Barack Obama,  Mitt Romney,  President 2012

Romney Attacks Obama Again Over Work for Welfare

This is the second television ad in which Mitt Romney has attacked President Obama over welfare.

Mitt Romney’s first television commercial since announcing House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin as his running mate brings back a claim first brought up last week: That President Barack Obama is altering the federal welfare-to-work program by dropping work requirements in the law.

The narrator in TV ad, released Monday morning by the campaign of the GOP presidential challenger and by the Republican National Committee, says that “Barack Obama has a long history of opposing work for welfare.”

The spot then includes sound of Obama from June of 1998, with the then-Illinois State Senator saying “I was not a huge supporter of the federal plan that was signed in 1996.”

The ad continues with the narrator adding that “on July 12th, Obama quietly ended work requirements for welfare. You wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job. Mitt Romney strongly believes work must be part of welfare.”

I believe this is a strong theme and will resonate well in Florida and the key upper-Midwestern states of Iowa and Wisconsin. This work for welfare meme will be pounding the President frequently.

Although the Romney Campaign will not release their ad buy, it appears this will appear in all of the key battleground states.

As is their practice, the Romney campaign would not reveal any details on where the new commercial will run or on the ad buy.

But according to data provided to their clients by Kantar Media/Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political ad spending on broadcast and national cable TV, the new spot began running Monday morning in television markets in Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio; Jacksonville, Tampa, Orlando, West Palm Beach and Fort Myers, Florida; Manchester, New Hampshire; Denver, Colorado; Reno, Nevada; Raleigh, North Carolina; Richmond, Virginia; and Washington, D.C. (which covers much of northern Virginia).

Here is the ad, embedded below: