It’s On: Obama Congratulates Romney On Cinching GOP Nomination

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama on Wednesday congratulated Mitt Romney on securing the Republican presidential nomination, a gesture coupled with a new line of attack on the GOP challenger that portrays his economic record while governor of Massachusetts as a failure.

The president called Romney and told him “he looked forward to an important and healthy debate about America’s future,” Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said. Romney’s campaign said the call was “brief and cordial.” Both men wished each other’s families well during the upcoming race.

Romney’s primary win in Texas on Tuesday pushed him past the 1,144-delegate threshold he needed to claim the nomination.

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Obama took the formal step of congratulating his opponent even as his team looked to shift to the Massachusetts story under Romney. In a five-page memorandum from senior Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod, the Obama camp cast Romney as poor steward of the Massachusetts economy during his 2003-2007 tenure as governor.

“When it comes to Mitt Romney and his economic philosophy the facts are clear — it didn’t work then, and it won’t work now,” Axelrod wrote.

Romney’s campaign, meanwhile, was bringing attention to failed stimulus projects under Obama and federal money given to green energy companies like Solyndra, a solar firm that received hundreds of millions of dollars from the government only to go bankrupt.

The competing attack-lines came as Romney pivoted from a long primary slog to the Republican nomination and a new summertime window to sway voters who have not yet fully tuned into the presidential campaign. Romney hopes to present himself as a worthy replacement for Obama who can help revitalize a slow-moving economy, the most important issue for voters.

The country is “just beginning a general election, we’ve gone through a primary … not a lot of people focus time on the characteristics of a new candidate like myself, and people will get to know me better. My guess is they’re going to get to know more about me than they’d like to by the time we’re finished,” Romney said in an interview on Fox News that aired Wednesday but was taped over the weekend.

For months, Obama and his allies have signaled plans to target Romney’s Massachusetts record, with advisers noting that the state’s economy lagged in job creation and saw an increase in debt while he was governor. The critique builds upon a line of attack this month of Romney’s record at private equity firm Bain Capital, which Obama’s team contends led to job losses and bankrupt companies even while Bain profited.