Obama campaign keeping focus on taxes

WASHINGTON - Democrats are growing increasingly confident that a two-pronged tax attack on Republican Mitt Romney - one part policy, one part personal - will help President Obama lure pivotal support from middle-class voters.

Led by Obama, the Democrats are going after Romney for seeking to protect tax cuts for the wealthy and for refusing to release more information on the taxes he pays on his personal fortune.

Democrats say both public and private polls suggest the double-barreled focus on taxes is giving Obama an edge in the race. The strategy also gives the president an avenue to campaign on the economy - the top issue for voters - while steering clear of talking about the nation's high unemployment.

Three months before the election, national polls show Obama with a slight lead. Romney will spend the coming weeks - starting Saturday with a bus tour - trying to change the trajectory of the race. In recent days, he has gone on the offensive by criticizing Obama on welfare, making his own play for middle-class voters, after months of taking heat from Democrats.

Republicans reject the notion that Romney's $5 trillion tax-cut proposal could hurt him in the fall. But some party operatives acknowledge that he is being damaged by declining to release more than two years of his own tax returns.

"I do think this has hurt the governor a little bit," said Steve Lombardo, a Republican pollster who worked on Romney's 2008 presidential campaign. "Ironically, it's really less about 'rich guy' and more about transparency and honesty. So Team Romney has to find a way . . . to demonstrate honesty and transparency, attributes that people take very seriously in selecting a president."

Maria Cardona, a Democratic strategist, said the tax criticism has "really seeped into the American psyche" and is affecting the way voters view Romney.

"They're thinking, this is not somebody who is going to fight for me. This is not somebody who even understands the world I live in," said Cardona, who was a senior adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign four years ago.

The Obama campaign ramped up its criticism of Romney's refusal to release his tax returns Thursday with a new television advertisement that - without evidence - raises the prospect that the GOP challenger paid no taxes some years.

Romney says he has paid taxes every year. But he has provided little documentation to back up his assertions. His campaign dismissed the ad and accused Obama of running "a dirty campaign."

On the policy front, Obama has sought to highlight the contrast between the two candidates' tax proposals.

The president is pushing Congress to extend tax cuts only for families making less than $250,000 a year (individuals making less than $200,000).

Romney's plan calls for a full extension of the tax cuts, first passed under George W. Bush, plus an additional 20 percent cut across the boar.