Ohio AFL-CIO

A flyer distributed by the AFL-CIO in Ohio.

KENT, OH – At two stops in Ohio on Wednesday, President Barack Obama hammered away at Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney for his lack of support for the auto industry bailout and for investing in companies that moved jobs to China. Neither line of attack is new, but both continue to allow the president to paint Romney as an outsourcer and out of touch.

“He's been talking tough on China. He says he's going to take the fight to them. He's going to go after these cheaters,” Obama said. “I've got to admit that message … is better than what he's actually done about this thing. It sounds better than talking about all the years he spent profiting from companies that sent our jobs to China.”

Obama added: “When you hear this newfound outrage, when you see these ads he's running promising to get tough on China, it feels a lot like that fox saying, ‘You know, we need more secure chicken coops.’”

In Ohio, where about 12 percent of jobs are tied to the auto industry, the president likes to use this line: “When my opponent said we should just let Detroit go bankrupt ... that would have meant walking away from an industry that supports one in eight Ohio jobs.”

Almost always, the audience boos and the president follows up with, “Don’t boo. Vote.”  

The Ohio AFL-CIO, one of the state’s biggest unions, has made the auto bailout message one of their three main bullet points of support for Obama. A flyer distributed by the union states, “Obama took a principled stand to reinvest in the American auto industry, saving a million good jobs and millions more that depend on the auto industry.”

Obama even managed to turn a verbal gaffe during his appearance at Kent State University into a Romney dig when he said, “I want to see us export more jobs.” The president quickly corrected himself and then joked, “I’m sorry, I was channeling my opponent for a second.”

VANDALIA, OH – For the Romney campaign, Tuesday brought yet more bad news from the Buckeye state: a new Washington Post poll showed the Republican presidential nominee trailing President Barack Obama by eight points in this critical battleground state, with 52 percent of Ohio voters in favor of giving the incumbent another four years.

Before Mitt Romney's plane touched down at the Dayton airport today, two top aides were dispatched to the press cabin to put out possible fires the numbers might have sparked.

"The public polls are what the public polls are," Romney Political Director Rich Beeson told reporters. "I kind of hope the Obama campaign is basing their campaign on what the public polls say. We don’t. We have confidence in our data and our metrics."

What the Romney team’s data indicated about Ohio, Beeson wouldn't say. He argued that Romney was inside the margin of error here “by any stretch,” and dismissed the much-hyped Obama ground game in Ohio as activity confused with progress.

"I will put our operation up against anybody’s. But at the end of the day, Ohio is going to come down to the wire and we’ll be in it down to the wire and I’m confident that we will win,” Beeson said.

In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Romney's Ohio chairman Rob Portman projected similar confidence that Romney would carry his home state, despite the mounting poll data showing him slipping further behind President Obama. He told NBC News that the Romney campaign was taking a page out of then-candidate Obama's book by attempting to run a more regional campaign inside the state. 

"I do think there is a strategy, which the Obama administration is very good at, which is to you know, target particular groups of people and particular regions and you know, the Romney campaign is doing it as well," Portman said.

Portman, a freshman senator, then ticked off the various demographics and localities and how they're being targeted by the Romney campaign: running advertisements accusing the president of a war on coal in the east; talking fracking in communities near the Marcellus and Utica shale formations; and focusing on trade and China in heavy manufacturing areas like the Mahoning Valley, Northeast Ohio and here in Dayton.

"I think that's one way we're going to win Ohio, by addressing the issues region by region," Portman said. "There isn't just one Ohio. It’s not monolithic."

Moments earlier, Romney had done exactly what Portman suggested; running as much against China's trade practices as the incumbent president, and vowing to fight back to preserve jobs.

"This cannot be allowed," Romney said of alleged Chinese trade abuses. "We cannot compete with people who don't play fair and I won't let that go on, I will stop it in its tracks."

In addition to his role as Romney's Ohio campaign chairman, Portman also serves as Romney's debate sparring partner, a role at which he is so good, Romney claims, the GOP nominee sometimes wants "to kick him out of the room."

Asked how debate preparations were going, Portman shrewdly looked to lower expectations for Romney, and raise them for Obama, ahead of the first showdown on Oct. 3rd.

"When you think about it, [Romney] hasn't had a real debate in 10 years," Portman said, claiming the 20-plus GOP debates Romney participated in during the primaries were not one-on-one, and were more like candidate forums than true debates.

He also heaped praise on Obama's debating skills: "Barack Obama is going to be formidable. I think it'll be a good debate, but I certainly would not underestimate what Barack Obama brings to it: a lot of experience in these kinds of debates and obviously a lot of knowledge and background on the federal issues."

OWENSVILLE, OH -- By Wednesday afternoon, Paul Ryan took a harsher tone against President Barack Obama and aligned himself with his running mate, Mitt Romney, regarding the attacks on Americans in the Middle East.

“The administration sent mixed signals to those who attacked our embassy in Egypt, and mixed signals to the world. I want to be clear: It is never too early for the United States to condemn attacks on Americans, on our properties and to defend our values,” Ryan told the crowd in the battleground state of Ohio. “That’s what leadership is all about.”

The GOP vice presidential nominee continued: “This administration’s policies project weakness abroad. Undercutting allies like Israel, outreach to enemies like Iran, national security leaks and devastating defense cuts. A weak America breeds insecurity and chaos around the world. The best guarantee of peace is American strength.” 

At Ryan’s first event of the day, in his home state of Wisconsin, the seven-term congressman focused less on policy and more on the tragedy itself.

“The attacks on our diplomatic missions in Egypt and Libya and the loss of four American lives including our Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens – this is outrageous,” Ryan said in De Pere, Wis. “Our hearts are heavy and our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families and I would just like to ask at this moment that we join together in a moment of silence in memory of them.”

While at both events, Ryan promised the crowd here that a Romney-Ryan foreign policy would follow the “peace thru strength” doctrine, the event seemed to coincide with rhetoric Mitt Romney used towards Obama Wednesday morning.

Speaking at a press conference in Jacksonville, Fla. early Wednesday, Romney said the president "demonstrated a lack of clarity as to foreign policy” regarding the attacks.

“It’s their administration that spoke,” Romney told reporters at a press conference in Florida. “The president takes responsibility not just for the words that come from his mouth but also for the words that come from his ambassadors, from his administration, from his embassies, from his State Department. They clearly sent mixed messages to the world.”

President Barack Obama fired back at the GOP ticket during an interview with CBS's 60 Minutes. 

"There's a broader lesson to be learned here, and, you know, Governor Romney seems to have a tendency to shoot first and aim later. As president, one of the things I've learned is you can't do that," Obama said. "It's important for you to make sure that the statements you make are backed up by the facts, and that you thought through the ramifications before you make them."

MILFORD, OH – Citing Mitt Romney's appearance on NBC's Meet the Press earlier in the day, Vice President Joe Biden took aim Sunday at Romney's failure to name specific tax loopholes he would close to lower taxes and balance the budget.

"He said that he's gonna pay for all these tax cuts by closing the loopholes, but when asked by Mr. Gregory what loopholes he'd close, he couldn't name one," Biden told a crowd of 700 supporters at a western Ohio high school. 

"All this has a giant price tag and it's not going to come from closing loopholes for millionaires," he added. 

On NBC, host David Gregory asked Romney to specify how he would eliminate tax deductions and exceptions in order to compensate for the enormous financial consequences of his deep tax cut proposals. 

Romney responded only by noting that "people at the high end" would have fewer opportunities for tax exemptions, but he declined to pinpoint any specific numbers or policies. 

“High income taxpayers are going to have fewer deductions and exemptions... Those numbers are going to come down. Otherwise, they'd get a tax break. And I want to make sure people understand, despite what the Democrats said at their convention. I am not reducing taxes on high income taxpayers. I'm bringing down the rate of taxation, but also bringing down deductions and exemptions at the high end so the revenues stay the same, the taxes people pay stay the same. Middle income people are going to get a break. But at the high end, the tax coming in stays the same. But we encourage small business, because small business is able to keep more of what it makes and therefore hire more people, which is my priority.”

The stop in Clermont County, a heavily-Republican area that supported John McCain by a 2-1 margin in 2008, was Biden's final campaign event of a two-day swing through Ohio. He will return to the Buckeye State next Wednesday to campaign in Dayton.

As speculation abounds about Mitt Romney's selection for a running mate, the Obama campaign is revving the engines to ensure its supporters in the home states of the possible picks are ready to dish some local dirt.

In emails to supporters in Ohio, Florida, and Minnesota, Obama for America invites critics of hometown pols Sen. Rob Portman, Sen. Marco Rubio, and former Gov. Tim Pawlenty to "share what you think Americans need to know about" the could-be vice presidential candidates.

An email to Obama for America's Minnesota supporters calls　Pawlenty "our former governor and 'Obamneycare' critic" and asks if the onetime presidential candidate "will really be Mitt Romney's running mate."

"Most Americans don't know Tim Pawlenty," the email reads. "But as a Minnesotan, you do -- and the truth is painful for the middle-class families who lived under his leadership. Like Romney, Pawlenty proved that when he's in charge, fees and taxes go up, job creation goes down, transparency gets worse, and women's rights are threatened."

The message: Those who know the talked-about running mates need to spread the word to a nation that doesn't know much about the "disaster" each would be as Romney's partner in the White House.

An email to Floridians dumps a sampling of opposition research on Rubio: "In the Florida State House, Rubio balanced the budget by sticking it to the middle class. And in the Senate, Rubio's led the way on almost every extreme position Mitt Romney has embraced. If chosen as Romney's VP, we can count on Rubio to lead us right back to the failed economic policies of the past. Remember -- this is the guy who called George W. Bush a ‘fantastic’ president."

A similar message was sent to Ohio Obama backers about Sen. Rob Portman: "The most damning pieces of his record involve choices he made as a senior member of the Bush-Cheney administration and conservative congressman, the consequences of which still reverberate on a national scale."

The message continued: "As one of the architects of the top-down Bush budget, Portman practically invented the policies that punished middle-class families while exploding the deficit, and crashing our economy."

Each email contains a link to a clearinghouse site where participants can, for example, "share what you think the rest of the country should know about what Rubio's really done in Florida -- the good, bad, and ugly -- and why he'd be a disaster as our next vice president."

The grassroots communication effort is similar to one launched by the Obama campaign during the GOP primaries.

So far, none of the other possible picks - like Wisconsin's Paul Ryan, Louisiana's Bobby Jindal, or New Jersey's Chris Christie - have received the same treatment. But as the buzz picks up, more such efforts could be on the way.

NBC's Andrew Rafferty contributed to this report.