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Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney along with his grandsons Parker Romney, right, and Nick Romney, center, serve pancakes during a campaign event at Mapleside Farms on Sunday in Brunswick, Ohio.

BRUNSWICK, Ohio -- While Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney campaigned across the battleground state of Ohio Sunday, he has his family standing by his side this Father’s Day.
 
“Let's wish a happy Father's Day to my dad,” Craig, one of Romney’s sons, told the cheering, rain-soaked crowd. “Happy Father’s Day.”
 
Kicking off the third day of Romney’s “Every Town Counts” tour, Romney and his wife, Ann, plus two sons, daughter-in-law, and a handful of grandkids served up pancakes at a breakfast here. 
 
“We love to help my dad and my mom and any chance we get to fly and meet up with them we just love to do it,” Romney’s other son in attendance, Matt, told the several hundred people at Mapleside Farms. Matt went on to fondly tell a story about how his dad helped his pregnant wife when she was on bed rest.
 
“He [Mitt] spliced the cable, built a TV cabinet, put a TV upstairs went and found someone who could help her do errands and got this all arranged in a matter of like 30 minutes,” Matt said. “I just look at that…he taught me to be both a father and a husband."
 
While the two sons shared insight on Romney’s personal side this Father’s Day, the all-but-certain GOP nominee continued to jab his competitor -- President Barack Obama.
 
“It looks like the sun is coming out,” Romney said as he began his nearly 20-minute speech just as the rain clouds parted. “I think that’s a metaphor for the country, the sun is coming out guys.  Three and a half years of dark clouds are about to part and it’s about to get a little warmer around this country, little brighter.”
Romney promises to seek immigration reform law

The Buckeye State is setting up to be the site of a fierce battle between Romney and Obama in this fall’s election. This visit marks Romney’s second visit to the state just this week and is a state Ohio GOP Sen. Rob Portman says the president should be spending more time in.
 
“We’re concerned for our families, our state, for our country. We’re concerned because we have a president of the United States who doesn’t know how to turn things around,” Portman, a Romney supporter and highly speculated vice presidential candidate, told the crowd while introducing Romney. “Folks he [Obama] needs to spend less time in Hollywood at fundraisers and more time with small businesses here in the state of Ohio.”
 
Romney served pancakes with Ann while Portman poured the syrup. The trio and Romney's two sons will all continue campaigning across Ohio on Father’s Day – two more events are planned Sunday in Newark and Troy. 

STRATHAM, NH -- Mitt Romney today kicked off his first major bus tour since clinching the Republican nomination with an event at the same family farm where he announced his candidacy for president just a year ago.

“Washington’s big government agenda should not smother small-town dreams. In the America we love, every town counts. Every job counts. And every American counts,” Romney told the 1,000-plus crowd at Scamman Farm. “In the days ahead, we'll be traveling on what are often called the 'back roads of America.' But I think our tour is going to take us along what I will call the 'backbone of America.'”

This event launched the campaign’s “Every Town Counts” bus tour that will bring the GOP nominee to six battleground states over the next five days: New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Michigan.

In a briefing to press at Romney headquarters in Boston, MA Friday morning, a campaign strategist noted that all states visited on the tour were won by President Barack Obama in the 2008 campaign.

"We're certainly campaigning on their turf as opposed to what would be considered our turf," strategist Russ Schriefer said.

As Romney addressed the crowd two planes flew overhead in the crystal blue sky, very reminiscent of his announcement day: “Romney for President 2012” [paid for by the campaign] and “Romney’s Every Millionaire Counts Tour” [from MoveOn.org] -- a sign of the ongoing battle between the two sides during this election cycle. The former governor was also very critical of Obama during his roughly 20-minute speech.

While mocking Obama’s long speech yesterday, Romney called him a “a detached and distant president.” 

"If there has ever been a president who has failed to give the middle class of America a fair shot, it is Barack Obama," Romney told the crowd. "I have a very different vision for America, and of our future. And I know what we must do to truly give our fellow Americans a fair shot and a better chance." 

Romney was joined in the small New Hampshire town by U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), who has accompanied the former Massachusetts governor at his past three visits to her state.

WASHINGTON, DC -- Mitt Romney set the stage on Wednesday for a showdown tomorrow that pit the presumptive GOP nominee and President Obama against each other at public campaign events in the same state for the first time in the general election.

Romney, appearing at a lunch meeting of the Business Roundtable, a group of executives that has also previously hosted Obama, fired a shot across the bow of the president's campaign. The former Massachusetts governor warned that Obama's words on Thursday at a campaign event in Cleveland are "cheap," and make for no substitute for actual action to improve the economy.

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney addresses the quarterly meeting of the Business Roundtable at the Newseum June 13, 2012 in Washington, DC.

"He said, as you know, just a few days ago that the private sector is doing fine," Romney said, again dredging up the president's gaffe at a press conference on Friday. "But the incredulity that came screaming back from the American people, I think, has caused him to rethink that, and I think you’re gonna see him change course when he speaks tomorrow, where he will acknowledge that it isn’t going so well, and he’ll be asking for four more years."

"My own view is that he will speak eloquently, but that words are cheap, and that the record of an individual is the basis upon which you determine whether they should continue to hold on to their job," Romney continued. "The record is that we have 23 million Americans that are out of work or stopped looking for work or underemployed. That is a compelling and a sad statistic."

Both Romney and Obama will court voters in the pivotal swing state of Ohio during separate events scheduled roughly for the same time of day. The president will speak in Cleveland, while Romney will appear in the Cincinnati area.

Today, Romney emphasized his pro-business agenda in front of the group of like-minded executives, hitting Obama for tax and regulatory policies he said were averse to business.

"I happen to believe that if you look at his record over the last three and a half years, you will conclude as I have that it is the most anti-investment, anti-business, anti-jobs series of policies in modern American history. The reason that it has taken so long for this recovery to gain traction and to put people back to work is in large measure because of the policy choices the president made," Romney said. "He is not responsible for whatever improvement we might be seeing. Instead, he’s responsible for the fact that it’s taken so long to see this recovery and the recovery’s been so tepid.”

The Obama campaign quickly responded, calling Romney's characterization of the president's record "dishonest."

“In another in a long line of ‘major’ economic speeches, Mitt Romney made dishonest after dishonest claim about the President’s record and failed to offer any new ideas of his own on how to improve the economy and strengthen the middle class," Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith said in a statement. "Contrary to Romney’s rhetoric, the President took our nation from losing 750,000 jobs a month to adding 4.3 million private sector jobs over the last 27 months, worked to reduce burdensome business regulations, and has put forward a plan to create more jobs and reduce the deficit while asking every American to pay their fair share."

After delivering remarks in the Newseum, a museum in the nation's capital dedicated to the preservation of the free press and the First Amendment, Romney took questions during a closed-press question-and-answer session. During his visit with the same group in May, President Obama also took questions after the press was escorted out of the room.

ORLANDO -- Mitt Romney tied President Obama's signature health reform law to the anemic hiring situation among small businesses on Tuesday, calling the 2010 law the "poster child" for harmful policies enacted during this administration.

"Obamacare," Romney said near the close of his remarks on a factory floor here in a crucial swing state, "is the poster child for a piece of policy that’s made it harder for businesses to hire people, so we’ve got to get rid of it, among other good reasons."

Aides said that Romney's renewed focus on "ObamaCare" anticipates a Supreme Court ruling on that very law this month. Romney has long been haunted by the strong resemblances between the law he signed as governor of Massachusetts (including an individual mandate), but has long since vowed to repeal the president's law should he be elected.

Today's events -- and ones like it in the coming weeks -- allows Romney to get out in front of the Supreme Court ruling, and outline his alternative plans for reforming health care.

To that end, Romney described some of his preferred solutions, such as block-granting Medicaid money to states and allowing consumers to buy insurance across state lines were specific. Others, such as Romney's desire to see health care act more like a market, and allowing states to experiment with their own reforms lacked specificity.

Any effort to replace the law, Romney said, must come after its repeal, a process he said again today he would begin on the first day of his administration -- a line that always gets cheers in Romney's stump speech, and today led to a standing ovation.

Romney also used an answer about the law that Obama gave on Monday to further his case that the president is "out of touch."

The president told a reporter from NBC affiliate KTIV in Sioux City, Iowa that it would be "hard to explain" why a business might have had to move from one state to another due to the health care law, because the law didn't govern that type of business. Republicans, including Romney today, pounced on the comment.

"Just yesterday, the president said something else that shows just how out of touch he is," Romney said. "He said he didn’t understand that Obamacare was hurting small business, he doesn’t understand that Obamacare impacts small business, and you have to scratch your head about that because about a year ago the Chamber of Commerce did a survey of some 1,500 small businesses and of those small businesses, three-quarters, 75 percent, said Obamacare made it less likely for them to hire people."

Romney recast his criticism of President Obama as "out of touch," last Friday after the president told reporters that the private sector was "doing fine," and today he continued to work that line of attack today.

"The president, as you know, said last week that the private sector is doing fine. He is so out of touch with what's happening across America, to say something like that. He went on, of course, this was not just one line taken out of context. He went on to describe why he believes that therefore we should provide another stimulus to hire government workers," Romney said, going on to describe how his own interactions with Americans as he travels the country have made him, not the president, more in touch with the concerns of average folks.

But the Romney campaign has also been forced to defend Romney's own response from last Friday, when he appeared to suggest that the message of the Wisconsin recall was not to hire more teachers, firefighters or police.

"He wants another stimulus, he wants to hire more government workers. He says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers. Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people," Romney said in that interview

Today, Romney told Fox News that Democratic accusations he would want to cut firefighters or teachers were "very strange."

“That's a very strange accusation. Of course, teachers and firemen and policemen are hired at the local level and also by states. The federal government doesn't pay for teachers, firefighters or policemen. So obviously that's completely absurd," Romney said. “[President Obama]'s got a new idea, though, and that is to have another stimulus and to have the federal government send money to try and bail out cities and states. It didn't work the first time. It certainly wouldn't work the second time.”

Romney had no more to say on the matter when asked by a reporter at his event today today if he thought Democrats had taken his remarks out of context.

"I'm not going to talk about that," Romney said, moving along the rope line.

COUNCIL BLUFFS, IA -- Mitt Romney condemned President Obama's assessment of the private sector's health as "fine" on Friday as a misreading of historic proportions.

The presumptive presidential nominee seized on the president's comments hours earlier at the White House, accusing Obama of being "out of touch."

"He said the private sector is doing fine," Romney said. "Is he really that out of touch? I think he's really defining what it means to be out of touch with reality."

Republicans were quick to pounce on Obama's line at a press conference this morning, which was meant to contrast the relative health of the private sector versus the public sector, which has had to weather layoffs prompted by cuts to government spending.

"The truth of the matter is that, as I said, we've created 4.3 million jobs over the last 27 months; over 800,000 just this year alone," Obama said. "The private sector is doing fine."

(An Obama campaign spokesman emphasized the 3.4 million private sector jobs to have been created during the president's tenure, though said much more work needs to be done.)

"For the president of the united states to stand up and say the private sector is doing fine is going to go down in history as an extraordinary miscalculation by a president who is out of touch," Romney said.

Obama's remarks were intended to goad lawmakers into taking action on his stalled jobs plan, particularly to boost hiring of government workers -- teachers, police and firefighters, among them -- at the state and local level.

Romney labeled that plan as effectively a new round of stimulus.

"He wants another stimulus, he wants to add more government workers," Romney said, "Did he not get the message in Wisconsin?"

NBC's Carrie Dann contributed reporting.

NORTH ST. LOUIS COUNTY, MO -- Mitt Romney on Thursday recast perhaps his favorite stump speech topic -- the central role of free enterprise in America's success -- as a moral issue, while also taking on President Obama's arguments about economic fairness.

"It is called the free enterprise system because we are both free to engage in enterprise and through those enterprises we ensure our freedom. But sadly, it has become clear that this president simply doesn’t understand or appreciate these fundamental truths of our economic system," Romney told an audience of several hundred supporters on a factory floor outside St. Louis.

"Over the last three and a half years, record numbers of Americans have lost their jobs or just disappeared from the work force, or can only find part time jobs. Record numbers of Americans are now living in poverty –-  46 million people. In this country. Living below the poverty line," Romney said. "This is not just a failure of policy; it is a moral failure of tragic proportion. Our government has a moral commitment to help every American help himself... And that commitment has been broken."

The former Massachusetts governor also used his morality argument to reframe President Obama's campaign for greater economic fairness.

"President Obama's vision is very different –- and deeply flawed. There is nothing fair about a government that favors political connections over honest competition and takes away your right to earn your own success," Romney said. "And there is nothing morally right about trying to turn government dependence into a substitute for the dignity of hard work."

Romney regularly casts himself as a defender of the free enterprise system and a champion of small business, and while he regularly speaks of the national debt as a moral issue, today's casting of free enterprise as morally good and the president's policies as morally bad was a rhetorical shift, performed before two of the campaign's own cameras, likely for a future television ad.

After the speech, Romney did not gloat about his Victory Fund's May fundraising totals, which surpassed those of the president's re-election campaign, telling reporters along the rope line that the campaign has "got a long way to go."

The presumptive GOP nominee also told reporters that he called Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker on Tuesday night to congratulate him on his victory in the recall effort there. He did not respond to a follow up question about whether he could win Wisconsin outright. His campaign advisers say they view the Badger state with cautious optimism, as a place to go on offense, but that they don't have to carry to reach the White House in 2012.

SAN ANTONIO, TX — Mitt Romney's campaign seem bolstered in their hopes of winning Wisconsin this fall, with Romney predicting Republican Gov. Scott Walker's victory in last night's recall election would "echo throughout the country" this November.

"What happened yesterday was people looked at a Republican governor, a conservative, and even though they may have been Democrat or independent, they looked at the record of a conservative who cut back on the size of government, who held down taxes, who said we had to reform — in this case public sector unions that asked for too much — and then he went to the polls," Romney told donors at a fundraiser here in San Antonio this morning.

Romney expanded upon that position in a conference call with business owners later this afternoon.

"The vote that we saw last night in Wisconsin said that people in what many have considered a blue state — it hasn’t voted for a Republican for president since 1984 — a blue state said we’ve seen a conservative governor, he cut back on the scale of government and has held down taxes and stood up to the public sector unions, and we want more of that not less of it," Romney told callers from the National Federation of Independent Business. "And I think you’re gonna find that in the decisions being made in November."

And while exit polls last night in Wisconsin showed Romney trailing President Obama among recall voters, the state is an attractive target for Romney's campaign as it looks to make inroads against the president's 2008 electoral map.

One Romney adviser described Walker's victory, and the mobilized, organized and well-funded Republican apparatus that made it possible, as something that "opens the door for us," in the Wisconsin — but emphasized that Romney doesn't have to win the state to reach the 270 it needs to win the White House.

Another top Romney adviser cautioned that the campaign had not yet decided how big of an effort to make towards winning Wisconsin, but suggested that the campaign would certainly be on offense there.

Wisconsin has become an unlikely incubator for top Republican talent in recent years, with Walker, RNC Chairman Reince Preibus and House Budget Committee Chairman (and oft-floated VP shortlister) Paul Ryan all hailing from the Badger state. 

The Obama campaign has kept its own focus on what it asserts is Romney's lackluster record as governor. 

“In Texas today, Mitt Romney offered nothing more than empty election-year promises—promises that we’ve heard from him before. He said that his priority as president would be job creation, but we know that that wasn’t his priority either as a corporate buyout specialist or during his time as governor," said Obama spokeswoman Lis Smith.

FREMONT, CA -- Mitt Romney decried what he said was the Obama administration's economic failures and cronyism outside the headquarters of a defunct company that Republicans have upheld as the very symbol of those shortcomings.

The presumptive presidential nominee stood for an impromptu press conference outside the headquarters of Solyndra, the now-bankrupt solar energy company that had been the beneficiary of a federal loan, which, Republicans contend, was doled out as a political favor.

"It's a symbol not of success but of failure. It's also a symbol of a serious conflict of interest," Romney said outside the headquarters, a destination which wasn't made public until the last possible minute, even to the traveling press corps that cover the former Massachusetts governor.

"An independent inspector general looked at this investment and concluded that the administration had steered money to friends and family - to campaign contributors," Romney said, referring to a series of loans which backstopped the company and would have paid investors back before taxpayers. "This building, this half a billion dollar taxpayer investment, represents a serious conflict of interest on the part of the president and his team."

The bankrupt company's opulent headquarters, long a target of Romney's derision on the stump, made for a powerful visual backdrop as Romney lambasted what he said was the company -- and the president's -- failings.

"It's also a symbol of how the president thinks about free enterprise," Romney continued. "Free enterprise to the president means taking money from the taxpayers and giving it freely to his friends."

The appearance came amid a battle over optics between the Romney and Obama campaigns that literally stretched the continent.

In Boston this morning, the senior strategist for the president's re-election, David Axelrod, rallied other supporters of Obama's on the steps of the Massachusetts statehouse to decry Romney's lone term as governor. Axelrod had intended to highlight what he said were Romney's broken promises as governor, though that message was muddled as a Romney campaign aide gathered supporters to heckle Axelrod, drawing the Chicago Democrat into an exchange over their jeers.

"Romney economics didn't work then and it won't work now," Axelrod said over the boos of the pro-Romney crowd.

Here in Fremont, a reporter asked Romney about the guerrilla tactics employed by his campaign.

"Many of the events I go to, there are large groups of, if you will, Obama supporters there heckling me. And at some point you say, you know what, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If they’re going to be heckling us, why we’re not going to sit back and play by very different rules," Romney said. "If the president is going to have his people coming to my rallies, and heckling, why, we’ll show them that, you know, we conservatives have the same kind of capacity he does."

But amid the campaign trail antics, Romney also took a moment to address the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Syria following a massacre this past weekend leading to the deaths of 100 civilians. Romney has repeatedly urged U.S. allies in the region, including Turkey and Saudi Arabia, to arm anti-government rebels and provide other aid necessary to remove the Assad regime from power.

Romney called the coordinated expulsion of Syrian diplomats by the United States and other allies "of course the right thing to do," but also a "very small matter in something as significant as the course of Syria."

"I hope we understand that Syria and what's going on there is a a ray of sunshine in the Middle East because you have a very dangerous tyrant, who has allied his country with Iran, which is seeking to become a dominant power in the middle east," Romney said.

"Syria is the headquarters of Hamas in the middle east. It is Iran's only Arab ally. Syria is the route for arming Hezbollah in Lebanon. It is important to see a change in leadership in Syria," Romney continued, adding that the peace plan implemented there by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was not"advancing in the way I think we could be advancing," and calling on President Obama to take a greater leadership role in resolving the crisis.