Obama and Romney in ill-tempered 11th-hour vote hunt

President Barack Obama and rival Mitt Romney darted across the United States Saturday in an 11th-hour blitz, with the neck-and-neck White House battle heading to an ill-tempered climax. Sharp political arrows flew much as they have throughout the bitter, months-long battle between the two parties' flag-bearers, but the rivals also turned to soaring rhetoric as they made their closing arguments. Three days before voters choose between giving Obama a second term or sending him back to Chicago, the rivals chased one another through a handful of states that will decide Tuesday's too-close-to-call election. The president dashed from small rural towns in Ohio to the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for a larger rally with a big, rowdy crowd in a conference center. He also heads to Iowa and then Virginia, two of the eight or so battlegrounds that the campaigns are obsessing over in the final 72 hours of the race. Romney spent the day in New Hampshire, Iowa and Colorado. Obama's applause lines were greeted with lusty cheers, and chants of "four more years" from a crowd, put at 20,000 by Milwaukee event officials, warmed up before Obama's arrival by pop star Katy Perry. "As long as there is a child in any place in Milwaukee, any place in Wisconsin, any place in this country, who is languishing in poverty and barred from opportunity, our fight goes on," Obama said,. "Our fight goes on because America has always done best when everybody has got a fair shot," he added, pushing his populist economic message. Obama also hit out at what he says is Romney's effort to roll back the clock to the days when Wall Street had "free rein to do whatever" it liked, contributing to "an economic crisis that we're still cleaning our way out of." "And governor Romney now is a very talented salesman," Obama added. "So in this campaign, he is trying as hard as he can to repackage the same old ideas that didn't work and offer them up as change." Wisconsin had been considered safe Democratic territory, but a combination of a resurgent Republican Party, waning enthusiasm for Obama and home state hero Paul Ryan as Romney's running mate has tightened the race. The latest RealClearPolitics average of state polls has Obama leading in Wisconsin by 5.4 percent. Romney began his day in New Hampshire, which has only four of the 270 electoral votes needed to claim the White House but could punch above its weight in a tight finish, and accused Obama of "demonizing" political foes. "I won't represent just one party, I'll represent one nation," Romney told a crowd at an airport rally outside Portsmouth, and warned Obama would find it impossible to work with congressional Republicans if he wins re-election. Romney also debuted a new political ad Saturday, seizing on Obama's comment in Ohio a day earlier when he told supporters angry at the Republicans not to boo but to vote, saying "voting's the best revenge." The ad featured Romney telling his biggest crowd of the campaign in Ohio Friday that Obama "asked his supporters to vote for revenge -- for revenge." "Instead, I ask the American people to vote for love of country," he said. Romney repeated the message in New Hampshire and then at a rally in Dubuque, Iowa, where in close combat on the last weekend of the campaign, Obama was set to touchdown for his own event at the same airport hours later. He also blasted the president for four years of failed economic policy that has left the nation mired in debt, with high unemployment and soaring gas prices. "He wants to settle. Look, Americans don't settle. We aspire, we reach, we dream, we achieve," Romney said. Later in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Romney said he saw Tuesday as "a moment to look into the future, and imagine what we can do to put the past four years behind us." "We're that close right now," he said. "The door to a brighter future is there." The president earlier visited the Washington headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency as New York and New Jersey struggle to deal with the aftermath of murderous superstorm Sandy. "We still have a long way to go," said Obama, stressing he had no time for government "red tape" which could hold up the relief effort, after discussing the crisis with the governors of New Jersey, Connecticut and New York. The Obama campaign enjoys the comparison between Obama doing his job managing the government while Romney campaigns as polls show a majority of Americans approve of the president's handling of Sandy. Latest polls show Obama and Romney tied nationally, but Obama appears to be solidifying his position in enough of the eight or so swing states that will decide the election to support his hopes of a second term. New surveys by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News Saturday showed the president up by 49 to 47 percent in Florida and leading Romney 51 to 45 percent in Ohio, double the margin in the current RealClearPolitics average. A Mason Dixon poll for the Miami Herald, however, had Romney up by six points in Florida, which the Republican, who also needs Ohio, cannot afford to lose if he is to be elected America's 45th president.