Romney rides debate win onto campaign trail

Mitt Romney will ride a surge of momentum from the first White House debate onto the campaign trail Thursday while President Barack Obama will try to make up for his own lethargic display. Romney badly needed a strong showing in the first of a trio of clashes with the president in Denver -- and got it -- with snap polls giving him an easy win that spurred new hope among Republicans for the November 6 election. Democrat Obama came across as irritated and passive as the energetic Romney performed an unflattering dissection of his White House record, hammering economic policies which he said had "crushed" America's middle class. The president will start the day with a chilly outdoor rally in Colorado -- a tightly contested swing state -- before traveling to another battleground, Wisconsin, where he is up by seven percent in the RealClearPolitics average. Romney was to link up with his vice presidential running mate Paul Ryan to hit another vital swing state, Virginia, which some analysts believe could be the decisive battleground in 2012, where Obama is up by around three percent. At the debate on Wednesday night, Romney appeared crisper and clearer than the president, who seemed tired after an exhausting four years in the White House amid the fallout of the worst economic crisis in decades."There's no question in my mind that if the president were to be re-elected you'll continue to see a middle-class squeeze with incomes going down and prices going up. I'll get incomes up again," Romney said. "(With Obama) you'll see chronic unemployment. We've had 43 straight months with unemployment above 8 percent. If I'm president, I will create -- help create -- 12 million new jobs in this country with rising incomes." Obama hit back by suggesting Romney would make $5.4 trillion in tax cuts geared towards the wealthy and said his Republican foe hadn't been clear on which loopholes in the tax system he would close. "Governor Romney has a perspective that says if we cut taxes skewed toward the wealthy and cut back regulations, we'll be better off. I have a different view," the Democratic incumbent said, calling for "economic patriotism." Romney challenged Obama's claims as the tax issue sparked the fiercest clashes in a mostly low-key televised debate watched live by tens of millions of Americans. "Virtually everything he said about my tax plan is inaccurate," Romney said. "If the tax plan he described were a tax plan I was asked to support, I would say absolutely not." Despite the unrest in the Middle East, this debate focused strictly on economic issues. Foreign policy gets its turn in the last of the three presidential debates at the end of the month. "I don't think there's any doubt that Romney won," Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College, told AFP. "He was more aggressive without being pugnacious or provocative or combative. The president seemed a bit flat. He seemed, I wouldn't say annoyed at times, but almost disconnected, almost not comfortable." The Romney campaign hailed a clear win for their man. "If this was a boxing match, it would have been called an hour into the fight," said top political adviser Eric Fehrnstrom. "Governor Romney is a very eager and willing candidate on the attack," Obama strategist David Axelrod wryly conceded. Romney, a multi-millionaire former venture capitalist, was expected to come under scrutiny over his complex offshore tax arrangements, which Democrats have highlighted to press the case that he is indifferent to middle class struggles. But Obama did not mention these, nor Bain Capital, the controversial Boston firm that Romney co-founded on his way to amassing his vast wealth, nor the most obvious of the recent slip-ups by his gaffe-plagued opponent. The 65-year-old Romney badly needed to reset the election narrative, after a video emerged of him branding 47 percent of Americans as people who pay no income taxes and depend on government handouts.The 51-year-old president was marking his 20th wedding anniversary on Wednesday and began the debate with a shout-out to First Lady Michelle Obama, apologizing for the unromantic setting. "Congratulations to you, Mr. President, on your anniversary. I'm sure this is the most romantic place you could imagine, here with me," Romney joked in a rare moment of levity as the duel began. Several national polls released before the debate showed a tight race, with Obama ahead by a few points. Polls of the key swing states that will decide the election gave the president a clearer advantage.