Biden Iowa Speech Signals Dem Hopes to Highlight Manufacturing

By George E. Condon Jr. // March 28, 2012 | 5:13 p.m.

In this March 17, 2011 photo, a line worker assembles a 2012 Ford Focus at the Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, Mich. Businesses increased orders for industrial machinery, computers and autos in March, lifting factory orders for the fifth consecutive month.

Vice President Joe Biden's speech in Iowa on Wednesday was more than a full-throated attack on Republican Mitt Romney's economic policies. It was also the latest indication that the Obama campaign intends to champion its manufacturing policies in battleground states in the Midwest, inviting voters, as Biden did Wednesday, to compare the president's program to what it casts as the likely Republican nominee's downplaying of manufacturing as a key part of America's economic recovery.

Biden pointedly quoted the Wall Street Journal, a newspaper rarely cited by Democrats, as stating, "Romney appeared to scoff, first in Detroit, then in Florida, at the notion of manufacturing as a job engine for the future." That, Biden said, sets up what he called the "choice in this election" between "our philosophy that believes manufacturing is central to our economy, and their philosophy that scoffs at it."