HENDERSON, Nev. – Running mates Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan aimed to project a sense of momentum and confidence as they entered the final two weeks before Election Day.
President Obama has “a message of going forward with the same policies of the last four years and that’s why his campaign is slipping and that’s why ours is gaining so much steam,” Romney told some 6,000 supporters here. “This is not just a matter of Paul and me. This is a movement cross the country. People recognize we could do a better job as a nation than we’ve done these past four years.”
The rally came less than 24 hours after the last of three presidential debates, but Romney barely mentioned the foreign-policy faceoff. He steered clear of foreign policy attacks on Obama at the rally and focused instead on jobs, the economy and Obama’s record.
Romney received passing grades from most analysts, but pundits and instant polls declared Obama the winner for the second debate in a row. Romney, who outshone a listless Obama in the first debate, nevertheless said the debates had “super-charged” his campaign.
It fell to Ryan to argue that Romney was the more presidential of two candidates in the final debate. “What we saw last night was Mitt Romney being concerned about America’s position in the world and President Obama more concerned about his position in this race,” said Ryan.
As the deadlocked contest increasingly becomes a question of voter turnout, both Romney and Ryan urged Nevada voters to vote early. Romney brought up the subject three times in his 17-minute speech.
With early voting already underway in Nevada, Democrats had an advantage of about 13,000 votes on Monday, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, though nearly 17,000 ballots were cast by third-party or non-partisan voters.
The two-week mark and conclusion of the debates catapulted the race into a sprint to the finish line that seemed to energize both tickets. “We can handle two more weeks of the attacks that are coming from Barack Obama.” Romney told the crowd. “But we cannot handle four more years of what he has given us."
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