The former Massachusetts governor declared that he had offered struggling Americans a "very different vision for the country" with a performance that confounded critics and left Obama floundering.
Mitt Romney reopened the race for the White House yesterday (Thursday) after securing victory over Barack Obama in the first presidential debate and revitalising Republicans who had feared his campaign was heading for defeat.
The former Massachusetts governor declared that he had offered struggling Americans a "very different vision for the country" with a performance that confounded critics and left Obama floundering.
In a 90-minute showdown in Colorado, which was watched by 58 million on Wednesday night, Romney attacked Mr Obama for the weak state of the American economy, while making an impassioned case for why he, instead, should be elected next month.
He accused the president of inflicting a "trickle-down government" of ever-growing control by Washington on Americans, turning Obama's accusation that the Republican challenger favoured "trickle-down economics" against him.
"I don't think that's what America believes in," Romney said yesterday (Thursday) during a surprise appearance at a conservative conference, where he took a victory lap among gleeful supporters.
A snap poll by CNN found two thirds of registered voters thought that Romney had won and only a quarter Obama. A CBS survey found 46% thought Romney was better than the president, while only 22% said Obama had won.
Romney, a 65-year-old grandfather frequently accused of being dull and unengaging, displayed more energy and enthusiasm than the Democratic incumbent 14 years his junior. Only 30% of voters had predicted a Romney win.
The president appeared lethargic and disengaged, repeatedly looking away from Romney and taking notes while the Republican challenger directed arguments to his face.
A chastened Obama told a morning rally yesterday that he had clashed with "a very spirited fellow who claimed to be Mitt Romney", but argued that "the real Mitt Romney" would wreck the country with extremist policies that he had repeatedly hidden from voters during their onstage encounter. "If you want to be president, you have to tell the American people the truth," said Obama. He accused his opponent of disguising plans to cut spending on education and to raise taxes on middle-class families to give tax breaks to higher earners.
Obama attempted to use the debate to expose the lack of detail in Romney's plan to cut all income taxes by 20% while not increasing America's $1.2 trillion (£740 billion) budget deficit and not increasing the burden on average-earners by ending other tax benefits.
He repeatedly stressed that non-partisan economists had said Mr Romney's plan was simply impossible.
Romney denied ordinary households would suffer, wrong-footing the president by abruptly styling himself as a moderate. "I don't have a tax cut of a scale that you're talking about," he said.
He even risked angering the Right-wing Republican "base" by embracing the health care reform he passed in Massachusetts. Romney said the scheme, which was the basis of the nationwide "ObamaCare" reform loathed by conservatives, proved he had a record of forging bipartisan deals. Seeming to concede that the Republican slipped free from his grasp, Obama said yesterday: "I had to spend a lot of time last night trying to pin him down".
James Carville, Bill Clinton's top strategist in the 1992 election, said: "President Obama came in, he wanted to have a conversation. Mitt Romney came in with a chainsaw."
Republicans hope the performance will transform a race that had appeared to be drifting away. Its effect will filter into opinion polls in coming days. Romney trails Mr Obama in all 10 key battleground states, according to RealClearPolitics, and is also behind nationally by an average of 3.1 percentage points.
Romney will on Monday deliver his first major speech on foreign policy on US soil during the election campaign. He is expected to revive criticisms of Mr Obama's handling of the terrorist attack in Benghazi that killed the US ambassador to Libya. Yesterday, a team of FBI agents were finally allowed to visit the compound where Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed.
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