Romney to Obama: Take hate home

OHIO - Agence France-Presse

Republican presidential candidate Romney speaks at a rally in Virginia. AP photo

U.S. Rebuplican presidential candidate Mitt Romney blasted President Barack Obama as “angry and desperate” Aug. 14 and told him to take his “hate” home to Chicago in an outburst that prompted the president’s camp to brand him “unhinged.”

“This is what an angry and desperate presidency looks like,” he said, in the most charged exchanges of the campaign so far. “Mr. President, take your campaign of division and anger and hate back to Chicago and let us get about rebuilding and reuniting America,” the Republican candidate said.

Response to Biden

A sudden and bitter escalation to the White House race was triggered when Vice President Joe Biden said in the one-time slave state of Virginia that Romney’s plans to slash banking regulation would “put y’all back in chains.” A furious Romney fired back at a rally in Ohio, accusing Obama, who ran in 2008 vowing to heal political divides, of trying to “smash America apart” to cobble together a 51 percent majority to win a second term.

Rising temperatures between the campaigns came as Romney and Obama trekked across crucial electoral territory in dueling bus tours as both geared up for their nominating conventions and a race to the finish on Nov. 6.