Mitt Romney's first television commercial of his second bid for the Republican presidential nomination hits the airwaves Tuesday, but the ad is already creating a controversy.
President Barack Obama's re-election campaign and the Democratic National Committee are both slamming the 60-second spot, saying it takes comments made on the campaign trail in 2008 by then-Sen. Obama out of context. But the Romney campaign says they used the line intentionally.
Programming note: GOP presidential candidates face off at 8 p.m. ET Tuesday, November 22, in the CNN Republican National Security Debate in Washington, D.C.
The commercial, titled "Believe in America," begins running on WMUR-TV, the main commercial television station in the first-in-the-nation primary state of New Hampshire. The ad's release comes as the major GOP presidential candidates face off Tuesday night in a CNN Republican presidential debate in the nation's capital that focuses heavily on foreign affairs, national security and the economy, and it also begins running in New Hampshire on the same day that the president makes a visit to the Granite state to urge Congress to act on his plan to extend and expand the payroll tax for millions of Americans.
The spot criticizes the president's efforts to turn around the economy, and among other things uses a clip from then-presidential candidate Obama from a campaign stop in New Hampshire from October 2008 saying "If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose."
