Romney, Obama spar over negative ads

Mitt Romney accused President Barack Obama and his allies Thursday of making personal attacks and perpetuating lies about him in TV ads.

The Republican rolled out a new commercial of his own that questioned Obama's values and accused the president of waging war on religious freedom.

Obama's campaign disputed that charge.

"I am seeing some of the ads out there. I don't know whatever happened to a campaign of hope and change," Romney said, alluding to Obama's previous campaign slogan, during an interview on the Bill Bennett radio program "Morning in America."

"I thought he was a new kind of politician. But instead, his campaign and the people working with him have focused almost exclusively on personal attacks. . . . It's really disappointing."

Romney argued that Obama "keeps on just running" ads that various fact-checking organizations have called inaccurate. "They just blast ahead," he said.

But Romney ignored the fact that he has kept his own ads assailing Obama on the air after these groups have found their claims to be false.

Romney talked generally about ads in the interview but didn't directly refer to a commercial by a Democratic outside group that has dominated the campaign in the past two days.

His campaign has called "despicable" an ad by Priorities USA Action that features a man whose wife died of cancer after he lost his health insurance when he was laid off from a company that was bought by the private equity firm Romney once ran.

Obama's campaign has refused to ask the group to pull the spot. Speaking at a rally in Pueblo, Colo., Obama bemoaned the influence of super PACs supporting Romney. He told voters they would see "more negative ads, more money spent than you have ever seen in your life." He made no mention of similar groups supporting his campaign.

The back and forth over the commercial underscored the degree to which the campaign has become intensely negative and personal as polls show a close race.

Romney's team rolled out an ad yesterday revives a months-old debate over new health rules mandating insurance coverage for birth control without co-pays. Obama says exemptions for churches and compromise language on charities fully protect religious freedom.