Republican presidential candidate Gov. Mitt Romney speaks in Washington.By JEFF ZELENY and JIM RUTENBERG
c.2012 New York Times News Service
WASHINGTON – Mitt Romney, having weathered the first sustained general election attack, is entering a critical 90-day stretch to the Republican convention on relatively equal footing with the White House and is unleashing a new offensive to win over independent voters and further undermine confidence in President Barack Obama’s stewardship of the economy.
Romney, who formally secured the Republican presidential nomination on Tuesday by winning a final batch of necessary delegates in the Texas primary, introduced a new line of criticism: accusing the president of squandering taxpayer money on companies like Solyndra, which declared bankruptcy last year after receiving $528 million in federal loan guarantees.
It amounted to a counterpunch to the White House’s assault on Romney’s tenure as head of Bain Capital, which Obama has portrayed as evidence that Romney would not look out for the middle class.