Obama, Romney keep up fight on campaign trail

A day after a lively, feisty encounter on stage, President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney are back on the campaign trail keeping up their fight off stage.

An energised Obama, who by most accounts delivered a much improved stronger performance at their second face to face encounter at Hampstead, New York, returned to the debate theme during a campaign stop in Iowa Wednesday.

As he had suggested during Tuesday's debate, he again insinuated that Romney's five-point plan to boost the economy is really a one-point plan that offers special benefits to the wealthy. Obama also seized on Romney's comment during the debate that he'd gone through "binders full of women" in recruiting his gubernatorial staff.

"I tell you what," Obama told a crowd of 2,000 in Mount Vernon, Iowa. "We don't have to collect a bunch of binders to find qualified, talented, driven young women ready to work and teach in these fields right now."

As he did Tuesday night, he linked his appeal to women to other campaign themes, including women's health, reproductive choice and equal pay and funding for Planned Parenthood.

Romney told supporters in Virginia that Obama does not have an agenda for a second term. He said the president has no jobs plan and that middle income American families face a $4,000 a year tax increase if Obama is re-elected.

"Why is it that there are 3.6 million more women in poverty today than when the president took office?" Romney asked at a rally in Chesapeake, Virginia. "This president has failed America's women."

"The answers are coming from us and not from Barack Obama," Romney said. "He's pretty much running on fumes."

While instant polls declared Obama the winner of the second presidential debate, its real impact on the White House race will not become clear for a couple of days until opinion pollsters have conducted the surveys.

But for now Obama is back in his elements egging for another fight at their third and final presidential debate scheduled for Oct 22 in Boca Raton, Florida.


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