President Barack Obama is pitching a broad economic argument to voters ahead of next week's debate with Republican opponent Mitt Romney, buying TV time in seven battleground states to promote what he calls a "new economic patriotism." 
 
 In a two-minute ad, Obama looks into the camera as he promotes an economic plan he says will create 1 million manufacturing jobs, cut oil imports and hire thousands of new teachers. 
 
 The ad set to air in New Hampshire, Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Nevada and Colorado comes as Obama and Republican Mitt Romney shadow each while looking for votes in a closely contested race. On Thursday, the two candidates are scheduled to campaign in the same state for the third straight day, this time in Virginia, a critical battleground in the Nov. 6 election. The president is not chosen by popular vote but in state-by-state contests. That makes these battleground states _ which are neither reliably Republican nor Democratic _ especially important in a tight election like this one. 
 
 Romney is to appear in suburban Washington for a veterans event, while Obama speaks to a farm bureau in Virginia Beach. 
 
 The simultaneous visits follow an all-day duel Wednesday in Ohio, where Romney declared he can do more than Obama to improve the lives of average people. Obama scoffed that a challenger who calls half the nation "victims" was unlikely to be of much help. 
 
 Meanwhile, new Republican-leaning independent groups have entered the presidential advertising fray as polling suggests Romney's campaign may be losing ground against Obama in key states such as Ohio and Florida. 
 
 The commercials, aimed at voters who supported Obama in 2008 but are now undecided, join those from the campaigns and outside groups swamping a narrow and possibly shrinking map of competitive states in the fast-moving presidential contest. Americans for Job Security launched an $8.7 million ad buy in six battleground states, while the Ending Spending Action Fund, a new conservative group bankrolled by billionaire Joe Ricketts, was set to debut a $10 million, four-state ad campaign on Thursday. 
 
 Polls show Obama widening his lead in several key states amid backlash from a leaked video in which Romney disparages the 47 percent of Americans who don't pay federal income tax as government-dependent Obama supporters who see themselves as victims and won't take responsibility for their own lives. 
 
 Obama's campaign was reveling in the latest public polling but trying to crush any sense of overconfidence. "If we need to pass out horse blinders to all of our staff, we will do that," campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Wednesday. 
 
 Romney went after working-class voters at three stops in Ohio, while Obama rallied college crowds at Bowling Green and Kent State. Early voting in Ohio begins next week. 
 
 "If President Obama were to be re-elected, what you'd see is four more years like the last four years, and we can't afford another four more years like the last four years," Romney told a boisterous crowd in Toledo at the day's final stop. 
 
 Romney said the country had lost more than half a million manufacturing jobs in the past four years. "This is not the path we want for America," he said. 
 
 Romney's campaign has been reeling from his caught-on-video comments at a Florida fundraiser last May. New opinion polls, conducted after the video became public last week, show Obama opening up apparent leads over Romney in battleground states, including Ohio and Virginia. 
 
 Romney told ABC News that the race was in a statistical tie in some national polls. 
 
 Obama was not about to let the video comments fade away. He said Wednesday that "America is not about what can be done for us. It's about what can be done by us together, as one nation, as one people." 
 
 And he added: "You can't make it happen if you write off half the nation before you take office." ||||| Mitt Romney returned to the campaign trail here Monday and trained his focus on President Obama, but his top aides and key surrogates fought to beat back a possible surge by Rick Santorum on the eve of Republican presidential contests in a trio of states. 
 
 Romney’s aides and a top surrogate, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, unloaded on Santorum over his support of taxpayer-funded earmarks during his years in Washington, calling him a “champion of earmarks.” The Romney team lobbed similar broadsides against Newt Gingrich ahead of last month’s Florida primary, but have let up somewhat as the former House speaker’s campaign has struggled. 
 
 Santorum threw some salvos of his own, assailing Romney’s health-care record as Massachusetts governor and saying he is “simply dead wrong on the most important issue of the day and should not be the nominee of our party.” 
 
 In a speech he delivered across the street from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., Santorum added that a Romney nomination would be a “devastating thing” for Republicans, according to the Associated Press. 
 
 A couple of hours later, Romney campaign aides shared with reporters comments Santorum made in 2008 when he was backing Romney in that presidential race. “If you’re a conservative, there really is only one place to go right now . . . and that’s Mitt Romney,” said Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania. 
 
 The Romney team has not unleashed such attacks on Santorum since his narrow win in the Iowa caucuses last month. As of Monday, the campaign was not airing any paid negative advertisements about Santorum. 
 
 Romney did not mention Santorum or any other Republican rival in his Monday afternoon rally in Grand Junction. He preserved his rhetorical fire for Obama, telling a crowd of a few hundred here: “Based upon the president’s own standard, he has failed. He does not deserve a second term.” 
 
 But in an interview with WCCO Radio in Minneapolis, he said, according to the AP, that Santorum’s “policies are, in my view, those of many Republicans in Congress who went along with Democrats to raise the debt ceiling, to allowing earmarks and to growing the size of federal government to a level that is frankly choking off the capacity of our economy to grow at the rate it should.” 
 
 Santorum accused Romney of throwing “the kitchen sink” at him. “He simply goes out and tries to destroy,” Santorum told reporters in Minnesota. “I don’t think it’s going to work this time.” 
 
 Santorum finished last among the four major candidates in Nevada’s GOP caucuses on Saturday, but he has devoted considerable time to the three states that will vote Tuesday. He said Sunday that he thinks he can do “exceptionally well” in Missouri’s nonbinding primary and “very well” in caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota. 
 
 He hopes a strong finish can provide a fresh jolt to his candidacy, which has struggled to raise money and build a national organization that can compete with Romney’s more formidable operation. 
 
 As the campaign moved onto multiple fronts this week, the candidates were forced to choose where to focus their time and money. Gingrich spent Monday campaigning in Colorado and Minnesota, while Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.) held rallies in Minnesota. 
 
 Romney was scheduled to stump in Minnesota, but abruptly canceled those plans so he could spend time in Colorado, where he has a robust organization and is considered the favorite. 
 
 Although the three contests could give winners momentum, they are nonbinding and will not award delegates, according to the Republican National Committee. Colorado’s 36 delegates will be chosen at district conventions in the spring. Minnesota will award 40 delegates at district conventions in April. And Missouri’s primary is merely a “beauty contest” — the state’s 52 delegates will be chosen beginning with precinct caucuses on March 17. 
 
 Romney’s prospects for a clean sweep of the three states were unclear Monday. Gingrich did not make it on the ballot in Missouri, which could help Santorum consolidate conservatives. And in Minnesota, whose caucuses Romney won in 2008, public polling showed Santorum running strong, but polls have been inconsistent and are considered unreliable. 
 
 Both states will be important barometers for Romney’s support in Midwestern swing states, but the candidate’s advisers tried to play down his chances. 
 
 “It’s a relatively small turnout, and the caucus attendees here tend to gravitate to the most conservative candidate,” Pawlenty said in a conference call with reporters. He quickly corrected himself to say “the most perceived conservative candidate.” 
 
 Pawlenty noted that in 2008, about 60,000 voters turned out for Minnesota’s GOP caucuses. If a similar share participates this time, it would represent about 2 percent of the state’s 3 million registered voters. He said all four candidates could be “bunched together toward the top of the pack.” 
 
 Staff writer Felicia Sonmez in Washington contributed to this report. ||||| Mitt Romney is declaring "I'm going to get this nomination" as Republicans in 10 states had contests to pick a challenger to President Barack Obama. 
 
 Romney on Tuesday congratulated rivals Newt Gingrich for his win in home state Georgia and Rick Santorum for wins in Oklahoma and Tennessee. Contests are still going elsewhere on the single largest day of voting so far in the nominating battle. 
 
 Romney is telling supporters that it's been a long road getting to Super Tuesday and, in his words, "my opponents have worked very hard." 
 
 Romney is keeping most of his election night remarks honed on Obama, again criticizing the incumbent he wants to vote from office in November. He warns supporters that Obama would be "unrestrained" if he wins a second term and would trample Americans' freedoms. 
 
 THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below. 
 
 Mitt Romney says he doesn't get nervous on primary nights. He doesn't have a lucky tie. And the best part about Super Tuesday, he and his wife said before the results came in, was heading back to Boston and eating dinner with one of their five sons. 
 
 "Oh, boy, we're headed home," Romney said as he stood in the aisle of the campaign charter plane that has carried him to Ohio, Idaho, Washington state and back to Ohio in the past week alone. 
 
 Romney made the comments as he and his wife, Ann, made a rare visit to the national press corps traveling on his plane as it waited on the tarmac to take him to Belmont, Mass., where the couple raised its family and have a house. 
 
 He's been on the road for two straight months, having last slept there on Jan. 6, right before New Hampshire's primary four days later. Massachusetts voted Tuesday along with nine other states that, together, handed him a significant number of delegates and set him on the path to becoming the GOP nominee. 
 
 For 25 minutes, the Romneys chatted casually with reporters, a remarkable moment for a campaign that until now has held the national media at arms-length. The moment was part of a tentative transition as Romney shifts from his role as the nominal frontrunner in the GOP nomination fight to a general election against President Barack Obama. 
 
 At a victory party in Boston, Romney was set to focus on Obama and cast the contest in a new light. "Tonight, we've taken one more step toward restoring the promise of America," Romney planned to say. "Tomorrow, we wake up and we start again. And the next day we do the same." 
 
 On most days, Romney gets on and off the front of the plane as reporters climb on and off the back, taking photographs from many rows behind. He has held question-and-answer sessions with the press corps on the plane, and sometimes hands out lunch or snacks to it. But not often. 
 
 Now, the candidate _ as well as his advisers _ are making a clear push to build a stronger relationship with the media and recover from a series of comments by Romney himself that made the wealthy former Massachusetts governor seem out of touch. 
 
 These days, the campaign is working to show the human side of a candidate who aides say is warm, funny and down-to-earth in private _ and provide a little bit of context to go with the scrutiny that's set to get much more intense as Romney moves toward becoming the GOP nominee. 
 
 To that end, the chat session at the back of the plane was followed by a formal press conference outside a Massachusetts polling place. 
 
 "There will always be in the world of media people who will find clip sentences to try and say something that you didn't mean to say," Romney told a bank of cameras there. "That's just the nature of the process." 
 
 No cameras were permitted by the campaign staff to film Romney on the plane, and reporters were prohibited from reporting much of what he said as a condition for getting access to him _ as is often standard during presidential campaigns. The difference was plain: He told personal stories, spoke more slowly and cracked easy jokes when he knew it wouldn't be used in stories. 
 
 At his news conference, answers were quick. 
 
 He avoided specifics, saying he wanted to win in Massachusetts _ his home state _ but offering no predictions about states where the contests were closer. He refused to comment on Rush Limbaugh's criticism of Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke, who the radio host called a "slut" and a "prostitute," saying only that he planned to focus his campaign on jobs and the economy. 
 
 "I think we'll pick up a lot of delegates," was all Romney would say about Tuesday night. "This is a process of gathering enough delegates to become the nominee, and I think we're on the track to have that happen."
– If President Obama absolutely killed Al Green's "Let's Stay Together," Mitt Romney has apparently responded by just plain murdering a patriotic standard. The Republican candidate was caught on camera last night at a Florida campaign rally warbling "America the Beautiful," which the Washington Post notes he has often called his favorite patriotic hymn. The unguarded moment on the eve of the primary is a departure for Romney, but the clip prompts Pier Morgan over at CNN to joke, "I think this could be an actual issue."