Biden goes after Romney in Iowa newspaper
Updated at 11:10 a.m. ET
Days before the Iowa Republican caucuses, the Obama administration is slamming Mitt Romney -- the Republican that President Obama's re-election team sees as its biggest 2012 threat -- in the op-ed pages of Iowa's biggest newspaper.
Vice President Joe Biden penned an op-ed in the Des Moines Register today that charges, "Romney appears satisfied to settle for an economy in which fewer people succeed, while the majority of Americans are left to tread water or fall behind."
Biden charges that the former Massachusetts governor is advocating for the same policies that led to the 2008 financial collapse and the subsequent recession. "Americans cannot afford a return to policies that rewarded the recklessness of a few while millions of small businesses and workers were left to clean up the mess," he wrote.
The vice president criticizes Romney and the GOP for opposing Obama administration initiatives designed to protect the middle class, such as new credit card regulations and new aid for college students.
"The president and I firmly believe... in opportunity -- that if you work hard and play by the rules, no opportunity should be out of reach," he wrote. "That is a fundamentally different vision than what the other side has proposed."
Mr. Obama's re-election team has treated Romney like the inevitable GOP presidential nominee, though Romney has failed to break out as the clear frontrunner in the primaries. Biden's op-ed is the latest attack the Obama team has made against the former governor and gives a preview of what the general election would look like, should Romney win the nomination.
At a diner in Tilton, New Hampshire Friday, Romney ripped into Biden for having the "hutzpah" to write the op-ed, CBS News/ National Journal reporter Sarah Boxer reports.
"I thought, now who would have the hutzpah - the delusion to imagine that I was responsible for the decline of this economy over the last three years?" Romney said. "And it was none other than Vice President Joe Biden!... And you wonder in some respects what fantasy land he lives in!"