Underdog Romney vows 'fight to finish'

25 Sep 2012, 12:07 pm   -   Source: AAP
US presidential hopeful Mitt Romney (pic) has vowed to fight to the finish against Barack Obama. (AAP)

US presidential hopeful Mitt Romney (pic) has vowed to fight to the finish against Barack Obama. (AAP)

US presidential hopeful Mitt Romney is campaigning "pretty darn hard" and has vowed to fight to the finish against President Barack Obama.

Mitt Romney has pledged a fight to the finish against President Barack Obama, lashing out at the incumbent's policies and vowing a more aggressive campaign, starting in battleground Ohio.

Romney insisted on Monday he was headed for election day victory despite polls showing him the underdog, and he levelled new criticism at Obama's foreign policy as running mate Paul Ryan rolled out on a three-day bus tour across the Midwestern state seen as critical for the Republican ticket's White House hopes.

Romney is back on the stump pushing his economic message in the final six weeks to November 6, on the back of last week's opprobrium for his comments disparaging "47 per cent" of Americans as government-dependent freeloaders.

He also earned criticism for spending more time fundraising than on public campaign events.

But after trying to draw a line under his 47 per cent comments, insisting he would be a president who worked for all Americans, Romney vowed to lay out a thorough ground assault, reassuring voters that he and Ryan were "very anxious to get out and speak with as many people as we can."

"We hit the road pretty darn hard," Romney told ABC News after an appearance in Colorado.

Romney and Ryan will both campaign in Ohio on Tuesday, the first time the pair have appeared together at an event since September 1.

In another interview -- part of a series of quick hits with US networks Monday -- Romney went so far as to predict victory.

"I'm very pleased with the fact that we have a campaign that is taking our message to the people across America and look, we're going to win," he told NBC News. "There is no question in my mind. We're going to win."

Ohio and Florida are seen as the two monumental battlegrounds of 2012, and after a handful of events in the Sunshine State late last week, Romney complete the final two days of the tour through the former.

"This is ground zero," Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus, acknowledging the importance of the Buckeye state, told a crowd of about 1,200 people in Lima as they awaited Ryan.

"This is our rendezvous with destiny."

Ohio is pretty much a must-win for Romney; no Republican has ever been elected president without winning the state, and Obama is currently ahead by about four percentage points here, according to a RealClearPolitics average of polls.

In Lima, Ryan bounded out on stage and quickly lashed Obama for what he said was four years of economic failure, citing 43 straight months of unemployment above eight per cent.

The US economy is "barely limping along, and the president has no idea how to grow it," Ryan said.

"The contrast could not be clearer in this election," he added, as he laid out the case for Romney, a multimillionaire investor who he said has the business know-how and experience to turn around the flagging economy.

But it was clear from a participant at Ryan's event that conservatives want to see more toughness from their candidates as they go up against the incumbent machinery.

"We need backbone in the Republican Party," 61-year-old Ohioan Dan Hermiller told Ryan, in comments that elicited cheers from the crowd.

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