First, he made clear (again) that he’s not going to make President Obama’s embrace of gay marriage an issue in the 2012 campaign — at all.

The 2 minute ad, running in Florida, Missouri, Iowa, Nevada and North Carolina, tells the story of the unionized steel mill that Bain, under Romney’s leadership, failed to turn around but still profited from.

He has said repeatedly that he was opposed to what President Obama did and now he wants to take credit for it.

If Romney were running as a “compassionate conservative” like Bush or a post partisan, shamanistic healer like Obama in 2008, the GST story would be as devastating as Kerry windsurfing.

And like Bush, Obama faces an opponent who won the nomination because of perceived strength on the incumbent’s greatest weakness.

Democrats in 2004 nominated a highly decorated war veteran who was one of their party’s reigning authorities on foreign policy.

Republicans in 2012 are about to nominate a former Chief Executive Officer whose specialty was turning around failing businesses.

And now, like the Bush campaign before it, Team Obama is looking to undercut their foe’s greatest perceived strength in early negative ads.

Bush broke with convention and went on the air with negative ads in March accusing Kerry of being an elitist and a flip flopper on foreign policy.

The kick the can approach of hoping to form a more coherent foreign policy platform after an election fits with a cautious campaign at a time when the economy remains the issue of the day.

His predecessors had generally waited until the late summer or fall to go negative.

But Bush, betting on a stiff challenge and wanting to use a cash and organizational advantage while Kerry was recuperating from his primary battle with John Edwards, Howard Dean and Wesley Clark to define the new Democratic standard bearer.

And while Bush was whacking at Kerry’s assumed strength, the incumbent was working hard to shore up his coalition with appeals on specific issues including gay marriage (Bush was adamantly opposed, Kerry was, like Obama has been since at least Wednesday, ambiguously supportive).

Still, Republican leaders are warning activists against making the gay marriage issue more prominent than Obama’s stewardship of the economy.

Obama is far eclipsing anything Bush might have dared do in 2004 in both scale, cost and sheer negativity.

While Bush worried about being seen as un presidential by going negative early, Obama has been blasting away for months, assured in the knowledge that any concerns about an incumbent president going on offense so soon and so harshly will be limited to mostly murmurs in the establishment press.

The economic sanctions Mr Obama has imposed have been far more crippling to the Iranian economy than anything President Bush did between the public revelation of Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities in 2003 and the end of Mr Bush’s term in early 2009.

Obama has been on air with attack ads against Romney for weeks and is currently in the midst of a $25 million swing state ad blitz.

The presidential candidates tried to put aside politically risky talk of gay rights Friday and return to Americans’ top worry, the economy, in two states critical to the hopes of President Barack Obama and his rival Mitt Romney.

The current ad from the campaign is a dire depiction of one of the companies Romney’s former firm, Bain Capital, failed to turn around.

Bain took over the company in 1993, which was then on the verge of collapse, like many small to midsize producers, amid a glut of cheap foreign steel.

Bain saw potential and restructured the company, borrowing big money to modernize the operation.

But, unlike Indiana steelmaker Steel Dynamics that Bain helped back to profitability around the same time, GST had a unionized workforce and a market niche.

The century old firm couldn’t compete with cheap, subsidized foreign steel being dumped on US markets.

After 10 years, GST was belly up and its 750 employees were out of work and their pensions were in jeopardy.

Romney’s company invested $8 million and walked away with $4 million in profit and $4.5 million in management fees.

While Romney counters with success stories like Steel Dynamics, Staples and Sports Authority, foes in Massachusetts and nationally have always appreciated the power of the GST story.

Romney’s main rival at that point was former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who waged a particularly ruthless battle against Romney.

Like Gingrich, Obama lacks a business resume and has spent most of his professional years in public life.

Obama’s goal is that while Romney is scrambling to raise money and organize a national campaign, the former Massachusetts governor will have to simultaneously defend his record as a business whiz.

The conventions are late (the Democrats will not wrap up until after Labor Day), meaning the formal general election season will be relatively short.

Democrats nominated Kerry in 2004 because they wanted someone who could counter Republican charges that the blue team were for retreat in the war with radical Islamists and out of their depth on foreign policy.

A decorated Vietnam vet who was the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations was seen as the antidote to those expected attacks.

Republicans undercut Kerry’s war record and emphasized his time as a protester bashing his fellow soldiers as barbaric oppressors of the Vietnamese people, a la “Genghis Kahn.The Republican message of 2004: Kerry isn’t what he seems to be.Obama’s message for 2012 is that Romney is even more of a rapacious capitalist than you think: a cold hearted businessman who cares about bottom lines, not families.If the economy stays lousy and voters are ready for a business like approach to the government — cuts, restructuring and increased efficiency – there’s nothing about Romney’s life as a capitalist swashbuckler to diminish that argument.If Romney were running as a “compassionate conservative” like Bush or a post partisan, shamanistic healer like Obama in 2008, the GST story would be as devastating as Kerry windsurfing. But Romney is running as the man with the ax who can cut back government after four years of Obama’s nurturing.If Obama wants to make the most of his early advantage in money and organization, he needs to find an accusation that undercuts Romney’s biographical claim rather than hardens it.The Day in Quotes”But we can’t fill this hole with cuts alone without doing severe damage to our schools.

Rubio is a crook who is not ready for prime time and the rest of the Gop fools who registration all fed help such as transportation bill ,education and health care has cost thousands of jobs in Florida .these republican bafoons such as Rubio ,Scott and mack and we saved the auto industry dip romney need to be thrown out of government together.vote Dem to move forward or teapublican to move back to the horse and buggy days .republicans have no credability on any issue and have no platform to run on except being againest anything Obama proposees even if its good for the country .

That’s why we’re bypassing the gridlock and asking you, the people of California, to approve a plan that avoids cuts to schools and public safety.

“– Gov. Jerry Brown, D Calif., in an online video informing constituents of an estimated $16 billion budget shortfall for the fiscal year starting July 1 – a gap of almost 20 percent. Brown’s government in January had estimated the shortfall at $9 billion. Today, Brown will lay out austerity measures he would enact if voters in November fail to approve a slate of tax cuts he has requested.”.

“– Alexis Tsipras, leader of the Coalition of the Radical Left in Greece’s parliament, talking to reporters after failed talks with President Karolos Papoulias to form a unity government and save a deal to restructure the county’s massive debt.”.

“– Norbert Röttgen, environment minister in Angela Merkel’s center right German government, who led a slate of candidates in Germany’s largest state, North Rhine Westphalia. His Christian Democratic Union was handed a crushing defeat by a coalition of socialists and environmentalists who ran against Merkel’s austerity measures.”.

“– Richard Trumka, president of the AFL CIO, talking to Bloomberg Television about union spending to help President Obama and other Democrats. Labor groups have already pledged $400 million to help Democrats this cycle. The figure was about $500 million in 2008.”.

“– Sentiment in an electronic Mothers Day card offered by the White House under the banner: “Happy Mother’s Day From The Affordable Care Act.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act , informally referred to as Obamacare, is a United States federal statute signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010.

Jeeuk MacGregor is a business journalist based in Busan, Korea. Jeeuk has a passion for financial markets and breaking news stories and loves writing about business news, stock market, and economic opinions that matters most to its audience. Jeeuk spends a lot of time discovering and researching latest financial markets and industry news stories in order to make sure the latest and greatest stories are brought to you first on BigBoardNews.com.