Romney-Ryan campaign began ad blitz today, focusing on swing states

(Caricature by DonkeyHotey) In the words of former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu, an adviser to Team Romney, the campaign will "carpet bomb" the president and vice president with ads starting today. One unnamed aide took the war metaphor one step further, comparing what's coming to "daisy cutter" bombs used in Vietnam and Afghanistan. The target is eight swing states whose votes are crucial to the challengers' chances of defeating Barack Obama.

"Time is short," said one campaign aide. "We have $100 million we've just raised.  If you look at our burn rate to date and our cash on hand, there's not much more we can spend on infrastructure. So we've got to start spending our general election funds in a big way, because you know what the value of that money is on the day after the election? Zero."

The states where those ads will run are Virginia, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. As kos wrote earlier today, the campaign has given up on Pennsylvania and Michigan and seems to be doing the same thing in Wisconsin. It can't let the swing states go.

You can eventually see all ads here. A few are already posted. The general theme plays on the campaign's "Are you better off than your were four years ago?"

Each starts off with footage of Romney behind a podium telling his audience: "This president can ask us to be patient. This president can tell us it was someone else's fault. But this president cannot tell us that you're better off today than when he took office."

The narrator of a 30-second ad titled "Waging War on Coal, Gas and Oil" tailored for the Virginia market says:

Here in Virginia, we're not better off under President Obama. His war on coal, gas and oil is crushing energy and manufacturing jobs. Romney's plan? Repeal Obama's excessive regulation, foster innovation, create over 340,000 new jobs for Virginia.

The ridiculousness of the job-creation claims without a timeline cannot be overstated. But that's the theme of the entire swing-state campaign.

Other ads claim Romney will create "59,000 new jobs for New Hampshire," "130,000 new jobs for Iowa," over 200,000 new jobs for Colorado," "700,000 new jobs for Florida," "100,000 new jobs for Nevada," "350,000 jobs for North Carolina."

No plan for actually creating these jobs is hinted at other than to make the standard pledge to get rid of "excessive" regulation. That doesn't help Virginians. But it does make Romney's billionaire angels smile.

It's a carpet-bombing campaign of silliness. But that doesn't mean it will have no effect at a time when so many Americans are without work. The reality: Romney is pushing another plan that would kill tens of thousands of actually existing green-energy jobs across the country, like the 7,000 in the wind industry in Iowa.