Romney: Obama has failed the middle class

STRATHAM, N.H. -- Mitt Romney launched the next phase of his presidential campaign Friday, kicking off a six-state, small-town bus tour and telling middle-class Americans that President Barack Obama hasn't given them "a fair shot."

"If there has ever been a president who has failed to give the middle class of America a fair shot, it is Barack Obama," the likely Republican presidential nominee told hundreds of people standing in the sunshine outside a farmhouse plastered with his bus tour's slogan, "Every Town Counts."

It was new attack on Obama, Romney's Democratic foe, who has repeatedly argued that it's Democrats who offer a "fair shot" to Americans who "work hard and play by the rules."

The bus tour -- Romney planned to fly each night to the next state -- is Romney's first traditional campaign swing aimed at undecided voters in six battleground states -- New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa -- that Obama won in 2008. Romney is hoping to win over people who might have voted four years ago for Obama's promise of hope and change but who are now disappointed in the president.

Still, Obama overshadowed the start of Romney's tour as his administration announced it will stop deporting hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who were brought to the United States as children. Romney ignored a reporter's question about the change in immigration policy as he shook hands with voters in New Hampshire.

Romney told supporters they don't have to "settle for these years of disappointment and decline," instead offering a nostalgic portrait of a small-town America that he promised to revive.

Americans are "worried and anxious . . . And they are tired of a detached and distant president who never seems to hear their voices," Romney said, as he stood on the bed of a farm's tractor trailer and read his speech.

The speech, delivered on the farm where he announced his presidential bid last year, was the kickoff of the six-state bus trek aimed at swaying undecided voters living "off the beaten path" outside of America's big cities. He invoked the names of famous American writers and entrepreneurs like Mark Twain, John Steinbeck and Thomas Edison while lamenting the decline of Rust Belt cities like Detroit, Pittsburgh and Cleveland.