WASHINGTON — Bill Clinton is going to bat for President Obama, bashing Mitt Romney as “extreme,” in e-mails touting a blockbuster June fund-raiser in Manhattan with the current and former presidents.
“If our opponent succeeds, so much of what we’ve fought so hard for will be rolled back,” Clinton wrote.
“Health-care reform — which many presidents, including me, tried to pass and couldn’t — will be gone. Same goes for the opportunity for millions more Americans to afford to go to college, and a growing economy that works for middle-class families.
“Our opponent is actually advertising a more extreme version of the policies that got us in trouble in the first place,” Clinton continued, in some of his most direct attacks on Romney to date.
In another fund-raising e-mail, Clinton, who ridiculed Obama’s campaign as a “fairy tale” during the 2008 primaries, tipped his hat to wife Hillary Rodham Clinton’s former nemesis and current boss.
“I’ve seen what this movement is capable of,” he wrote. “Time and again, you’ve pulled off victories that a lot of people thought couldn’t be done.”
In the e-mail, Clinton calls Obama an “excellent president,” and vows to fight alongside him into November.
Clinton’s popularity rating hit 67 percent in a Pew poll last year, while Obama is struggling to top 50 percent.
Romney yesterday accused Obama of “attacking capitalism” when the president assails Romney’s corporate-raider career at Bain Capital.
Obama has repeatedly painted Romney as a robber baron, and even a corporate “vampire” who made a fortune by savaging companies and firing workers.