WASHINGTON - When President Barack Obama criticized Mitt Romney by name this week for embracing a controversial Republican budget proposal, he worded his attack carefully and with bite. "(Romney) said that he's 'very supportive' of this new budget, and he even called it 'marvelous' -- which is a word you don't often hear when it comes to describing a budget," Obama said during a speech on Tuesday, before adding: "It's a word you don't often hear generally." The desired effect was clear: tie Romney directly to mostly unpopular plans for budget cuts and emphasize that the former executive is out of touch by lampooning his use of a seemingly out of date adjective. After watching quietly while Republican candidates fought each other, Obama is now trying to define his likely opponent in November as an out-of-touch multi-millionaire who would cut social programs for the elderly and the middle class while promoting policies to help the rich. Obama's riff on Romney's use of the word "marvelous" to describe Representative Paul Ryan's budget plans carried a subtle message. "It's a word you kind of associate with the upper class, and I think that the intention was to tweak Romney for being wealthy and, you know, sort of brought up in the kinds of circles where they would say 'marvelous,'" said Kenneth Sherrill, a political science expert at New York's Hunter College. "That's trying to get under his skin a little bit." The attack - which Obama repeated at a fundraiser on Thursday night - is a sign of things to come. Obama's campaign has worked steadily to construct an image of an insensitive and patrician Romney even before he wins the Republican nomination, hoping to create a caricature that sticks with voters once the election officially becomes a two-man race. Romney has made similar efforts to define Obama, portraying him as unprepared and unable to handle the country's economic challenges. And he began the process earlier, deliberately focusing his critiques on the president rather than the other Republican challengers.
