Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Tuesday chided President Barack Obama for using a cartoon character named "Julia" to explain how his policies benefit women and middle-class voters.
"Liberals envision government guiding and providing every need of every citizen," Romney said, reading from a teleprompter in Lansing, Michigan. "Government will be at the center, the most important player in our lives."
"Have you seen, by the way, the president's vision for the future?" he asked. "To help us see it, his campaign has even created a little fictional character. It's on the website, living an imaginary life filed with happy milestones for which she will spend the rest of her days thanking President Obama. It's called 'The Life of Julia.' And it's a cartoon."
"Julia progresses from cradle to grave, showing how government makes every good thing in her life possible. Weak economy, high unemployment, falling wages, rising gas prices, the national debt, the insolvency of entitlements -- all these are fictionally assumed away in a cartoon produced by a president who wants us to forget about them."
Romney added: "By the way, what does it say about a president's policies when he has to use a cartoon character rather than real people to justify his record?"
The Obama campaign unveiled the interactive cartoon, "The Life of Julia," on its website last week. It attempts to show how the character would be affected differently by the policies of Obama and Romney throughout her life.
The website suggests, for example, that Julia would not have been enrolled in the Head Start program at the age of three under Romney's budget cuts. Julia's education might also suffer if Romney cuts funding for public education and allows Pell Grants to expire, according to the Obama campaign. The fictional character also benefits from Obama's policies on health care for young adults, fair pay for women, low interest rates on student loans, birth control coverage, prenatal care, small business loans, Medicare for seniors and Social Security.
"What does it say about the fiction of old liberalism, to insist that good jobs and good schools and good wages will result from policies that have failed us time and again?" Romney remarked on Tuesday. "President Obama is looking in the wrong direction. Looking backward won't solve the problems of today, nor will it take advantage of the opportunities of tomorrow. His are the policies of the past."
"The challenges of the present and the promise of tomorrow must be met by a new and bold vision for the future, and I will bring it."
