Romney campaign to 'carpet bomb' airwaves after Obama nomination speech

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Senior Romney-Ryan campaign officials tell Fox News the campaign will launch an enormous media offensive on Friday, the day after President Obama accepts the Democratic Party's nomination for a second term. The push will include ad buys in several states that will cost tens of millions of dollars.

Aides said more than a dozen new ads, each tailored to different regions and segments of the electorate, will begin airing Friday, aimed at dramatically shifting the dynamics of a contest that Romney-Ryan aides acknowledge, in terms of the hard realities of the electoral map, have until now favored the Obama-Biden ticket.

"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."

Romney-Ryan aides see their recent fundraising edge, in conjunction with spending by the Republican National Committee, as a critical weapon in their battle against the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee. But they also know the advantage will be nowhere near as marked as it was for Mitt Romney during the Republican primaries, against under-funded opponents like Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich.

Former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu, an adviser to the Romney campaign, said this week that its strategy going forward will be to "carpet bomb" the president and vice president.

Romney-Ryan officials did not repudiate such talk; indeed, one official, in speaking to Fox News, likened the offensive that will begin Thursday to the "daisy cutter" bombs used in the Iraq war.