WASHINGTON: Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney will address foreign policy and national security in a major speech Monday in the key electoral battleground of Virginia, his campaign said.
A Romney spokesperson told AFP Thursday that the address will take place at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), one of the nation's oldest military colleges.
Romney reinvigorated his flagging campaign with a command performance in Wednesday's first presidential debate, aggressively challenging Barack Obama on his economic record, health care reform and the national debt.
The VMI appearance will take place a few weeks before the foreign policy-themed third debate, and just ahead of the vice presidential showdown between Romney's running mate Paul Ryan and Vice President Joe Biden.
The Romney team senses a clear opening against Obama in the wake of simmering international developments, primarily in Libya.
In an advisory later Thursday announcing the VMI speech, the campaign said Romney "will offer a stark contrast between his vision for a strong foreign policy and the failed record of President Obama.
"Where President Obama has shown weakness, a Romney administration will demonstrate strength and resolve," the campaign said.
"Where President Obama has shown equivocation, a Romney administration will demonstrate clarity and never hesitate to speak out for American values."
Republicans are hounding Obama over the assault on the US consulate in Benghazi on September 11 which killed the US ambassador and spurred contradictory and shifting explanations from the administration.
Romney is holding up Libya as the inevitable result of a feckless foreign policy that has left America on its knees.
"Our values have been misapplied and misunderstood -- by a president who thinks that weakness will win favor with our adversaries," he wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal.
But the Obama campaign has indicated it is only to happy to wage this election on foreign policy territory, and a full bore Romney assault poses risks as polls show the public backs the president's leadership abroad.
Aides tout the president's achievements in ending the Iraq war, winding up the Afghan conflict, killing Osama bin Laden, hammering Al-Qaeda and "rebalancing" US foreign policy toward emerging Asia.
They also believe Romney's clumsy first intervention into the recent Middle East crisis, railing at the administration while the US consulate in Libya was under attack, devalues his argument.
And they gleefully recount the Republican presidential nominee's gaffe-strewn foreign tour in July as a sign of the erratic and incoherent worldview of a man not fit to be commander-in-chief.
Obama had a slim lead over Romney in opinion polls going into Wednesday night's debate. The Republican challenger is hoping his strong performance will have made inroads in key swing states where he trails the president.
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