US Election: Mitt Romney and Ann Romney mount clean up operation "My job is not to worry about those people," he told guests at the $50,000-a-plate (£31,000) fund-raiser. I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. In the first of an anticipated barrage of TV attack advertisements on the remarks, a pro-Obama campaign group contrasted the glitzy venue for Mr Romney's fund-raiser with an ordinary American house. "Behind these doors, Mitt Romney calls half the American people victims," a narrator tells viewers over the first image. "Behind these doors, middle-class families struggle," he says over the second. Mrs Romney, who was dispatched to defend the remarks in the battleground state of Colorado, rejected the suggestion her husband had showed "disdain for people who are poor." "He's talking about what we're facing in America right now," Mrs Romney told local television. And if we don't take corrective measures soon, that more and more people will become dependent on government. And that is not what we want. Attempts by Republicans to retaliate on Wednesday by highlighting newly unearthed footage of Mr Obama saying in 1998 that he was in favour of the principle of "redistribution" largely fell flat. Mr Romney's leaked comments have derailed his attempts this week to relaunch his campaign and reverse Mr Obama's stubborn yet narrow lead in opinion polls. The president is 2.7 per cent ahead nationwide, according a RealClearPolitics average, and enjoys slim advantages in almost all key swing states. Several new polls indicate that voters were unimpressed with Mr Romney's reaction to the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which was criticised as hasty and overly party-political. However, Mr Obama's own approval rating for handling of foreign policy took a five-point blow in the wake of the Libya crisis, according to a new NBC/Wall Street Journal survey yesterday. Leads opened by Mr Obama following the Democratic party convention in the two longest-running national tracking surveys have also disappeared, according to the pollsters Gallup and Rasmussen. Mr Obama accused his opponent of "writing off" a large section of the population. There are not a lot of people out there who think they're victims. There are not a lot of people who think they're entitled to something," he told the Late Show with David Letterman.