Romney surrogate: Obama should 'learn how to be an American' In some of the toughest comments yet delivered on behalf of Mitt Romney's campaign, former New Hampshire Gov. John H. Sununu assailed President Obama's roots in the "political-slash-felon environment" of Chicago and suggested that Obama needed to "learn how to be an American." In a conference call arranged by the Romney campaign on Tuesday, Sununu attacked Obama over the president's recent statement that business owners needed government help to succeed. "These are the people who are the backbone of our economy and the president clearly demonstrated that he has absolutely no idea how the American economy functions," Sununu said. The men and women all over America who have worked hard to build these businesses -- their businesses, from the ground up -- is how our economy became the envy of the world. He added: "It is the American way, and I wish this president would learn how to be an American." Asked later if he could clarify that remark, Sununu didn't exactly step back, saying that Obama "has to learn the American formula for creating business." The Obama campaign immediately fired back, with campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith issuing a statement in which she said: "The Romney campaign has officially gone off the deep end. The question is what else they'll pull to avoid answering serious questions about Romney's tenure at Bain Capital and investments in foreign tax havens and offshore accounts. This meltdown and over-the-top rhetoric won't make things better -- it only calls attention to how desperate they are to change the conversation. The remarks by the former governor and White House chief of staff, followed by anti-Obama statements from four business owners, came as the Romney campaign fights back furiously against attacks over the Republican's record as the head of Bain Capital, the Boston-based venture capital firm. It is an increasingly nasty debate that touches on a fundamental issue: the relationship between business and government in the U.S. Obama may have crystallized his view with remarks during a campaign stop in Roanoke, Va., earlier this week. "If you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own," he said. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. Those comments have created a stir on the Internet and were the focus of the remarks by Sununu and the business owners Tuesday. Sununu said they were "the latest in a series of self-defining and frankly extremely dumb comments" by the president. He used them to suggest that Obama is a reflection of a corrupt political environment in his hometown of Chicago. "He comes out of that murky political world in Chicago where politician and felon have become synonymous," Sununu said, attacking Obama for practicing "crony capitalism" in which friends and campaign donors are rewarded. He then referred to recent comments by Obama spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter, who said that Romney may have committed a felony by telling the Securities and Exchange Commission that he was Bain Capital's chief executive at a time when he now says he was not. Said Sununu: "If you introduce the word 'felon' into the political discourse, you open yourself up again to the discussion of the Chicago roots and the Chicago political-slash-felon environment that he came out of." Among those speaking along with Sununu was Kyle Koehler, whose father founded KK Tool Co. of Springfield, Ohio. Koehler took exception to Obama's comments about business, saying the president misunderstood that owning a business is "about risk and reward, but it's mostly about sacrifice." "For this president," he said, "the American dream seems more about waking up every morning and knowing that the government is going to provide free education, free school lunches and a college education, a guaranteed job with healthcare, paid vacations and 99 weeks of unemployment if it turns sour. I can't help but think if our founding fathers were alive today, they wouldn't recognize that as the American dream. It seems to me that [in] the Obama's America, there's no risk but there's plenty of reward. That's called socialism to me. Twitter: @latlands