President Obama told a crowd at a private fundraiser in Florida Tuesday he draws a line between himself and those who want his job.
"This election will probably have the biggest contrast that we've seen maybe since the (1964) Johnson-Goldwater election -- maybe before that," Obama said.
"The Republicans in this race, they've got a fundamentally different idea," he told a small crowd who paid at least $10,000 to attend the private affair at a home in Palm Beach Gardens.
"Their basic deal is that if they dismantle government investments in infrastructure or clean energy research, or education, if they give it all away in tax cuts to folks like me and some of you who don't need them and weren't even asking for them, that that somehow makes America stronger."
Obama said, "I fundamentally disagree. That's not how our middle class got built. ... Our greatness as a nation has always been because we rise together and we have a broad-based prosperity, and we build a middle class where everybody who wants to work hard, everybody who's willing to put all their effort into it -- they can make it, regardless of what they look like, where they come from, what their last name is."
The president asked supporters "to exhibit the same kind of enthusiasm and energy and passion as you did back in 2008. ... It may not be as fashionable to be on the Obama bandwagon as it was back then. But my determination is undiminished, and the need for your involvement is as important as ever. ... I'm confident America's best days are still ahead."
