Ellington

Looking to define the Republican ticket's views on Medicare, the Obama campaign released an online video Monday featuring seniors in Florida talking about how Ryan's proposed changes to the popular health care program could affect them.

"It doesn't make any sense to cut Medicare," says one woman. The video aims to portray the Romney-Ryan ticket as a threat to Medicare and Obama as its protector.

The commercial comes as Romney gently tries to distance himself from his running mate's budget plan, making clear that his ideas rule, not Ryan's.

"I have my budget plan," Romney said, "And that's the budget plan we're going to run on."

He walked a careful line as he campaigned with Ryan, a tea party favorite, by his side in North Carolina and Wisconsin, singling out his running mate's work "to make sure we can save Medicare." But the presidential candidate never said whether he embraced Ryan's austere plan himself.

The pair faced an estimated 10,000 supporters in Wisconsin as Ryan returned Sunday to his home state for the first time in his new role.

"Hi mom," Ryan said, voice crackling as he took the stage and looked out over a sprawling crowd.

An enthusiastic Romney seemed to feed off the energy.

"If you follow the campaign of Barack Obama, he's going to do everything in his power to make this the lowest, meanest, negative campaign in history. We're not going to let that happen. This is going to be a campaign about ideas, about the future of America," Romney said. "Mr. President, take your campaign out of the gutter. Let's talk about the real issues that America faces."

The Romney campaign, meanwhile, released a new ad accusing the Obama administration of "gutting welfare reform."

The new television advertisement released Monday accused the Obama White House of stripping the work requirement from the nation's welfare law. It's the same charge the Republican candidate levied in a separate ad last week.

Independent fact checkers have found the premise of the ad to be false.