Yesterday Iowa with Palin, today Pennsylvania with Romney

GOP presidential frontrunner and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney today will hold a press conference outside Allentown Metal Works, a factory President Barack Obama visited in 2009 to tout the stimulus — about a year before the factory closed its doors. That’s pretty stagey — but it also effectively dramatizes Romney’s oft-repeated point, “Obama isn’t working.”

To underscore that point and complement his visit to the Keystone State, which will also include two fundraisers in Philadelphia, the Romney campaign today also released this 40-second web video:

Neither the video nor Romney’s visit will go unmatched by the president, however. Obama will also be in Pennsylvania today, for two Democratic National Committee fundraisers in Philadelphia. This is far from Obama’s first attempt to woo the religion-and-gun-clingers of the state. CNN Political Ticker reports:

Thursday’s trip is his thirteenth trip to the Keystone State since taking office and his third since announcing his re-election campaign April 4. …

The president was in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania last week and Philadelphia on April 6. According to a recent Quinnipiac University poll, 48 percent of voters in the state approve of Obama’s performance as president and 48 percent disapprove.

He won the politically important state in the 2008 presidential election with 55 percent of the vote to GOP candidate Sen. John McCain’s 44 percent. Former President George W. Bush lost the state’s 21 electoral votes in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, to former Vice President Al Gore with 50 percent in 2000 and Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts with 51 percent of the vote in 2004.

However, 2010 was a good year for Pennsylvania Republicans. Republican Pat Toomey won election to the Senate and voters ousted four incumbent House Democrats.

Clearly, Pennsylvania could go either way. But Romney’s sounding pretty confident. ”Two and a half years ago, President Obama said that if he didn’t get the economy back on track, then he would be a one-term president. He is right,” Romney said in a statement. “Pennsylvanians have run out of patience.”

If they have, that seems pretty fair. As the Romney web video points out, Pennsylvanians have borne with more than most: Nearly 500,000 Pennsylvanians are looking for work. And in the Keystone State alone, 100,000 jobs have been lost, nearly 40,000 of which were manufacturing jobs.