Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said told Chris Wallace in an interview on FOX News Sunday that the Obama campaign is, "trying to divide the American people," through a campaign based on pitting social groups against one another.

" This is one street versus another street," he said. "That is the kind of  divisiveness that Americans recognize. and one reasons why his campaign despite spending massively more than our campaign...it is is very different than the campaign of hope and change he ran on originally." 

The Obama campaign has not recanted their clearly exaggerated and entirely false claims about him, Romney said.

"When the president accuses me of being a felon and his campaign doesn't distance himself from that, when he has a PAC that said I am responsible  for a death and he doesn't distance himself from that, I would suggest that is a campaign of anger and divisiveness," he said.

Part of the aggressiveness of Obama's campaign, according to Romney, comes from its uncurbed campaign spending.

"This president was the first post-Watergate candidate for president who would push aside the federal spending limits and spend an unlimited amount based on what he could raise," he said. "And to be competitive we are following suit but I would far rather have a setting where we would both agree agreeing to the federal spending limits. We have to spend time an enormous amount of time fundraising fund raise not time on the campaign trail and increases of the potential of  money having influencing politics."

This coming week will be very crucial for Romney to drive home this message at the Republican National Convention (RNC) of having a different kind of campaign than the one run by Obama.

"I believe that if people stand back and consider all the America has to deal with going forward they'll recognize that we're the only team that has answers for these challenges," he said.

He will also have to make a substantial effort to distance himself from the "legitimate rape" comments made by Rep. Tom Akin (R - Mo.)

"It was a terrible statement on his part and uninformed and outrageous and offensive and I asked him to get out of the race and distanced myself from the kind of thing he said as far as I possibly can," he said.  "He was wrong. And obviously it's being used by democrats to cast a shadow on our entire party.'"

But it is one thing to say you reject the statement and another thing to convince the American people that you do not represent what Akin now stands for. And with the lastest Gallup polls showing Romney and current president Barack Obama in a dead heat with 46 percent each, there is no room for error.