BY WESLEY P. HESTER

Republicans continue to hammer on President Barack Obama for commenting last week that the “private sector is doing fine,” with Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign trying to make the issue stick in battleground Virginia.   

Yesterday, the campaign sent out comments from Virginia business owners condemning the president’s remark, which Obama almost immediately attempted to walk back last week, commenting that “it is absolutely clear that the economy is not doing fine.”

Melissa Ball, owner of Ball Office Products in Richmond, said that claiming the private sector was doing fine was “an insult to the more than 240,000 Virginians who still can’t find a job in the Obama economy.”  

Now, Republicans are seizing on remarks from a handful of Democrats that they say contradicts the president’s assertion, including U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner, D-Va.

On Monday, Warner was asked if he thought the private sector was doing fine.

“No,” he said. “I don’t feel like that, you know, on a relative basis corporate balance sheets look very good, but there is not the kind of demand that we need to see to generate the job growth. I do think there are things around infrastructure that can be done that would actually help things right now.”