The Obama campaign is opening a new front in its war against GOP rival Mitt Romney, ABC News has learned, with planned attacks to begin this week on Romney’s record as governor of Massachusetts and the campaign promises Democrats say he left unfulfilled.

Team Obama will point to Romney’s rhetoric on job creation, size of government, education, deficits and taxes during the 2002 gubernatorial campaign and draw parallels with his presidential stump speeches of 2012. The goal is to illustrate that Romney has made the same promises before with unimpressive results, officials say.

The approach appears aimed at shifting some focus off of President Obama, who has an underwater approval rating and has struggled to bring down unemployment — currently above 8 percent nationally. He and his campaign are aggressively trying to make Romney an unacceptable alternative on the November ballot…

“Governor Romney has made his experience as a financial CEO the entire rationale of his candidacy for president. Now, he doesn’t really talk about what he did in Massachusetts. But he does talk about being a business guy,” Obama said at an Iowa campaign rally last week. “He says this gives him a special understanding of what it takes to create jobs and grow the economy — even if he’s unable to offer a single new idea about how to do that, no matter how many times he’s asked about it.”