WBRZ - Baton Rouge

CHESTERFIELD, Va.- Vice President Joe Biden made a raw appeal to Virginia's middle class, blasting the Republican presidential ticket for pushing what he says is a blueprint for boosting middle-income taxes while giving trillions in tax breaks to the rich.

Biden said Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan represent a radical and obstructionist brand of conservatism that would sacrifice education and Medicare to help the wealthy.

He spoke to a crowd of more than 500 in a cramped tractor barn in a Republican-voting suburb of Richmond, Va.

Polls show President Barack Obama slightly ahead in the battleground state.

Biden said the GOP is "not your father's Republican Party." He added that his former Senate colleague, Virginia Republican John Warner, would never buy in to such extremism.