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WSJ Tears Mitt a New One
No matter how hard moderate Presidential nominees like Mitt (and McCain and George HW) try, there's nothing they can do to placate the hard right. Add the Wall Street Journal to the growing list of those completely willing to speak out against team Romney.
The Romney campaign thinks it can play it safe and coast to the White House by saying the economy stinks and it's Mr. Obama's fault. We're on its email list and the main daily message from the campaign is that "Obama isn't working." Thanks, guys, but Americans already know that. What they want to hear from the challenger is some understanding of why the President's policies aren't working and how Mr. Romney's policies will do better.
Meanwhile, the Obama campaign is assailing Mr. Romney as an out-of-touch rich man, and the rich man obliged by vacationing this week at his lake-side home with a jet-ski cameo. Team Obama is pounding him for Bain Capital, and until a recent ad in Ohio the Romney campaign has been slow to respond.
Team Obama is now opening up a new assault on Mr. Romney as a job outsourcer with foreign bank accounts, and if the Boston boys let that one go unanswered, they ought to be fired for malpractice.
Interesting to hear the Right slamming Romney for vague messaging and slow-to-no counter punching. Thrilled to see Team Obama cast as the effective aggresor. Never thought I'd see the day. MORE! MORE! MORE!
Amazing to think that not too long ago people regarded Obama as an empty suit. I don't think the GOP has anyone at the moment who is better at this than the President. They should have learned their lesson after he beat back the Clinton machine in 2008.
Also interesting to hear NUMEROUS commentators this past week -- left, right, and center -- saying that Obama is finally getting around for the first time to defending Affordable Care Act, if only to defend against the "tax" vs "no tax" hole he dug himself into. (One or two saying it is too late; maybe, although earlier -- by about 26 months -- would have helped).
Points to Romney for "flip flopping" this time by saying the freeloaders penalty IS a "tax" not a penalty as it was in Mass. In substance, it is a non issue but Republicans and enough media think it is so Obama, Pelosi, and others are trapped in it, or think they are.** This isn't a flip flop on lack of principal -- although Romney has plenty of those. It is unifying the GOP message, killing Romney's candidate vs his advisor story, and selecting a better weapon.
Well, I agree this whole tax thing is a non-issue but i have to admire how the President is throwing that back in Romney's face. Not sure if the "flip-flop" or "no convictions" points will resonate more with voters but his reversals are really becoming comedic. How can anyone take Romney seriously. Here is President Obama hitting Romney hard.
President Obama is keeping his health care law close and his enemy’s health care law closer on the campaign trail this week, embarking on a new effort to highlight similarities between the Affordable Care Act and Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts reforms.
“The guy I’m running against tried this in Massachusetts and it’s working just fine, even though he denies it,” Obama said in Ohio Friday.
It was the second time in two days Obama brought up Romney’s health care law, which the White House has long claimed as a model for the Affordable Care Act. In an interview with a local Ohio station on Thursday, Obama accused Romney of flip-flopping by attacking the White House for many of the same policies he once supported.
“One of the things that you learn as president is that what you say matters, and your principles matter,” Obama said. “And sometimes, you’ve got to fight for things that you believe in and you can’t just switch on a dime.”
Obama was digging into what has become an issue for the Romney campaign: whether the individual mandate, a feature of both the Affordable Care Act and the reform law Romney signed in Massachusetts, counts as a tax. National Republicans reacted to last week’s Supreme Court ruling upholding the law by slamming the mandate as a tax hike, but Romney adviser Eric Ferhnsrom, trying to shield Romney’s own mandate from similar criticism, said he disagreed. The resulting confusion, which included a puzzling walk back from Romney himself, is currently causing heartburn among conservatives.
“The fact that a whole bunch of Republicans in Washington suddenly said this is a tax — for six years he said it wasn’t, and now he has suddenly reversed himself,” Obama said Thursday. “So the question becomes, are you doing that because of politics? Are you abandoning a principle that you fought for, for six years, simply because you’re getting pressure for two days from Rush Limbaugh or some critics in Washington?”
One of Obama’s favorite moves during the contentious Republican primaries was to talk about how many great ideas he thought Romney had about health care back when he was in Massachusetts. At the time, his remarks were considered a transparent attempt to inflame conservative voters who were suspicious of a variety of past, moderate positions held by Romney as governor.
Now that the Supreme Court has upheld the ACA, it’s clear the Obama campaign sees value in bringing back the same tactics. After all, it’s not just the mandate that the laws have in common, its their entire structure: Both are based on pushing the uninsured into a state exchange where they can purchase subsidized coverage on the private market. That means that every time a Republican leader attacks Obama on the policy merits of the ACA, he or she can expect Romney to get a question on why he thought the same policy worked for Massachusetts.
I am delighted that Team Obama is hammering away, straight up, in defense of the Affordable Care Act and staying in Romney's face on vulture capitalism, Bain, and outsourcing jobs (despite 'helpful' advice to the contrary from self-serving slimeballs Clinton and Rendell). He/They may struggle and. ultimately, may only be partially successful -- but this is a lot better than blowing off GOP/Fox News/Right wing PAC lies as "silly season" or treading carefully so as not to appear anything less than the embodiment of bipartisanship.
All I want team Obama to do is a make a smart fight of it, minimize getting defined into a corner by the opposition, and do both rapid response AND counter attack. They have NEVER looked better than they've looked this week.
Agreed. It took them forever to get a guard up in the first place; maybe, just maybe, they will stay on edge and not wait for 'silly season' to blow over.