David Axelrod: It’s a ‘bullshit notion’ that Obama ran a positive campaign in 2008
[Twitchy.com]
Axelrod to @GlennThrush: “Bullshit notion” that 2008 was a strictly positive campaign.
Zeke Miller @ZekeJMiller In May, ABC News portrayed President Obama as a uniter at heart with a natural aversion to “politics as usual,” forced to embrace super PACs and negative advertising by those icky Republicans. It wasn’t that he 
didn’t want to run the most positive campaign ever; he was just being pragmatic and resigning himself to the political climate.
David Axelrod says otherwise.
He called it a “bullshit notion” that Obama ran a positive campaign in 2008, according to “Obama’s Last Stand”, a new e-book by Politico reporter Glenn Thrush.
Ryan Candidacy Puts Debts, Deficits Front and Center
[Breitbart.com]
by Wynton Hall 11 Aug 2012, 4:34 PM PDT
Liberals who are “giddy” at the prospects of Mitt Romney’s selection of Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan are in for a rude and sober awakening when they realize the strategic genius behind the decision.
Team Romney’s strategy? Lure the Obama campaign into attacking Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” deficit reduction plan as a means to frame the 2012 election as a battle over the economic consequences of debt and deficits. If Obama strategists David Axelrod and David Plouffe take the bait, Mitt Romney will win.
What? ABC Indignantly Chides Romney’s U.K. Trip: Advisers Question President’s ‘Heritage’
[Newsbuster.org]
By Scott Whitlock | July 26, 2012
ABC kicked off Mitt Romney’s visit to London, Thursday, by hyping “controversial” comments from the candidate’s advisers. A Good Morning America graphic adopted the worst possible interpretation for remarks by anonymous Romney aides that the President doesn’t respect the “Anglo-Saxon heritage.” The network graphic blasted, “Romney Takes London: Advisor Quote Questions Obama Heritage.”
Saying that Romney aides “questioned Obama’s heritage” hints at birtherism or other charges that the operatives clearly did not make. Reporter David Muir included the quote from one adviser who suggested that the White House “doesn’t fully appreciate the shared history” Britain and America have. Other remarks, not mentioned by Muir, include attacking Obama as a “left-winger” and promising to return the bust of Winston Churchill. How, exactly, do these comments question Obama’s heritage?
Parroting the Democratic line, Muir quoted a tweet by David Axelrod: “Mitt’s trip off to flying start, even before he lands, with stunningly offensive quotes from his team in British press.”
Perhaps trying to lower Romney in comparison to Obama, Muir reminded viewers of the Democrat’s 2008 tour of Europe: “A trip that will inevitably be compared to then-candidate Barack Obama’s overseas trip four years ago. A thick crowd of two hundred thousand in Berlin.”
Muir has a pattern with this. On July 1, he hyped Obama’s Bain attacks, insisting that the Republican “can’t escape” attack ads.
CBS’s Glor Calls Out David Axelrod For His ‘Extreme’ Attack on Romney
[Newsbusters.org]
By Matthew Balan | July 06, 2012
CBS’s Jeff Glor confronted David Axelrod on Friday’s CBS This Morning over his most recent attack on presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney: “You said that Mitt Romney was the most secretive candidate since Richard Nixon….I think that would strike a lot of people as extreme. Do you stand by those comments?“
Glor also pressed Axelrod on the Obama campaign’s “outsourcer-in-chief” attack ads on Romney: “Fact Check, as you know, looked at this, found no evidence that Mitt Romney, while he was still running Bain Capital shipped American jobs overseas. Is it fair to keep those ads on the air?“
The journalist, along with anchor Erica Hill, interviewed the Democratic presidential campaign senior adviser eight minutes into the 7 am Eastern hour. Hill also played a little hardball with her guest in her lead question: “We just heard…the President charging Mitt Romney with playing politics over use of the word ‘tax,’ when it comes to the mandate. The President, of course, adamantly denied that it was a tax in 2009, when he was trying to sell this. The Supreme Court says otherwise. How do you reconcile that now as you try sell a tax to the American people?“
When Axelrod answered, in part, that “whatever you call it – whether you call it a mandate, whether you call it a tax – what it is is a penalty” and attacked Romney for “folding” to “Rush [Limbaugh] and the right and the guys in the Republican caucus on Capitol Hill,” the CBS anchor took him to task: “But if you say it doesn’t matter, the word that you use, then why does it matter if he [Romney] switches words, to your point?“
Glor stepped in once the Obama campaign official answered Hill’s follow-up. He lead with his hardball question on the “outsourcer-in-chief’ attack, and concluded the segment with his challenge to Axelrod. The Democratic pundit got almost a minute and a half to defend his “extreme” attack:
GLOR: David, you keep calling Mitt Romney the ‘outsourcer-in-chief’. We heard what the President said on the trail, indicating that he sent jobs overseas. Fact Check, as you know, looked at this, found no evidence that Mitt Romney, while he was still running Bain Capital shipped American jobs overseas. Is it fair to keep those ads on the air?
Obama goes up with $25 million ad buy
[MSNBC.com]
May 07, 2012
Sara D. Davis / Getty Images
President Barack Obama speaks at a campaign rally May 5 at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Gentlemen, start your airwaves.
Senior Obama campaign officials said Monday that a new major television ad buy reflects their broader media strategy: underscoring the need to build on the president’s first term while also responding to all attacks from what they characterize as a Republican monolith of the Romney campaign and its affiliated Super PACs.
The campaign will spend $25 million on swing-state ads this month, top strategist David Axelrod told reporters on a conference call. The ad is a positive one, the first positive ad the campaign has run. Axelrod argued that the sum spent on this ad would be more than Mitt Romney spent on positive ads through the entire GOP primary.
“I believe that by the end of this week — certainly by the end of next — we will have spent more money offering people a positive vision for the future, talking about the president’s record and the nation’s record under his leadership and where we’re going than Gov. Romney has in his entire campaign,” Axelrod said, “and there’s a reason for that.”
(more…)
GOP Decision to Cancel White House Meeting Brings Talk of Gamesmanship
FoxNews.com
Published November 17, 2010
Whether it was a political delay tactic or a scheduling mishap, Republicans are finding themselves in a PR battle to explain their canceling on President Obama’s announced meeting Thursday with congressional leaders.
Having canceled a press conference on Wednesday scheduled to follow the House GOP’s leadership election, Republicans said they also don’t have time to pay a visit to the White House while they are still in planning and organizational mode.
But Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, rejected even calling the delay a postponement because the only date Republicans agreed to was Nov. 30 when all members would be free to meet.
“That’s literally all there is to it,” he told FoxNews.com.
White House Concedes on Upper Income Tax Cuts
FoxNews.com
Published November 11, 2010
Reuters – Oct. 30: Obama Senior Advisor David Axelrod departs the White House to spend the weekend campaigning for Democratic candidates.
President Obama senior adviser David Axelrod insisted Thursday that comments he made to an online publication conceding to an extension of tax cuts for all income levels are no different from remarks by the president over the weekend.
Axelrod, who confirmed to Fox News comments he made to The Huffington Post, suggested that the administration is ready to accept an across-the-board continuation of current tax rates, marking a turnaround from the White House’s pre-midterm election stance on impending tax increases.
“We have to deal with the world as we find it,” he said. However, Axelrod made clear to Fox News the White House is not conceding a permanent extension for the top 2 percent of earners.
The president’s top adviser also acknowledged that separating different categories of tax cuts now is politically unrealistic and procedurally difficult.
“We don’t want that tax increase to go forward for the middle class … But plainly, what we can’t do is permanently extend these high income taxes,” he told the online publication.
The Twister of 2010: The Democrat Crack-up
BigGovernment.com
Posted Oct 2nd 2010 at 1:21 pm
by Publius
Peggy Noonan in today’s Wall Street Journal:
The Democratic Party right now is showing signs of coming apart under the pressure of the election and two years of an unpopular presidency. But it’s not a split in two, with the left versus the establishment. It’s more like a splintering, with left-leaning activists distancing themselves from the party’s politicians, and moderate politicians distancing themselves from Mr. Obama.
And part of what’s driving it is what is driving the evolution of the Republican Party. The Internet changed everything. Everyone has facts now, knows who voted how and why. New thought leaders spring up and lead in new directions. Total transparency leads to party fracturing. Information dings unity. We are in new territory.
Rahm Emanuel Expected to Quit White House
A British newspaper reported Sunday that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is expected to quit within six to eight months in frustration at the Obama administration’s unwillingness to “bang heads together” to get policy pushed through.
The story in the London Sunday Telegraph says that while Emanuel, 50, “enjoys a good working relationship with Mr Obama,” both men have reached an understanding that differences over style mean he will serve only half the full four-year term.
Emanuel’s friends tell the paper that he is also worried about burnout and losing touch with his young family due to the pressure of one of most high profile jobs in US politics.
(more…)
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