Chris Wallace hosted top officials from both the Obama and Romney campaigns on Fox News Sunday yesterday, and both were given an opportunity to describe, in one paragraph, “What’s the choice in this election?” Romney adviser Ed Gillespie said:
A classic conservative message. Free enterprise vs government control. American people vs Washington bureaucrats. The message may not be new, but it has a proven track record. Now here is Obama adviser David Axelrod’s answer:
See the problem? Axelrod is trying to frame the election in Occupy Wall Street rhetoric, the 99% vs the 1%. But in the middle of his argument he admits that the 99% is losing. If the economy “continues down the road we are on” “fewer and fewer” people will “do very well.”
This kind of message worked great when Obama was an insurgent candidate running against eight years of President Bush, but now Obama has to defend four years of his own administration. Obama apparently is hoping that Americans will forget that his stimulus failed to keep unemployment below 8 percent. That he wasted billions of tax payer dollars on green energy companies like Solyndra. That he spent the first 15 months of his presidency on a health care bill that nobody likes and is likely to be found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. That he has done nothing to reduce the debt, reform the tax code, or make America more competitive.
The reality is that the overwhelming majority of Americans believe our country is heading in the wrong direction, 61 percent to 33 percent according to the latest Real Clear Politics average. Does Obama want us to believe he had been powerless to change the direction of the country in his first four years in office? If so, why should Americans believe he will be any more effective as a lame duck president in his last four years?
If the only election Obama can run is a “change” election, then the White House will likely see some change come January 2013.
Campaign 2012
Obama: In a Friday evening interview with Univision, Obama again promised he would push for an immigration amnesty soon. “I can promise that I will try to do it in the first year of my second term,” he said.
GOP: An anonymous donor gave $10 million late last year to the Republican Super PAC Crossroads GPS, to run ads attacking President Obama and Democratic policies.
Around the Bigs
The Wall Street Journal, Afghan Insurgents Strike Across Nation: Heavily armed insurgents staged attacks in Kabul and across Afghanistan on Sunday, in their largest assault on the capital since the Taliban were ousted from power more than a decade ago.
The New York Times, White House Opens Door to Big Donors, and Lobbyists Slip In: Although Mr. Obama has made a point of not accepting contributions from registered lobbyists, a review of campaign donations and White House visitor logs shows that special interests have had little trouble making themselves heard.
Reuters, Obama’s “green jobs” have been slow to sprout: On the campaign trail in 2008, Obama promised that a $150 billion investment would generate 5 million jobs over 10 years. The White House said in November 2010 that its clean-energy efforts had generated work for 225,000 people and would ultimately create a total of 827,000 “job years” – implying average annual employment of around 200,000 over the four years of Obama’s presidential term.
Lefty Plyabook
The Huffington Post is attacking Romney for statements he made this January suggesting that welfare recipients should work outside the home in order to qualify for benefits.
The New York Times‘ Andrew Rosenthal explains why the “Republican War on Women” is real.
At The Daily Beast, Michelle Goldberg notes that Romney lost big among women when he last to Sen. Ted Kennedy in 1994.
Righty Playbook
Townhall‘s Guy Benson posts a video of Obama Super PAC donor Bill Maher saying, “But what [Hilary Rosen] meant to say, I think, was that Ann Romney has never gotten her ass out of the house to work.”
AEI‘s James Pethokoukis posts a poll showing that the vast majority of bankers do not believe Dodd-Frank ended “Too Big to Fail.”
The Weekly Standard‘s Bill Kristol attacks a New York Times article that Speaks Ill—and Falsely—of Andrew Breitbart.
