The debate over Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital intensified Tuesday with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Vice President Biden weighing in.
“Your job as president is to promote the common good. That doesn’t mean the private-equity guys are bad. They’re not,” Biden said at a campaign stop in Keene, N.H. “But that no more qualifies you to be president than to be a plumber.”
McConnell, meanwhile, called Obama the most anti-business president since Jimmy Carter.
TOP STORY: Attack on Bain attacks President Obamadefended his campaign’s attacks on Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital.
Monday’s press conference in Chicago was centered around the NATO summit, but the most memorable moment was when Obama suggested Romney’s work at the private-equity firm was fair game in November’s election.
“The reason this is relevant to the campaign is my opponent, Governor Romney, his main calling card for why he should president is his business experience,” Obama said.
He also indicated he didn’t believe Romney understood what the job of president entailed.
“If your main argument on how to grow the economy is that ‘I know how to make a lot of money for investors’ then you’re missing what this job is about.”
Republicans worked quickly to distance themselves from a proposal from a GOP-leaning super-PAC to run attack ads against President Obama based on his relationship with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
That proposal was floated and rejected within hours on Thursday as Mitt Romney, top Republicans and Team Obama criticized the idea.
Whether the proposal was leaked to The New York Times by someone who wanted to stop the ad or to get it attention, it put Wright — and the issue of race — back into the news cycle.
Obama had no public events Thursday so reporters didn’t have a chance to question him, but Romney criticized the proposal at a campaign stop in Florida, saying it was the “wrong course” for the campaign to take.
In the end, the biggest lesson from this story might be the power of the super-PACs. Thanks to the Citizens United decision, we know they have more influence than ever — this shows how it’s possible for them to hurt a candidate they are trying to help and just how little control the party has over them.
TOMORROW’S AGENDA TODAY: Mitt Romney will be campaigning in New Hampshire. President Obama welcomes world leaders to Camp David for a NATO summit.
President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) clashed in a meeting at the White House on Wednesday.
Their argument was over the debt limit, but one can’t helping looking at it through election-year undertones: Obama fighting to keep his job and Boehner to keep the House.
Boehner’s aides seemed to be playing up the clash over the debt, which, coincidentally, is the same issue Mitt Romney is discussing on the campaign trail this week.
One item getting a lot of play: the hoagies Obama brought for the luncheon.
Boehner’s office noted: The Speaker “was very pleased with the sandwiches served.”
It’s a small agreement, but it’s a start.
TOMORROW’S AGENDA TODAY:Mitt Romney is still campaigning in Florida, and Vice President Biden is still campaigning in Ohio. Read more...
Nebraska state Sen. Deb Fischer had long been written off in Tuesday's GOP primary for the state's open Senate seat.
The smart money was on state Attorney General Jon Bruning, who had locked up most of the GOP establishment support, plus the backing of Tea Party Express and Citizens United. Fiscal conservatives were lining up behind state Treasurer Don Stenberg, whose benefactors include the Club for Growth and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.).
All Fischer had was a rag-tag campaign she affectionately described as grassroots, and the doggedness to keep on going no matter what the polls showed.
"It's a question of being out there and meeting folks," Fischer said in a recent interview with The Hill. "Having them meet me, listening to their concerns and Nebraskans responding to a positive campaign."
Then, in the final days of the primary and long after most believed the race had settled, something started happening.
President Obama went after Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital on Monday, trying to turn one of his rival’s strengths against him.
Romney has long touted his tenure at the private-equity firm as proof he is the better choice to lead on the economy. Team Obama fired back on Monday, launching a two-minute television ad and holding a conference call with reporters to hammer Romney on his time at Bain.
The ad, an accompanying online video and a website depict the private-equity firm as predatory and having engaged in "questionable business practices."
Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter told reporters Romney’s record was fair game because it “tells us about what kind of president he would be.”
Their focus was on a steel company in Kansas City, Mo., that Bain bought and closed in 2001. At that time Romney was on leave from Bain to run the Salt Lake Winter Olympics. But Cutter argued Romney should still be held accountable because he set the deal “in motion.”
In the ad, one of the laid-off workers called Bain “a vampire” that came in and “sucked the life out of us.” Naturally, the banner headline on Drudge most of the day was “Obama: Romney a ‘vampire.’ ”
Mitt Romney made a hastily arranged trip to Charlotte, N.C., on Friday, and not just because that city is the site of the Democratic National Convention.
It's because North Carolina looks to be leaning red.
President Obama won the state four years ago but his decision to publicly endorse same-sex marriage this week could cost him the Tar Heel state, especially as his announcement came the day after the state rejected an amendment legalizing gay marriage.
The Republican National Committee circulated a memo on the state, arguing that the retirement of high-profile Democratic lawmakers in the North Carolina, a sexual harassment scandal dogging the state Democratic Party leadership and the campaign finance corruption trial of former presidential candidate John Edwards means that "the Tar Heel State is a major headache for Chicago."
TOMORROW’S AGENDA TODAY: Romney will give the commencement address at Liberty University, which was founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, on Saturday. Read more...
The day after President Obama put to rest questions about his “evolution” on gay marriage, The Washington Post ran a lengthy article on Romney’s high-school years, including a report he bullied a student thought to be gay.
Romney went on Fox Radio to apologize — sort of — saying he “did some dumb things” in the past, but insisted that gay students were never a specific target. He’s previously admitted to being a prankster in high school, but bullying is a tougher image to fight.
High school is tough for everyone and having your teenage years become fodder in the national press is pretty brutal. But in this 24-hour information age, more and more of candidate’s private lives are becoming fair game.
TOP STORY: An historic moment — and a political one.
President Obama on Wednesday endorsed gay marriage, becoming the first U.S. president to voice support for same sex-couples to legally marry.
And, yes, all the adjectives — historic, landmark, monumental, etc. — apply to his announcement, but it’s also an election year, and that means it’s all about the politics.
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