The Republican National Committee (RNC) released a new Web video Friday knocking President Obama's comment Thursday that “you can’t change Washington from the inside."
The minute-long ad uses clips from Obama's 2008 campaign, in which the president repeatedly says his campaign is about changing the culture of Washington, D.C., contrasting them with comments the president made at a Univision forum Thursday.
Obama made the statement while responding to a question about his biggest failure in his first term.
“I’ve learned some lessons,” Obama said. “Most important is you can’t change Washington from inside, only from the outside. That’s how some of our biggest accomplishments, like healthcare, got done — mobilizing the American people.”
Obama added that in a second term, “I want to concentrate on having a much more constant conversation with the American people so they can put pressure on Congress to move issues forward.”
The Web video immediately transitions to Republican nominee Mitt Romney blasting the president's remarks from the campaign trail on Thursday afternoon.
"He said he can't change Washington from the inside, he can only change it from the outside," Romney says. "Well, we'll give him that chance in November."
In a statement accompanying the video, the RNC said Obama's comments were making it clearer that his "campaign is a mirage."
" 'Yes we can' was appealing to so many four years ago, but four years later, it's turned into 'No I can't,' " said RNC Chairman Reince Priebus. "Barack Obama's campaign rationale in 2008 was his ability to change how things are done in Washington, but now he says that he can't change things at all and has instead become part of the problem. Washington is more broken, more divisive and less respected than when Barack Obama was elected four years ago."
In a statement Thursday, the Obama campaign accused Republicans of taking his statement "wildly out of context" and setting "a new record in desperation."
"What the president said today is no different than what he has been saying for many years — that change comes from outside Washington, not inside," said Obama spokeswoman Lis Smith. "When Americans came together and stood up to special interests, we reformed healthcare, cut taxes for the middle class and put in new rules for Wall Street. And that’s why we have elections. Mitt Romney apparently doesn’t believe that change comes from the American people. Maybe that’s because he has written off half the country in this election, and has repeatedly demonstrated that he’s incapable of standing up to the extreme right wing of the Republican Party — even if it’s in our national interest.”
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