Democratic National Committee Chairwoman and Florida congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said Wednesday that Sen. Orrin Hatch's suggestion that President Obama's reelection team would attack Mitt Romney's Mormon faith was "preposterous."
"That is just preposterous. That suggestion is utter nonsense," Wasserman Schultz told MSNBC. "Let’s remember that President Obama has had so many things hurled at him — birth certificate questions, whether he is or is not a Christian — for them to suggest that religion will be injected by President Obama and the Democratic Party, I mean, I think they need to take a look inward at the accusations that their party and their supporters have hurled before they take that step."
Sen. Hatch reportedly told a group of Republican delegates that Obama's team would "throw the Mormon Church at him like you can’t believe.”
The DNC chairwoman also defended the president's
speech Tuesday — in which he criticized Mitt Romney directly for the first time — as a necessary step.
"Mitt Romney, throughout his primary campaign, has relentlessly focused on President Obama, has hit him daily, sometimes even hourly, and President Obama rightly is making sure that the American people understand that there is a dramatic difference in the two visions they have to choose from in this country come November," Wasserman Schultz said.
Wasserman Schultz also expressed confidence that the Supreme Court would uphold the president's signature healthcare law.
"I think they will recognize that Congress has the right to regulate commerce, that the commerce clause is where this question will come down," Wasserman Schultz said. "You've had conservative and liberal judges appointed by Republican and Democratic presidents who have said it's constitutional and upheld it in cases in lower courts, and I think that ultimately that's where they'll come down."
