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House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi defended the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee on “This Week” for sending a fundraising email that attempted to capitalize on the apparently dead advertising plan to link President Obama to Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The plan has been repudiated by Mitt Romney as well as the head of the super PAC reported to have been considering backing the plan.

“Why would we have any regrets?” asked Pelosi, dismissing Romney’s rejection of the proposed advertising campaign.

During our interview, Pelosi cited a previous attack by Romney on President Obama using Wright in which the former Bay State governor said  “I’m not sure which is worse: him listening to Rev. Wright or him saying we must be a less-Christian nation” during an interview with Sean Hannity. When asked about these comments in light of the current controversy, Romney stood by them even as he admitted he could not recall exactly what he said.

“He has, he stood by his remarks in February.  So I think maybe it might be useful to see what he said in February and see that he stands by those remarks,” Pelosi said.

For his part, House Speaker John Boehner called the DCCC email “nonsense” before quickly stressing that this year’s election will be about the economy.

“This kind of nonsense shouldn’t happen.  The election’s gonna be about the economy and getting Americans back to work.  And I think Governor Romney’s prescriptions are much better,” he said.

Pelosi joined her House colleague in agreement on this front.

“The election is about three things:  jobs, jobs and jobs,” she said.

Article source: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/nancy-pelosi-defends-dems-rev-wright-fundraising-appeal/

Believing that to win in November, Mitt Romney needs the support of a sizable amount of Latino voters (anything close to the 34% John McCain got in 2008 is a defeat; anything around the 41% who voted for George W. Bush in 2004 is a victory), Republicans continued to intensify their level of involvement with the Latino community this week. They seem encouraged by a simple rationale. Romney, as FoxNews said, “could beat Obama if he courts Hispanics.“

Let me add this for clarity: Romney could beat Obama if he courts Hispanics and if Hispanics are enchanted by his charms.

But there is a lot of work to do. A recent NBC/WSJ poll indicated that 69% of Latinos still prefer Obama to the 22% who favor Romney.

If Republicans really believe they must do well with Hispanics to win the presidency, they have good reason to be worried.

Still, they struggle to gain the hearts and votes of Latinos. In January, they created the office of Director of Hispanic Outreach and named activist Bettina Inclán to lead it. And last week, Inclan presented new GOP Hispanic outreach directors in six states.

Also as part of the effort, this week Arizona’s senator and former presidential candidate John McCain told Juan Williams that the issue of immigration stands between Latinos and Mitt Romney, and that, actually, Romney “has said that he is in favor of immigration reform. “Now,” added McCain, “like anything else, the devil is in the details.”

You bet.

But McCain understands that even though topics like jobs and education are paramount for Latinos, the immigration issue is what differentiates them from non-Latino voters.

Thus, immigration is what defines the Hispanic electorate.

Additional involvement in Latino issues included a presentation by the junior senator from Florida, Republican Marco Rubio, to the media. Rubio outlined, one more time, his own version of the DREAM Act, a once-bipartisan-now-Democratic bill that would allow many undocumented students and soldiers to legalize their immigration status.

Not that it’s time to present the law in committee…or that there is any timetable for that. Rubio’s move is aimed to show Latinos that someone in the GOP is sympathetic to the plight of the immigrant. And to show that Republicans at least have the beginning of a legislative record on these issues. (After all, the only other piece of legislation Rubio has introduced was in July 11, when he presented Senate Resolution 236, designating September 2011 as “National Spinal Cord Injury Awareness Month.“)

So, this week Rubio continued to try to reap the fruits of a bill that does not even exist. No wonder Senate Majority leader Harry Reid wants Rubio to stop talking about the bill and start doing something about it.

And, there is a little additional problem: Mitt Romney is not supporting the bill. At least, according to Inclán, he has not decided yet. Actually, on his website, Mittromney.com, he criticizes Obama for deporting too few, not too many. “…instead of taking a strong stand on illegal immigration, he [Obama] has ordered immigration officials to enforce immigration laws “selectively,” leading to the dismissal of many deportation cases.”

Still, these outreach efforts by the GOP toward Latinos, part of their strategy to unseat Obama, couldn’t come at a more opportune moment. This week, the Census Bureau announced that for the first time, “racial and ethnic minorities make up more than half the children born in the U.S.“

And even if the rate of growth of the Hispanic population in the country slowed, as fewer immigrants illegally cross our borders, the threshold is important. Translation: The clock is ticking and you need to acknowledge this and join the trend. Or oppose it.

What to do, then? Some, such as Inclán last Tuesday, attacked Obama from the Left accusing him of stepping up deportations and not passing immigration reform. But Romney, as we saw, would have deported even more…although that view came prior to the exit of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, and before the etch-a-sketch debacle.

So, what is the GOP’s position on immigration?

Attacks like Inclan’s on Obama’s immigration record will undoubtedly leave Obama unfazed and unscathed. But the insistence of the GOP on finally developing talking points that are somehow palatable to Latinos may indicate that the influence of the far right in the GOP, so powerful during the early stages of the primaries, has continued to fade, and with it, the most extreme voices in the party seemed headed back to, well, where they used to live before: the fringes. (Remember Herman Cain’s electrified fence “joke” as a way to stop “illegals?”)

It appears probable then that, without the need to energize the troops for the primaries, and with the urgent need to reach independent voters, the GOP tone on immigration and Latinos will turn civil and dialogue will resume.

Wait a minute.

Enter the Supreme Court…which, by late June is set to rule on the legality of SB 1070, Arizona’s highly controversial 2010 anti-illegal immigration law.

From reading the transcript of the recent hearings on the constitutionality of SB1070, it seems the Supreme Court seems bound to uphold it. This is also what the experts think. Even McCain predicts it: “I think it’s pretty clear from the argument that the Supreme Court members made, that a lot of that, that law may be upheld…” he said to Williams.

But a decision to uphold the statute could energize Latinos to register and vote for Obama. Hispanics could forget his unfulfilled promises of immigration reform and his deportation record.

Which would be an unintended consequence of the Supreme Court decision.

And Obama? This week, the president was quietly amassing his war chest at a meeting with wealthy LGBT and Latino donors who paid at least $5,000 each to be there.

Maybe he let Republicans take the lead in searching for ways to attract the Latino vote.

Only they still don’t have an official position on what McCain called “one of the key issues of the 2012 Presidential campaign.”

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(CBS News) COLUMBIA, S.C. – Florida Sen. Marco Rubio fired up an audience of South Carolina Republicans as he labeled President Obama the most “divisive” figure in modern American history, picking up an attack line used by his party’s presumptive nominee, Mitt Romney.

“The president and his party’s view of America’s government and our lives is a failed one. It hasn’t worked. His ideas that sounded so good in the classrooms of Harvard and Yale haven’t really worked out well in the real world,” Rubio said. “They get frustrated. They cant win on their record. And so they’ve chosen to go down a different road, one that I think is destructive, counterproductive, and very unfortunate.”

If Rubio’s speech to the nearly 1,000 party members gathered for their annual Silver Elephant dinner was meant to serve as a test of his ability to act as an attack dog for Mitt Romney, he did his job well. The oft-mentioned potential running mate for Romney delivered an extended critique of the president’s policies and rhetoric that was interrupted several times by applause from the audience, who also gave him a standing ovation at the end.

They weren’t the only ones voicing their approval for Rubio. South Carolina’s top Republicans in attendance – Gov. Nikki Haley and Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint – had their own praise for the young senator.

DeMint said, as he introduced Rubio, “We have a speaker here tonight that can be that voice for freedom.” And Graham praised him as “the future of the Republican Party,” and thanked him for his leadership. “Ronald Reagan would be proud of you,” he said, the ultimate compliment among a GOP crowd.

They aren’t alone. Rep. Tim Scott from South Carolina told reporters before Rubio’s speech that the Florida senator is a popular pick among his colleagues on Capitol Hill to serve as Romney’s number two.

Rubio returned much of the praise, even crediting DeMint with his 2010 Senate victory.

“If Jim DeMint had not endorsed me, I would not be a member of the U.S. Senate today,” Rubio said as he reflected on how defeated he felt when Republican after Republican lined up to support his opponent, then-Gov. Charlie Crist.

For all his focus on the importance of the election at hand, Rubio’s speech also had the hallmarks of a candidate gearing up for a possible presidential run in 2016. He presented his life story as representative of the American dream, noting that while he stood before a podium, his used to stand before a bar serving drinks on a Saturday night.

And South Carolina is not Rubio’s first dance with voters of a key primary state. He delivered that same message about the ability to escape the circumstances of one’s birth in America before a group of Iowa business leaders who had traveled to Washington, D.C. earlier this month.

Article source: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57437849-503544/rubio-fires-up-s.c-republicans-by-attacking-obama/

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On Sunday morning’s Up with Chris Hayes, host Chris Hayes led off with the umpteenth cable news discussion of the Obama campaign’s assault on Mitt Romney‘s record at Bain Capital, and Romney’s attempt to draw a “character assassination” foul over it. Hayes and panel raised interesting questions about whether Team Obama’s courtship of private equity donors amounts to hypocrisy, and whether Romney’s Bain record is an indicator of how he would govern, among others.

According to Hayes, “staging this kind of assault on romney’s financier past is a delicate proposition” because President Obama “is trying to paint Romney as an unfeeling corporate raider, while raising millions of dollars from these same financiers these attacks demonize.”

He mentions a fundraiser held at the home of Blackstone Group president Tony James, and top Obama bundler Jonathan Lavine, currently a managing director at Bain.

This hypocrisy argument, however, seems to rely on the notion that you should only accept money from people whom you think should be running the country. You can take donations from plumbers, yet still think a plumber isn’t qualified to be president. If anything, President Obama’s private equity donors could be seen as an indictment of Romney, who is clearly better for their narrow interests, yet can’t gain their unanimous support.

The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein opined that “in the Bain discussion, both sides have managed to say nothing interesting.”

While I agree with Klein that “I don’t think what romney did at Bain shows he’s prepared to run the country,” I disagree with his assertion that “I don’t think it’s a good reason to think what he did at Bain is a preview for how he would govern.”

Klein noted that when Romney was Governor of Massachusetts, he “did some big social policy, particularly the Romneycare bill.”

But Hayes pointed out that Romney’s “entire tenure as Massachusetts governor is totally erased from his record,” which is why I think Klein is wrong. If Mitt Romney says his record at Bain is what voters should base their decisions on, we should take him at his word.

One thing I love about this clip is how, about a minute in, Hayes pulls a reverse-Pawlenty and barely stops himself from calling the President “Obamney”: (watch the full segment here)

There’s been a lot of talk about Romney’s response to the Obama campaign’s Bain attacks, which he repeatedly called “character assassination,” and equated with the scuttled Joe Ricketts plan to sic an “extremely literate conservative African-American” on President Obama (“extremely literate?” Like what, a guy who snowboards while reading Dostoyevsky?).

One thing that’s been missing from the discussion of this back-and-forth is the distinction between “character assassination” and attacking someone’s character. While I would disagree with Romney that the Bain attack, among others leveled by the Obama campaign, constitute “character assassination,” I’ve heard a lot of cable news analysts (particularly liberals) say that these attacks have nothing to do with character. Both of these ideas are wrong.

“Character assassination” is a subset of character attacks, differentiated by dishonesty and/or unfairness. Obviously, it is fair to examine Romney’s record at Bain, because Romney has made that his one and only sales pitch. Even as Steve Rattner tried to call the Obama ad unfair, he couldn’t help but point out that it was Mitt Romney who made the claim that his experience at Bain made him a job creator, when that’s really not the point of private equity at all.

Had Romney never made that specific claim, then I’d say it would be unfair for the Obama campaign to single out Bain failures, and represent them as characteristic of everything Romney did there (only to the extent that’s what all political ads do, present only information that supports a given conclusion).

However, let’s not pretend that this line of attack is not about Mitt Romney’s character. Romney’s bogus claims of job creation certainly gave the campaign an opening, but the emotional tales from people thrown out of work at GST Steel are clearly designed to “paint Romney as an unfeeling corporate raider,” as Hayes said, but also to fit into a broader narrative about Romney’s character.

Even way back when Mitt Romney was perpetual runner-up to a carousel of increasingly ridiculous GOP frontrunners, senior Obama adviser David Axelrod drew the template for this campaign by saying that “campaigns are like an MRI for the soul,” which is about as deep a reference as you can get to someone’s character. The Obama campaign, along with pro-Obama SuperPAC Priorities USA Action, has worked that narrative like a chain gang since then.

Indeed, almost every attack leveled by Team Obama has dealt with Romney’s character; has concluded with the unsaid question “Who does that?”

However, if the Obama campaign is guilty of picking at Romney’s character scabs, theirs is a petty misdemeanor compared to the mainstream media, who obsessively chronicle (or “report,” if you prefer) every dissonant move Romney makes, from putting his dog on the roof of his car, to defending putting his dog on the roof of the car. The message is clearly “what the hell is wrong with this guy?”

Now, I can understand a Romney supporter being unhappy with the relentlessness of it all, and there’s certainly a worthy discussion to be had over how important this sort of intangible quality should be in an election, but what I haven’t seen is anyone stepping up to say “Hey, strapping your dog to the roof of your car is totally normal. Telling a joke about shutting down a factory is a fine strategy for a campaign speech. And y’know what? A dead straight parent really is better than a live gay one.”

Far more important than whether Romney acts like he’s running to defeat our Earth-leader is whether he knows how to govern humans. On that count, Romney’s Bain experience is revealing, because as Hayes said, “in the private sector, you have a specific goal, you have one interest you’re keeping in mind: the financial health of your shareholders.”

The question voters need to answer is, if elected, who will be Mitt Romney’s shareholders?

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• Mitt Romney cannot cry about “Character Assassination” until the emotion chip is added to his “human subroutine data processor.”

• In a word, yes.

• I hope your candidate Romney decides to take off his creased mom jeans and put on his big boy britches. He just spent the entire primary ruining people’s reputations to secure the nomination, now with one negative Bain ad and a few fiery Biden speeches he’s whining about character assassination? Is Romney also going to cry if Ahmadinejad says mean things about him that happen to be true? Give me a break!

  Politics is a bloodsport. It’s not badminton, Chuck.

• And still…..Mitt refuses to show his birth certificate.

• He’s afraid of how many of his grandmothers names will be on it.

• Drawing a character assassination “foul” Nice metaphor!

• Obama’s work performance and Romney’s work performance seem appropriate to me; nothing character assassinating about that.  At least Obama wouldn’t stand silent if a supporter said Romney should be tried for treason … that’s complicity in character assassination, at the least.

• Obama is the first ” birther “, claiming many years ago to be from Kenya on the book bio he wrote and updated over the years.

  He should condemn himself.

• The question voters need to answer is, if elected, who will be Mitt Romney’s shareholders?

  It has to be somewhat obvious that Romney will be marching to whomever Carl Rove and his not so merry band of Bush cronies say to march to. We can fool ourselves, but I’m pretty sure that is the 0.01% wealthy white men who play Risk, as Steve Wright might say, on a life size board.

Article source: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/character-tissues-does-mitt-romney-have-right-to-cry-about-character-assassination/

Recent news stories have accused Mitt Romney of engaging in hurtful pranks while he was in High School–such as cutting the hair of a fellow student against his will. Many of us would not want our old High School behavior to be dissected in public and I know I certainly wouldn’t. But I want to focus on Romney’s response to these attacks, not because I think his response should have any impact on whether or not one chooses to vote for him, but because we all as a society can improve in this area.

Romney has responded to these attacks by saying “I participated in a lot of high jinks and pranks during high school, and some may have gone too far. And for that I apologize.”

Ann Romney has in the past spoken warmly and positively about her husband’s fun loving pranks. In a video tribute to him she warmly says: “There were a lot of pranks, a lot of pranks.”

If a husband and wife want to engage in pranks on each other as a form of romantic love then that is between the two of them. But for the rest of us the whole issue of pranking someone else which is now becoming more and more popular in our society raises a larger religious question: whether or not in general it is permitted to momentarily hurt someone for the sake of a good laugh.

Are practical jokes or pranks on an unsuspecting person permitted according to Jewish law? What about teasing someone or calling them by a nickname? While they might be funny and get a few momentary laughs, the clear answer is that they are not permitted.

The prohibition originates from a verse in Leviticus (25:17) which states: “One shall not aggrieve his friend.” The Babylonian Talmud (tractate Bava Metzia 58b) interprets this to mean that one cannot cause pain to someone as a result of their actions, even if we would think that that pain is minimal. The great medieval commentator on the Torah, Rashi, comments that this verse means that one cannot tease their friend.

The Talmud expands on this prohibition and includes in it any behavior whereby your words or actions cause even momentary hurt and minimal pain. Thus, the examples of prohibited behavior in the Talmud even include presenting oneself to a shopkeeper as though you are interested in purchasing an item when you really have no interest. Another example of prohibited behavior is reminding someone of their previous sins even years after they have repented.

The Talmud lists three people who are considered especially egregious sinners. One of those people is someone who calls another person by a derogatory nickname even if the other person is used to that name and apparently does not mind. Such is the enormous sensitivity we must have for the feelings of others.

But the codes of Jewish law take this law one step further.
According to the Shulchan Aruch (Choshen Mishpat 420: 32) even causing someone temporary fright by playing a joke upon them and jumping out at them from the dark is a violation of this law. Hurting someone and causing emotional pain even for a good joke is prohibited.
American law now recognizes that certain practical jokes are a violation of the law as well.

Congress has passed a law which outlaws spoof calls. It is illegal to make a phone call and intentionally place a different caller id so that the receiver of the call is not deceived. This law which is known as “The Truth in Caller ID Law” makes it illegal “to cause any caller identification service to knowingly transmit misleading or inaccurate caller identification information with the intent to defraud, cause harm, or wrongfully obtain anything of value….”

Now this law was probably intended to protect people who were trying to hide from their creditors, but nevertheless protecting people from pranks is a step in the right direction.

It is ok to laugh and the Torah also encourages laughter, just not at someone else’s expense. Of course, it is not just Mitt Romney who has pranked people (we all have done it in our lives), but now that Mitt Romney is in such an important position of leadership he can and should take the initiative to turn this into a teachable moment. He should announce that from this day forward his campaign and if he wins, his White House, will be prank free zones.

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Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-shmuel-herzfeld/mitt-romneys-pranks_b_1524584.html

Ron Paul won 12 of 13 delegates in Minnesota’s state GOP convention. If Mitt Romney has the nomination all but tied up and Paul has effectively ended his campaign, why continue the fight?

By

Brad Knickerbocker, Staff writer /
May 20, 2012

Delegates cheer as GOP Presidential candidate Ron Paul speaks at the Minnesota Republican State Convention Friday, May 18, 2012, in St. Cloud, Minn.

Dave Schwarz/The St. Cloud Times/AP

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Article source: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/President/2012/0520/Ron-Paul-bloodless-coup-in-Minnesota-takes-most-delegates.-Now-what

It’s unusual for a president to unload a double-barreled attack on his opponent six months before Election Day. 

 But that’s what President Barack Obama spent the last week doing to Republican challenger Mitt Romney. 

 Obama and a cadre of high-profile surrogates unleashed a sustained barrage countering Romney’s central claim that his work as the CEO of a private equity firm uniquely qualifies him to revive the nation’s economy. 

President Barack Obama. (AP Photo/Jim Mone)

 All week, Democrats have relentlessly hammered home an image of Romney at Bain Capital closing struggling businesses and eliminating jobs, making him the last person Americans should turn to for job creation. 

 Such weighty sorties from an incumbent chief executive are usually reserved for the final months of a campaign, when most voters are paying attention. The attacks usually aren’t launched in May, when Americans are focused on graduations, family vacations and spending time outdoors. 

 But strategists for Obama, who has been pilloried for months by GOP presidential candidates, are trying to create an early negative outline of Romney that they hope to fill in later

The Associated PressRepublican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

when voters are paying closer attention to the race. 

 If successful, a fringe benefit of the early Obama offensive would be to chip away at Romney’s advantage among polled voters who say the former Massachusetts governor is better suited to handle the economy than the president. 

“Clearly this is part of an effort to define Mitt Romney before he has a chance to get broadly known on his own terms,” said J.J. Balaban, a Philadelphia-based political media consultant who advised Joe Sestak’s 2010 U.S. Senate campaign. 

“Mitt Romney has been consumed with winning his primaries, whereas the president and his team has really gotten to sit back, plan and get the gun loaded,” Balaban said. “Yes, it’s early … but it’s not surprising that the incumbent, regardless of party, is loaded for bear.”

Obama’s campaign officially launched May 5 and began with a positive message as part of a $25 million, monthlong ad buy in nine battleground states, including Pennsylvania. 

 The first television ad touted Obama’s handling of the economic crisis and implored voters to give the president a second term to finish the job. 

 But Monday, the campaign released a scathing six-minute online video prominently displayed on social media websites, and a two-minute abbreviated television version telling the story of a Kansas City steel mill’s demise under Bain’s stewardship. The TV ad was broadcast in five swing states, including Pennsylvania. 

“After purchasing the company, Mitt Romney and his partners loaded it with debt, closed the Kansas City plant and walked away with a healthy profit, leaving hundreds of employees out of work with their pensions in jeopardy,” the campaign said in a statement. 

 The Obama campaign’s early lurch for Romney’s political jugular surprised some prominent Democrats, particularly those with high-end corporate backgrounds. 

“I think the ad is unfair,” said Steven Rattner, a New York financier and senior adviser to Obama on the auto industry bailout. 

“Bain Capital’s responsibility was not to create a hundred thousand jobs, or some other number,” Rattner said. “It was to make profits for his investors, most of whom were pension funds, endowments and foundations. And it did it superbly, acting within the rules and very responsibly.”

 Obama supporter and Philadelphia financier Peter Buttenwieser, an heir to the Lehman brokerage fortune, has criticized Obama campaign tactics in the past. But he resisted casting aspersions on the Bain Capital assault last week. 

“We’re going to see a number of these kinds of ads from both candidates,” Buttenwieser said. “I assume I’ll like some of them and not like others.”

 The Obama campaign’s Bain attack was buttressed by an Obama-supporting super political action committee, Priorities USA, that also assailed Romney and Bain for predatory business practices. The group launched a $4 million television ad buy in five swing states, including Pennsylvania. 

 The aerial assaults were reinforced by an elaborately coordinated ground blitz across several battleground states that included Vice President Joe Biden spending days stumping in Ohio, a state all Republican presidential candidates must win to claim the White House. 

 The effort was also accompanied by a series of news conferences in several swing state cities, including Harrisburg. 

 The campaign also orchestrated a cluster of conference calls for reporters — including one with a former employee of a Pittsburgh-area paper mill that closed under Bain’s supervision — to reinforce the message.

Republicans criticized the weeklong broadside as an unprecedented, shallow and misleading smear campaign meant to distract voters from Obama’s poor record. 

“Honestly, it’s grotesque,” said Phil English, a former Erie congressman and a Romney supporter. “The truth is the president’s record in turning the economy around is difficult to defend, so his team has decided to vilify Mitt Romney and try to challenge his authentic business successes.”

 Even some well-connected Democrats were only mildly enthused with what they saw as a futile attempt by Obama to win over conservative Democrats — specifically white, working-class men.

“My guess is the first tier of support that’s probably going to be stripped away by Romney is white, working-class men,” said Larry Ceisler, a Philadelphia-based media consultant. 

“They’re probably trying to throw something out there to retain some of these voters,” Ceisler said. “They’ll give it a shot, probably won’t [retain them], but then move on to work on their core constituency, and then the independents where the election will be won or lost.”

 The week ended with one pro-Romney super PAC matching the $25 million Obama ad buy in 10 battleground states, and another super PAC contemplating a nuclear attack on Obama that was publicly waved off by Romney. 

 To clear the campaign air, Romney’s campaign unveiled a new positive ad Friday, a spot depicting how he’d hit the ground running from the very first day on the job.

 But the campaign waters have been so thoroughly sullied — by GOP primary attacks on Obama and the president’s early assault on Bain — that pundits and partisans expect nothing less than a further descent down the negative campaign rabbit hole.

“The public is very weary,” said English, still speaking of the Obama attacks. “I think this is going to be the ugliest campaign of our generation.”
 

Article source: http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2012/05/analysis_barack_obama_and_mitt.html

Rep. Paul Ryan, the House budget committee chairman who has emerged as a top Mitt Romney surrogate and is talked about as a possible running mate, countered the Obama campaign’s fresh attack on Romney’s record at Bain Capital by citing the government’s failed gamble on solar panel firm Solyndra. 

Ryan, R-Wis., speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” tried to draw fire away from the presumptive Republican presidential nominee by pointing to the “crony capitalism” of taxpayer-backed loans to well-connected firms like Solyndra. 

“What Bain did is they used private capital to try and help struggling businesses,” Ryan said. “What President Obama’s doing is he’s gambling with taxpayer money and giving money to corporate contributors like Solyndra, and he’s losing taxpayer money.” 

[Obama's] losing taxpayer money

- Rep. Paul Ryan

The Romney surrogate drew renewed attention to Solyndra, the solar panel company that filed for bankruptcy after receiving nearly $530 million in taxpayer loans, after the Obama campaign brought up Romney’s record at Bain in a big way this past week with a hard-hitting campaign ad. 

The ad highlighted the case of a Kansas City steel company that went bankrupt in 2001 and laid off hundreds of workers — in the years following Bain Capital’s involvement. 

Austan Goolsbee, former Obama economic adviser, told “Fox News Sunday” that Romney’s record at Bain ought to be thrown open for the public to examine, considering he cites his business experience as a chief qualification to be president. 

“In this case, the company did horribly but the investors did great,” he said of the steel company highlighted in the Obama ad. “They canceled pensions, they drove the company into the ground, but the investors of Bain actually profited a great deal.” 

Romney’s campaign, as it did when the candidate’s Bain record came under attack during the GOP primary season, has pointed to other companies that thrived after Bain’s involvement.
Ryan pointed out Sunday that Romney wasn’t even at Bain when the Kansas City company filed for bankruptcy — he was overseeing the Olympics. 

And he said the Obama administration is taking its share of gambles too, only with taxpayer money. 

“What happens when the government sees itself as a venture capitalist — they end up picking lots of losers,” Ryan said. “It’s not working.” 

With both candidates’ records coming under close scrutiny as the general election campaign heats up, Goolsbee disputed the claim that Obama stands for a “government-directed approach” to the economy. He cited the billions of dollars in business tax cuts Obama has signed. 

“He believes that the main driver of the economy is the middle class,” Goolsbee said, accusing Romney of pushing a tax-cuts-for-the-wealthy view premised on the “George Bush budget.” 

“If that was a magic elixir, why did we not have phenomenal growth?” he asked.

Article source: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/05/20/top-romney-surrogate-answers-bain-attacks-with-solyndra/

The NATO summit in Chicago and the G-8 summit at Camp David this weekend. The roiling elections in Greece and France, which installed a new and yet untested leader in the eyes of the White House. The anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death.

Global events are dominating the month of May, giving Mitt Romney a potential opening to make a cohesive foreign policy case — and attempt the difficult task of closing the stature gap with an incumbent president whose national security milestones have given him, in the minds of Republicans, a tenuous foreign policy strength.

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So far, Romney has largely steered clear of using this moment as a pivot point, attempting to keep his message focused solely on the economy. He hasn’t given a foreign policy speech since the muscular one he delivered last October at the Citadel, before the GOP primaries lasted longer than he expected. He has blasted President Barack Obama as an apologist for the U.S., a critique that Democrats argue masks areas in which, they say, the Republican and the president don’t differ much.

Yet this month provides Romney with a particularly ripe chance to return to foreign policy, one of the few obvious opportunities in an election that’s so far been dominated by economic concerns. And while Republicans historically have fared well on foreign policy in presidential elections, polls this election cycle show that it’s Obama who’s seen as the hawk among voters who give the president the national security edge.

“I think that will come,” insisted Romney foreign policy adviser Robert Kagan, who also advised John McCain in 2008. “It should be done in a way that’s on [the candidate’s] own timetable.”

At minimum, this month’s events highlight the range of foreign policy areas in which Romney has left observers wondering where he stands. And while not all Republicans think Romney needs to swing at every foreign policy pitch that comes over the plate, a number privately believe he should start laying out his case again soon.

Multiple people with ties to Romney’s camp indicate that things are moving toward a more sophisticated foreign policy operation.

As an example, Romney’s campaign issued a string of foreign policy-related statements late Saturday, one criticizing Obama over energy policy amid the G-8 summit, and another on Chen Guangcheng’s arrival in the U.S., which framed the outcome of the Chinese dissident’s case in a context a number of foreign policy hawks favored: that the U.S. had stood up for human-rights abuses.

Several sources said Romneyland has put out word of a coming foreign policy speech within the next few weeks, although there has been little communicated beyond the scope, or its exact timing.

Article source: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76521.html

Massachusetts Republicans Mitt Romney and Scott Brown have a history of supporting each other throughout their political careers.

But with each facing a tough election, neither the presidential candidate nor the U.S. senator is playing up that history, perhaps with good reason.

Brown, trying to win re-election in one of the most Democratic states, spends much of his time promoting his bipartisan bona fides and describing himself as a “Scott Brown Republican” rather than a conservative or liberal Republican.

He may be one of the few Republicans running who boasts of working with President Barack Obama to pass bills. On his campaign website, Brown has posted pictures and videos of him with the Democratic incumbent.

Romney has moved increasingly to the right, shedding some of the more moderate positions he held as Massachusetts governor as he worked to rally GOP activists during the primaries.

As Brown took a more moderate stance, he alienated some of the conservative and tea party activists who helped elect him in 2010. Those are the same people Romney will need if he hopes to win in November. Brown’s shift to the middle could make him a liability for Romney among conservatives.

Brown probably will continue to play down his ties to his former governor and emphasize his own independent streak, particularly with recent polls showing Obama enjoying a double-digit over Romney in Massachusetts.

“Brown sees pretty clearly that there are no Romney coattails in Massachusetts for him to ride and, indeed, being close to Romney for his own re-election bid could be a liability,” said Paul Watanabe, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts.

The distance between the candidates is more than strategic. Romney and Brown have adopted competing views on several big issues, from a new nuclear weapons treaty with Russia to the fate of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion.

Romney has said Roe v. Wade should be reversed. Brown says a woman should have the right to an abortion, although he opposes federal money for the procedure. Brown voted for the new START treaty with Russia, saying it was important for national security. Romney said the treaty was Obama’s “worst foreign policy mistake.”

The differences don’t stop there.

Romney has called for repeal of the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law. Brown voted for it. Romney backs amending the Constitution to ban gay marriage. Brown opposes such an amendment and says gay marriage is “settled law” in Massachusetts. Such unions became legal in the state in 2003.

Romney, in 2007, said the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy seemed to be working. Brown voted with Democrats and some Republicans to end the policy that barred gays from serving openly in the military, earning praise from the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay GOP group.

While Romney hasn’t said if he’ll release more than two years of his income tax returns, Brown has made public six years of his tax documents.

When pressed on the differences of opinion, Brown’s campaign repeats his endorsement of Romney.

“Sen. Brown thinks Mitt Romney is a good and decent person who is devoted to his family and strong on jobs and the economy and that’s why he supports him for president,” Brown spokesman Colin Reed said in a statement.

Article source: http://news.bostonherald.com/news/us_politics/view/20120519mitt_romney_scott_brown_play_down_past_connections/srvc=home&position=recent