There is a controversy brewing about a new Romney television ad in New Hampshire that uses Senator Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign words against him when he described John McCain’s campaign strategy as avoiding running on the crashing economy in progress at that time in 2008. The Romney’ ad does not clearly indicate that Obama’s words were describing McCain in 2008 and not the economic conditions today. This is an opening shot in the War of 2012. Get your bandages ready because it is going to be bloody.
Politico’s Mike Allen, in his morning Playbook (the MOST influential daily email newsletter to political insiders) reported it like this:
BRACKETING OBAMA IN N.H., ROMNEY POPS FIRST PAID AD, “Believe in America” (his campaign slogan and logo) — Alexander Burns: “The commercial … opens with footage of an October 2008 Obama rally in the Granite State … ‘I am confident that we can steer ourselves out of this crisis,’ Obama says in the Romney spot, as text appears on screen reading: ‘He failed.’ Then, the Romney ad clips a section from the same Obama speech, in which the president mocked John McCain’s campaign for saying: ‘If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.’ Except in the Romney ad, there’s no mention of McCain. There’s just a snippet of the president saying: ‘If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.'” YouTube: http ://youtu.be/H3a 7FC0 Jkv8
–Romney news release discloses full Obama quote: “”Senator McCain’s campaign actually said, and I quote, if we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.”
–Obama campaign response: “Romney’s First Spot is a Deceitful and Dishonest Attack” … DNC: “Fact Check – Mitt Romney’s Attack Ad.”
–Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom, in an e-mail to POLITICO’s Dylan Byers: “We used that quote intentionally to show that President Obama is doing exactly what he criticized McCain of doing four years ago. Obama doesn’t want to talk about the economy because of his failed record.”
–Buy is $140,000, beginning today, running only on WMUR, the ABC station in Manchester, and N.H.’s only network affiliate.
–Romney’s voiceover: “I’m gonna do something to government. I call it the smaller, simpler, smarter approach to government. Getting rid of programs, turning programs back to states and, finally, making government itself more efficient. I’m gonna get rid of Obamacare. It’s killing jobs and it’s keeping our kids from having the bright prospects they deserve. We have a MORAL responsibility not to spend more than we take in. I’ll make sure that America is a job-creating machine, like it has been in the past. It’s high time to bring those principles of fiscal responsibility to Washington D.C. I’m Mitt Romney, and I approve this message.”
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