Camps Duel Over New Obama Ad Featuring Romney Singing

The Obama campaign defended its use of Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney singing in a new ad, saying that it doesn’t paint the former Massachusetts governor as unpatriotic but is a legitimate way to display his record.

“The ad pokes fun, a little bit, tries to have some fun with it, but then it walks through exactly what Mitt Romney’s record is,” said Obama campaign adviser Stephanie Cutter this morning on CBS’ Face the Nation.

“It’s a purely negative stump speech that Mitt Romney is saying,” Cutter continued. “Now, let’s remember, part of this stump speech is to talk about how the president doesn’t understand freedom, doesn’t feel the passion of freedom and doesn’t understand America. What about that gives you any sense of where Mitt Romney’s going to take this country?”

The ad features Romney singing “America the Beautiful” at a Florida campaign stop in January, while flashing cards about Romney’s wealth and allegations of outsourcing.

Romney’s longtime adviser Kevin Madden fought back against the ad, but didn’t quite get the song right in his Face the Nation rebuttal.

“I think it is troubling that they would mock somebody who was singing ‘God Bless America,'” Madden said.

“President Obama, who at this time of very tough economic struggles, is telling the American public that the one thing that they need to be worried about — the two things that they need to be worried about, the three things they need to be worried about — are what’s in Governor Romney’s financial disclosures,” he added. “And I think that’s a very troubling place for the country to be when we have our president right now who’s not willing to talk about what he’s going to do to fix the economy and is only — only interested in attacking Governor Romney.”

Madden also defended Romney against charges that he signed SEC documents as CEO of Bain Capital after he said he’d left the company.

“Fact check after fact check, investigative journalist after investigative journalist has shown that Governor Romney left Bain in 1999,” Madden said. “The reason that there is a document that had — in 2002 — that had his signature is because, during that transition from 1999 to 2002, where there was transfer of ownership over to the new partners of Bain, that there was a duty to sign those documents.”

“The simple point is, if you’re telling the SEC that you’re in charge but you’re telling the American people that you bear no responsibility, one of those things is not true,” Cutter said.