Consider campaign ad source – if you can

(PNI) Americans for Responsible Leadership this week dumped $350,000 into the campaign to kill this apparently unthinkable idea of changing the way we elect our leaders.

So who, you might ask, are the Americans for Responsible Leadership? These Americans who feel so committed to our present system of electing ideologues that they would pour this kind of money into defeating Proposition 121?

I can't tell you. Americans for Responsible Leadership are also Americans Who Believe That You Don't Need To Know Who They Are, You Just Need To Vote How They Want.

And so, they have thus far funneled $450,000 into the campaign to kill the "top two" primary initiative, according to documents on file with the Arizona Secretary of State's Office. And an additional $500,000 into defeating Proposition 204, the sales-tax hike for education and roads.

And they've sunk a startling $11million into defeating a pair of California props -- one a tax increase and the other a measure aimed at limiting the political activity of unions.

Had they incorporated in some other state, the Americans would likely have to tell us who they are. But because this is Arizona -- where talk of transparency is mostly just that, talk -- we have no right to know where the money is coming from to sell us on killing these initiatives.

Thank you, Arizona Legislature.

Americans for Responsible Leadership was incorporated by Robert Graham of Phoenix, who owns a wealth-management company and is campaigning to become the next chairman of the state Republican Party.

The other directors are Eric Wnuck of Cave Creek, who runs a medical-imaging company and briefly ran for Congress in 2010, and Steve Nickolas of Scottsdale, who owns a bottled-water company.

Graham didn't return my call to talk about his covert operation.

It is one of a parade of so-called non-profits that have sprung up since a landmark 2010 Supreme Court decision said corporations have a First Amendment right to spend as much as they want on political campaigns.

Because the Legislature has thus far declined to force these covert corporations to disclose their contributors, we are left to wonder who it is who so badly wants to defeat the top-two primary.

Lest you think that's the only way special interests are concealing their attempts to manipulate your vote, think again.

Last week, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Crane McClennen gouged another galling loophole into campaign-finance laws, ruling that the Committee for Justice & Fairness didn't have to disclose who it really was when it ran an attack ad against Tom Horne in the final weeks of his 2010 campaign for attorney general.

In that ad, the Justice & Fairness people informed us that Horne, as a state legislator, had voted against tougher penalties for rape and as state superintendent had allowed a pornography-viewing teacher back into the classroom.

"Tell Superintendent Horne to protect children, not people who harm them," the ad said, just weeks before the election.

What it didn't say was who the Committee for Justice & Fairness was.

Had curious voters dug into Internal Revenue Service records, they would have found that Justice & Fairness was really the Democratic Attorney General Association.

Both the Maricopa County Attorney's Office and a state administrative-law judge determined that the independent committee should have registered with the state and filed campaign-finance reports.

However, the group's attorney, Tom Irvine, countered that Justice & Fairness didn't need to tell us who they really were because they weren't advocating Horne's defeat.

They were simply educating voters about "the important issue of protecting Arizona schoolchildren from statutory rape and from teachers who view pornographic materials in the classroom."

Which would be laughable, except that last week, Judge McClennen agreed with Irvine, calling the law requiring such disclosure "unconstitutional."

Irvine said the group didn't have to register because it never used any of the so-called "magic words" that constitute express advocacy -- vote for, elect, reject, etc.

The more issue-oriented sort of "electioneering," he said, is not regulated in Arizona.

"The reason they didn't register here is the Arizona Legislature has chosen not to have electioneering committees regulated at all," he said. "So, it's a choice the Arizona Legislature made."

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery said it's clear the group was advocating for Horne's defeat and thus should have had to disclose who was behind the ads. He plans to appeal McClennen's ruling.

"People need to know who's doing what," he told me.

He's right.

Especially now when we're getting "No on 121" ads asking, "Why are special interests trying to eliminate your vote?" and warning, "Don't let special interests eliminate your election choice in Arizona."

Ads, I might add, that are being paid for by special interests.

We just don't know whose (interests, that is), beyond the fact that they are Americans and apparently for "Responsible Leadership."

I'd say consider the source.

The problem is, you can't.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizona republic.com or 602-444-8635.

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

Posted

View the original article here

Obama Campaign Says It Beat Romney in Fund-Raising for August

12:51 a.m. | Updated The Obama campaign announced early Monday that it had raised $114 million in August, saying it had brought in more than the Romney campaign for the first time since April.

That number was released just after Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee said that their campaign had raised more than $111.6 million in August, leaving the candidate and his party with about $168.5 million in cash at the beginning of September.

Both campaigns have said they hope to raise more than three-quarters of a billion dollars, amounts that would shatter previous records for presidential spending. Neither campaign is accepting public funds for the general election campaign.

Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, Jim Messina, said in a statement: “The key to fighting back against the special interests writing limitless checks to support Mitt Romney is growing our donor base, and we did substantially in the month of August.”

The Obama campaign said on Twitter that 98 percent of donations in August were for $250 or less. The Republican effort raised about $34.6 million in donations of less than $250, the campaign said, about a third of the total — a better showing with small donors than Mr. Romney has had in the past.

In a statement, Spencer Zwick, Mr. Romney’s finance chairman, and Reince Priebus, the R.N.C. chairman, said: “Americans are not better off than they were four years ago and they are looking for a change of leadership. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are offering bold solutions to our country’s problems – that is why we are seeing such tremendous support from donors across the country.”

View the original article here

Romney campaign is on three-month fundraising winning streak

WASHINGTON – President Obama and his aides have been warning supporters for weeks that they're in danger of losing the money battle.

By Charles Dharapak, AP

Mitt Romney leaves a hardware store in Wolfeboro, N.H., during a day off from the campaign trail on Monday.

By Charles Dharapak, AP

Mitt Romney leaves a hardware store in Wolfeboro, N.H., during a day off from the campaign trail on Monday.

They weren't just crying wolf.

Mitt Romney and the Republican Party said Monday that they picked up $101.3 million in July, the third straight month they have outraised the incumbent's campaign.

Obama and the Democrats raised just over $75 million in July, his campaign announced.

Romney's July advantage was the biggest yet, leading to increasingly urgent fundraising appeals from Obama and the Democrats.

One e-mail to supporters from Obama's campaign chief operating officer, Ann Marie Habershaw, used the subject line, "This is why I keep asking."

"We've been outraised by Mitt Romney and the Republicans for two months running," she said in the Aug. 2 e-mail, one of hundreds collected by ProPublica.org. "Right now, Romney and his allies are clobbering us on the airwaves in nearly every single battleground state — we've got to make sure our message can get through, too."

Romney's national finance chairman, Spencer Zwick, said Romney's financial support shows "this is more than a campaign — it is a cause."

Comparing monthly campaign fundraising:

Source: Romney and Obama campaigns

The release of monthly fundraising figures — which include money raised by the campaigns and the national party committees — has become a ritual for the presidential contenders. Romney's campaign announced his totals in an early-morning e-mail to reporters; the Obama camp followed up via Twitter hours later.

Obama boasted that 98% had given $250 or less (Romney's figure was 94%) and that 26% of his July donors had never contributed before.

Romney and his allies have $185.9 million cash on hand, but Obama did not disclose how much he has left to spend — an important number as the campaign enters the final three months. That number will come when the campaigns make their required federal disclosures on Aug. 20.

"There's not going to be inadequate resources for either candidate," said Sheila Krumholz of the Center for Responsive Politics, a money-in-politics research group. Even so, she said, it's nice to have the freedom that money brings: when and where to run ads, when and where to travel and which field offices to staff with more people.

If Romney does wind up with a money advantage, Krumholz said, "there will be a lot of nervous people on the Obama side."

Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the campaign's not panicking. She said fundraising is on track to produce "the biggest grass-roots campaign in history," one capable of "reaching voters in the key target states."

"We are where we need to be," she said.

On Monday night, Obama was scheduled to headline his 196th and 197th fundraisers since launching his re-election bid in spring 2011. That puts him on pace to triple the 86 fundraisers George W. Bush held in his 2004 campaign.

For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

View the original article here

Supplement industry boosts Romney campaign by $4.5M

WASHINGTON – Executives with companies selling everything from energy drinks to weight-loss pills made from African mango-seed extracts are among the ranks of Republican Mitt Romney's top fundraisers, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

By Evan Vucci, AP

Mitt Romney has refused to release a comprehensive list of his top fundraisers.

By Evan Vucci, AP

Mitt Romney has refused to release a comprehensive list of his top fundraisers.

Overall, individuals and companies with ties to the nutritional and dietary supplement industry have poured more than $4.5 million into campaign accounts benefiting Romney's presidential ambitions, federal records show. The spending comes as the industry is at odds with the Food and Drug Administration over proposed rules that would govern the use of new dietary ingredients.

Unlike the pharmaceutical industry, supplement makers long have been exempted from federal review of their products for safety or effectiveness before being marketed. "It is a very loosely regulated industry," said David Schardt, a senior nutritionist with the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The group advocates for food and nutrition safety.

"It is viewed as a Wild West arena, where virtually anything goes," he said.

Romney has refused to release a comprehensive list of his top fundraisers — bucking a practice that goes back to the 2000 presidential election.

By contrast, President Obama has disclosed the names of 532 people who raised at least $50,000 for his re-election.

In recent weeks, USA TODAY compiled a list of roughly 1,200 individuals helping Romney collect campaign cash by reviewing campaign news releases, Federal Election Commission (FEC) records, invitations obtained by the non-partisan Sunlight Foundation and news accounts.

Industry figures aiding Romney include:

•Rex Maughan, the CEO of Forever Living and his wife, Ruth, of Paradise Valley, Ariz., listed as members of Romney's "Arizona finance committee" in a September campaign news release. The Maughans and employees of the company, whose products include aloe vera drinks and gels, have donated more than $102,000 to Romney and his joint fundraising efforts with the Republican Party, FEC records show.

•Miguel Fernandez, chairman of MBF Healthcare Partners, a Florida private-equity firm whose portfolio includes supplement manufacturer Nutriforce Nutrition. Last year, he donated $500,000 to a pro-Romney super PAC, Restore Our Future. Another $500,000 came from MBF Family Investments, which shares an address with his company.

•Executives with Utah-based supplement companies. They include David Lisonbee, CEO of 4Life Research, who gave $500,000 to the super PAC this year; and Steve Lund, co-founder of Nu Skin Enterprises, a Provo, Utah, nutrition and skin-care company. Eli Publishing and F8 LLC, which share a Provo address, donated $1 million each to the super PAC. State records list Lund as Eli Publishing's registered agent.

•Others in the industry have helped host fundraising events for Romney, such as Daryl Allen, a distributor for USANA, which sells vitamins and weight-loss aids. She and her husband, Robert, were listed among the "San Diego chairs" for a September breakfast reception for Romney at diet guru Jenny Craig's Del Mar, Calif., home.

Frank VanderSloot, who heads an Idaho-based supplement and wellness firm and is a Romney fundraiser, said his support for the former Massachusetts governor "has nothing to do with the kind of business we are in. It has to do with the fact that we are in business."

VanderSloot, who sits on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's board of directors, said Obama "is far off base in his understanding of what creates a healthy economy." VanderSloot has donated more than $1.1 million to Romney and Restore Our Future.

In a statement, Lisonbee of 4Life Research said Romney's track record in business "is encouraging for entrepreneurs." The company's president, Steve Tew, emphasized that the donation was a personal contribution from Lisonbee and reflects neither the company's nor industry's political views.

Nu Skin's Sydnee Fox said Lund's contribution was personal and separate from company business.

Fernandez was unavailable, an aide said. Other executives did not return calls.

Romney spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg provided the campaign's standard response to inquiries about donors: "People who support Mitt Romney do so because they support his pro-growth, pro-jobs agenda for the country."

Several of Romney's backers distribute their products through direct sales instead of retail stores. Direct sellers "tend to be very entrepreneurial," possibly explaining their support for a Republican, said Steve Mister, who heads the industry's Council for Responsible Nutrition.

Indeed, more than two-thirds of the industry's contributions to federal candidates' main campaign accounts have gone to Republicans so far in this election, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign money.

Mister said his group supports both Democrats and Republicans in Congress who understand the industry and has taken no position on the presidential race.

The industry also has long roots in Utah, where Salt Lake City native and herbalist John Christopher established a School of Natural Healing in the 1950s. Today, Utah's supplement industry is a powerful economic force with $7.1 billion in annual revenues, said Loren Israelsen, a Utah resident and executive director of the United Natural Products Alliance.

Romney is an adopted son of the Beehive State, where he ran the Salt Lake Olympics in 2002 and has drawn substantial financial support from the state's fellow Mormons.

Supplement trade groups say they are well regulated. Rules adopted in 2007 now require manufacturers to report serious illnesses linked to their products; the FDA began plant inspections in 2008 to enforce new rules on how supplements are made.

The industry now is pushing the FDA to rescind what it claims are overly broad regulations proposed last year on new supplement ingredients. The proposal seeks to comply with a 1994 law that declared anything already sold as a supplement was considered safe, but said new ingredients introduced after that date would be subject to FDA scrutiny before being marketed.

"We have to have a certain amount of regulation to give consumers the confidence that the products are safe," Mister said. But the new proposal "would have a crippling effect on innovation."

Contributing: Gregory Korte and Christopher Schnaars

For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

View the original article here

Obama Campaign Takes Gamble in Going Negative

With 100 days remaining before Election Day, there is an air of apprehension around the Obama campaign headquarters here. Yet there are few regrets about the tone of the race, only a conviction that the circumstances — a frail economy, intense Republican opposition and a well-financed negative campaign from Mr. Romney and his allies — left Mr. Obama no option but to fight back even if it sullies his image as a candidate of hope and change.

“Is it a different kind of race than 2008? Of course,” said David Axelrod, a senior campaign strategist. “If we were passive in the face of this onslaught we are facing, our folks would be unhappy. There are few on our side who are counseling us to sit idly by.”

Mr. Romney and his allies are giving as good as they get, lacerating Mr. Obama as hapless in promoting job creation, feckless with allies like Israel and determined to expand government until the United States resembles Sweden.

As the campaigns prepare for the next phase of the race, the two sides are taking stock of what they have achieved in their first sustained engagement, a relentlessly negative effort over the last two months to define the other. The exchanges have been so fierce that hardly a positive ad has been broadcast in July.

But both the opportunities and the risks in the definition wars are greater for Mr. Obama. Mr. Romney is less well known to the public, giving Democrats a chance to shape perceptions of him just as more voters are starting to tune in to the race.

The president’s prospects for re-election now rest in part on one of the biggest gambles of his career: that the benefits of trying to eviscerate Mr. Romney outweigh the costs to his own image and reputation.

With a political climate ripe for unseating an incumbent, the president’s campaign team signaled long ago that it had no intention of trying to replicate the 2008 race, and made it clear last year that if Mr. Romney won the Republican nomination, they would rush to aggressively define him before turning to a forward-looking message in the fall.

Mr. Obama, whose competitive and confident streaks seem to have been rekindled by the challenge from Mr. Romney, has shown no inclination to hold back in trying to portray his rival as a secretive Bush-era throwback whose wealth puts him out of touch with the middle class.

The president not only approves of his television ads, as federal election law requires him to say in each commercial, he also screens many of them in advance, either on his iPad or during a regular Sunday evening meeting with political advisers at the White House.

Fearful of the tone becoming too shrill, he took the rare step of speaking directly to the camera in a new ad that elevates the conversation, a hint of his approach when the campaign moves beyond summer.

“Sometimes politics can seem very small,” Mr. Obama said, sounding almost apologetic. “But the choice you face, it couldn’t be bigger.”

His aides wondered in particular whether a recent spot showing Mr. Romney singing “America the Beautiful,” while headlines about outsourcing and overseas bank accounts flashed, was too negative. The president and some of his strategists were unsure, aides said, but a focus group of voters found it to be fair. They still tested the ad again before showing it.

The ratio of negative ads, which are defined as those in which a campaign mentions its rival by name, tells the story. Since April, after Mr. Romney became the presumptive nominee, Mr. Obama broadcast negative commercials 118,775 times compared with 56,128 times for positive commercials.

In the same time period, Mr. Romney ran negative spots 51,973 times and positive spots 11,921, according to an analysis from Kantar Media, which tracks political advertising. This does not include the Republican “super PAC” ads that are almost entirely attacks on the president.

“President Obama was keeping a more balanced mix, but by the end of June he turned off the positive spigot,” said Elizabeth Wilner, who studies advertising for the group.

View the original article here

Romney Campaign at Odds With G.O.P. on Health Care ‘Tax’

That message, delivered first by a top aide to Mr. Romney on television and later by the campaign, contradicts top Republican Party officials and leaders in Congress, who have spent the last several days eagerly accusing the president of levying a new tax.

By straying from the party message, Mr. Romney’s campaign offered a fresh example of his difficulty in carrying the conservative mantle on health care — a problem that his Republican rivals predicted during the primaries because he championed universal health coverage while he was the governor of Massachusetts.

Attacks by Mr. Romney on the president’s health care plan inevitably lead to comparisons with the Massachusetts law. And while Mr. Romney has pledged to repeal what conservatives call Obamacare, he had largely avoided calling the mandate a tax on Americans, perhaps because his plan included a similar mandate.

On Monday, Eric Fehrnstrom, Mr. Romney’s senior adviser, said the Massachusetts mandate was a penalty and that Mr. Romney agrees with Democrats that Mr. Obama’s health care mandate is not a tax, either.

“The governor disagreed with the ruling of the court,” Mr. Fehrnstrom said on MSNBC’s “The Daily Rundown.” “He agreed with the dissent written by Justice Scalia, which very clearly stated that the mandate was not a tax.”

Democrats seized on Mr. Fehrnstrom’s comment. David Axelrod, Mr. Obama senior campaign adviser, said in an e-mail that Mr. Romney cannot agree with his fellow Republicans because to do so is “to condemn himself.”

For much of Monday, Republicans sought to minimize the differences between themselves and Mr. Romney by trying to focus on Mr. Obama’s own shifting characterization of the health care mandate. In 2010, Mr. Obama said the mandate should not be called a tax.

“The federal individual mandate in Obamacare is either a constitutional tax or an unconstitutional penalty,” Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for Mr. Romney, said. “Governor Romney thinks it is an unconstitutional penalty. What is President Obama’s position?”

But by insisting on calling the mandate a penalty, Ms. Saul effectively endorsed the weekend’s Democratic talking points and added to the clash with the Republicans’ line.

Republicans had seized on the Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday that the mandate, which will compel people to obtain health insurance, is valid as an exercise of the government’s taxing power. Republicans disagreed with the ruling, but saw the tax language as politically damaging to Mr. Obama.

Since becoming the presumptive Republican nominee, Mr. Romney has largely been in sync with other Republicans as they coalesced around his candidacy. But aides to the Republican leaders on Capitol Hill said the lawmakers have no intention of backing away from their tax message against Mr. Obama despite the disagreement.

Don Stewart, an aide to Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said the issue puts the White House and Democrats “in a box: They either believe the mandate is an unconstitutional ‘penalty,’ or they believe it is a constitutional tax as the court ruled. It’s either unconstitutional, or it is a tax.”

Democrats fought back against that characterization on Sunday. Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the minority leader, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the health care mandate includes a “penalty” for a small number of “free riders” who choose not to buy insurance.

But as Mr. Romney pursues the presidency for a second time, some of his past statements characterizing the mandate match up more closely with the Democrats than they do with the Republicans.

The argument made by Ms. Pelosi on Sunday was the same one that Mr. Romney made in 2006 when he was fighting for his state’s health care plan. He repeated that argument during a debate in the 2008 presidential campaign.

In an opinion article in USA Today in 2009, Mr. Romney again used the term “free riders,” writing that a penalty like that in his health care plan “encourages ‘free riders’ to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical cost on to others.”

Those kinds of statements were the source of numerous attacks by Mr. Romney’s Republican rivals during the primaries.

Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota and a leading vice-presidential prospect, last year called Mr. Romney a “co-conspirator” in the passage of national health care, using the phrase “Obamneycare” to mock the health care plans.

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas predicted that health care would be a “major anchor” around Mr. Romney’s neck. Rick Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania, called Mr. Romney “the weakest candidate” to prosecute the case against Mr. Obama’s health care plan.

View the original article here

Murdoch Chides Romney on Campaign and Obama Challenge

10:19 a.m. | Updated Rupert Murdoch is offering some unsolicited advice to the Romney campaign. Saying he met the candidate last week, Mr. Murdoch, the head of the News Corporation, suggested Sunday on Twitter that Mr. Romney may have to shed some of his current staff and replace them in order to go up against “Tough O Chicago Pros” — no doubt a reference to President Obama‘s campaign team, which is based in that city.

Met Romney last week.Tough O Chicago pros will be hard to beat unless he drops old friends from team and hires some real pros. Doubtful.

— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) July 1, 2012

Mr. Murdoch, of course, controls Fox News, a favored spot for influential Republicans including Mr. Romney himself. And it is not the first time the media baron has chimed in on Twitter with some musings on the presidential campaign and the candidates. He once chided Mr. Obama on the antipiracy front, for instance, and predicted Rick Santorum‘s strong showing in Iowa. On his Sunday Twitter burst, Mr. Murdoch also gave a more neutral take on the president, saying the election would be “referendum on Obama, all else pretty minor.”

US election is referendum on Obama, all else pretty minor.

— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) July 1, 2012

During the previous presidential election in 2008 Mr. Murdoch remained elusive on which candidate he liked, though he sent some signals that he may have preferred Mr. Obama. Speaking at the annual All Things Digital Conference in 2008 sponsored by The Wall Street Journal, a subsidiary of News Corporation which is controlled by Mr. Murdoch, he said of Mr. Obama, “He is a rock star,” adding, “he’ll probably win it.”

Mr. Murdoch then went on to say that Republican candidate at the time, John McCain, was a “patriot and a decent guy, but he’s unpredictable and he doesn’t know much about the economy, adding, “I think he has a lot of problems.”

Though originally giving strong praise for Mr. Santorum when he was still running for the Republican Party’s nomination, Mr. Murdoch has since offered mainly lukewarm words toward Mitt Romney. Mr. Murdoch recently took to Twitter to criticize Mr. Romney’ immigration policy. His message said: “When is Romney going to look like a challenger? Seems to play everything safe, make no news except burn off Hispanics.” When asked by one of his Twitter followers what he thought of the Mormon religion, Mr. Murdoch called it “a mystery to me, but Mormons certainly not evil.”

On Monday, Mr. Murdoch was back on Twitter again, this time saying he had heard from the Romney campaign and wants Mr. Romney to win to “save us from socialism.”

Romney people upset at me!Of course I want him to win, save us from socialism, etc but should listen to good advice and get stuck in!

— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) July 2, 2012

Taylor Arluck contributed reporting.

View the original article here

Romney Campaign at Odds With G.O.P. on Health Care 'Tax'

That message, delivered first by a top aide to Mr. Romney on television and later by the campaign, contradicts top Republican Party officials and leaders in Congress, who have spent the last several days eagerly accusing the president of levying a new tax.

By straying from the party message, Mr. Romney’s campaign offered a fresh example of his difficulty in carrying the conservative mantle on health care — a problem that his Republican rivals predicted during the primaries because he championed universal health coverage while he was the governor of Massachusetts.

Attacks by Mr. Romney on the president’s health care plan inevitably lead to comparisons with the Massachusetts law. And while Mr. Romney has pledged to repeal what conservatives call Obamacare, he had largely avoided calling the mandate a tax on Americans, perhaps because his plan included a similar mandate.

On Monday, Eric Fehrnstrom, Mr. Romney’s senior adviser, said the Massachusetts mandate was a penalty and that Mr. Romney agrees with Democrats that Mr. Obama’s health care mandate is not a tax, either.

“The governor disagreed with the ruling of the court,” Mr. Fehrnstrom said on MSNBC’s “The Daily Rundown.” “He agreed with the dissent written by Justice Scalia, which very clearly stated that the mandate was not a tax.”

Democrats seized on Mr. Fehrnstrom’s comment. David Axelrod, Mr. Obama senior campaign adviser, said in an e-mail that Mr. Romney cannot agree with his fellow Republicans because to do so is “to condemn himself.”

For much of Monday, Republicans sought to minimize the differences between themselves and Mr. Romney by trying to focus on Mr. Obama’s own shifting characterization of the health care mandate. In 2010, Mr. Obama said the mandate should not be called a tax.

“The federal individual mandate in Obamacare is either a constitutional tax or an unconstitutional penalty,” Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for Mr. Romney, said. “Governor Romney thinks it is an unconstitutional penalty. What is President Obama’s position?”

But by insisting on calling the mandate a penalty, Ms. Saul effectively endorsed the weekend’s Democratic talking points and added to the clash with the Republicans’ line.

Republicans had seized on the Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday that the mandate, which will compel people to obtain health insurance, is valid as an exercise of the government’s taxing power. Republicans disagreed with the ruling, but saw the tax language as politically damaging to Mr. Obama.

Since becoming the presumptive Republican nominee, Mr. Romney has largely been in sync with other Republicans as they coalesced around his candidacy. But aides to the Republican leaders on Capitol Hill said the lawmakers have no intention of backing away from their tax message against Mr. Obama despite the disagreement.

Don Stewart, an aide to Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said the issue puts the White House and Democrats “in a box: They either believe the mandate is an unconstitutional ‘penalty,’ or they believe it is a constitutional tax as the court ruled. It’s either unconstitutional, or it is a tax.”

Democrats fought back against that characterization on Sunday. Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the minority leader, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the health care mandate includes a “penalty” for a small number of “free riders” who choose not to buy insurance.

But as Mr. Romney pursues the presidency for a second time, some of his past statements characterizing the mandate match up more closely with the Democrats than they do with the Republicans.

The argument made by Ms. Pelosi on Sunday was the same one that Mr. Romney made in 2006 when he was fighting for his state’s health care plan. He repeated that argument during a debate in the 2008 presidential campaign.

In an opinion article in USA Today in 2009, Mr. Romney again used the term “free riders,” writing that a penalty like that in his health care plan “encourages ‘free riders’ to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical cost on to others.”

Those kinds of statements were the source of numerous attacks by Mr. Romney’s Republican rivals during the primaries.

Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota and a leading vice-presidential prospect, last year called Mr. Romney a “co-conspirator” in the passage of national health care, using the phrase “Obamneycare” to mock the health care plans.

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas predicted that health care would be a “major anchor” around Mr. Romney’s neck. Rick Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania, called Mr. Romney “the weakest candidate” to prosecute the case against Mr. Obama’s health care plan.

View the original article here

Republicans Wage Repeal Campaign on Social Media

The Republican National Committee released a video titled “The Final Verdict” on YouTube as part of its social media campaign in response to the Supreme Court ruling on the health care law.

Soon after the Supreme Court ruling on President Obama’s health care law was announced, Republican leaders took to Twitter with a new hashtag, #fullrepeal, aimed at helping to focus the conversation on ousting Mr. Obama in November and reversing the law.

The fight for #FullRepeal begins NOW. The way to get rid of #Obamacare is to defeat Obama in November.

— RNC (@GOP) 28 Jun 12

The hashtag and a new video on YouTube titled “The Final Verdict” are part of a social media strategy that Republican Party leaders agreed upon with Romney campaign officials this week in the event the court allowed the health care overhaul law to stand.

On Facebook, there’s a Repeal It Now page with a link to a petition and fund-raising drive.

As part of the plan, the Republican National Committee also introduced a new Web site, People v. Obamacare on Thursday morning to provide what it said was information for people “so they can continue to fight for free market health care solutions that will decrease costs and increase care.”

Users who do a Google search for Republican National Committee are directed to the new Web site, which features a tab showing the conversation on Twitter around the #fullrepeal discussion.

“Today’s Supreme Court decision sets the stakes for the November election,” said Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee in announcing the debut of site. “Now, the only way to save the country from Obamacare’s budget-busting government takeover of health care is to elect a new resident.”

To help drive the #fullrepeal message, the committee bought advertising space on Twitter, using what it is calling a promoted tweet, which directed people who were searching for information about the law to the new Web site.

By noon on Thursday, #fullrepeal was a trending topic on Twitter. According to Topsy analytics, the term has been mentioned thousands of times in the last 24 hours.

The Romney campaign embraced the hashtag with Andrea Saul, press secretary for Mr. Romney, using it throughout the day to announce updates on Twitter about how much money Mr. Romney had raised online from people upset with the decision.

9,500+ donations to @MittRomney & Victory today for #FullRepeal $1.1 million & climbing

— Andrea Saul (@andreamsaul) 28 Jun 12

The #fullrepeal hashtag accompanied Twitter posts from the National Republican Senatorial Committee; House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio; Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader; and even the College Republicans before the coordinated, strategic messaging spread to supporters across the country.

On July 11th, the House will once again vote to repeal ObamaCare. #healthcare #fullrepeal

— Eric Cantor (@GOPLeader) 28 Jun 12

#fullrepeal #4jobs RT @GOPLeader: During the week of July 9th, the House of Representatives will once again repeal ObamaCare.

— Speaker John Boehner (@SpeakerBoehner) 28 Jun 12

McConnell: “The Supreme Court has spoken. This law is a tax. The bill was sold to the American people on a deception” #fullrepeal

— NRSC (@NRSC) 28 Jun 12

“#Obamacare was bad policy yesterday. It’s bad policy today.” – #MittRomney #FullRepeal

— College Republicans (@CRNC) 28 Jun 12

The hashtag helped develop conversations on Twitter about the Republican leadership’s proposed next steps even among those with small followings.

@EmilyMcCargar only way to repeal now is get @MittRomney elected along with #GOP Senate majority. #FullRepeal

— jjrohloff (@jjrohloff) 28 Jun 12

It was also used on Twitter in posts criticizing Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. for voting in favor of the law.

CJ Roberts Opinion, pg 6: “It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.” #fullrepeal

— Rep. James Lankford (@RepLankford) 28 Jun 12

On the other side of the debate, supporters used Twitter to criticize the new Web site.

@GOP you mean peoplevromneycare?

— Raymond Rehayem (@libraryeye) 28 Jun 12

And to suggest new hashtags. In this case, a Twitter user suggested #moveforward.

.@GOPLeader: “For the next 5 years, I’ll keep putting politics before progress, despite overwhelming public sentiment to #MoveForward.”

— Jonas Heineman (@SanFranCitizen) 28 Jun 12

View the original article here

Romney Campaign Unleashes Coordinated Response to Court Ruling

Moments after the Supreme Court ruled on President Obama’s health care law, Lanhee Chen, the policy director for Mitt Romney, sent an e-mail to about three dozen senior Republicans on Capitol Hill and in state attorneys general’s offices.

“Please stand by. Reviewing. Will circulate answer,” the e-mail, sent at 10:17 a.m. said in part.

Minutes later, at 10:27 a.m., Mr. Chen sent another e-mail: “Go with upheld.”

Those three words unleashed a public relations plan that was nine weeks in the making and designed to make sure that the Republican response to whatever the court decided served Mr. Romney’s presidential ambitions.

“Everyone at the table understood the importance of this decision,” said Sean Spicer, the communications director for the Republican National Committee, which coordinated the planning. “The only way we were ever going to get rid of Obamacare is if we are committed to electing Governor Romney.”

For more than two months, a group of top aides to Mr. Romney met weekly with staff members to Republican lawmakers, legislative campaign committees and representatives of the state attorneys general. The meetings, led by Jeff Larson, the chief of staff at the Republican National Committee, were usually held at 3 p.m. in a conference room on the fourth floor of the committee’s headquarters.

The group developed three scenarios. Scenario One assumed the court had upheld the health care law. Scenario Two assumed the court had overturned it. Scenario Three contemplated a variety of partial rulings.

In each case, the group developed separate statements, Twitter hashtags, videos and Web sites. Mr. Spicer said there were spirited discussions (many hashtag suggestions were discarded, for example) as the group debated how to respond.

But in all cases, it was agreed that Mr. Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee, was in charge of the message.

“Everybody was going to take their cue from Governor Romney,” Mr. Spicer said.

On Thursday morning, communications and policy aides from Capitol Hill and from Mr. Romney’s Boston headquarters convened in a first-floor conference room at the Republican National Committee that had been turned into a war-room. A large monitor was running TweetDeck. The group watched the initial, confusing reports about the court’s decision.

Then, they waited for Mr. Chen’s e-mail.

“Once Lanhee gave the green light, we were hitting our state parties, our surrogates,” Mr. Spicer said. The minute the e-mail arrived, Scenario One went into operation.

The surrogate list, developed over weeks, included dozens of state and national Republican officials, booked onto television and radio programs from morning to night. The switch was thrown on a Web site: peoplevobamacare.com. Republican officials everywhere started posting on Twitter with the agreed-upon hashtag: #fullrepeal.

The plan was originally designed for a Monday implementation, Mr. Spicer said (the court’s last scheduled day of the term). He said it will be compressed a bit because of the Thursday decision.

And what about Scenarios One and Two? “We had mapped out every conceivable scenario,” Mr. Spicer said.

But he’s not saying anything much about those.

Follow Michael D. Shear on Twitter at @shearm.

View the original article here

Obama campaign spends more in May than it raises

WASHINGTON – Fighting to keep his job, President Obama spent more money than he raised in May, and ended the month with $109.7 million in cash reserves — a more than 6-to-1 advantage over his Republican rival Mitt Romney, federal reports filed Wednesday show.

By Carolyn Kaster, AP

The campaign of President Obama, who attended Tuesday's G-20 summit in Mexico, raised $39.1 million in May.

By Carolyn Kaster, AP

The campaign of President Obama, who attended Tuesday's G-20 summit in Mexico, raised $39.1 million in May.

Obama, who has been able to accumulate cash as Romney fended off primary challengers, spent three times more in May than he did in April, reflecting new investments in staff — a total of 703 campaign workers in May, up from 631 a month earlier — and the barrage of television commercials in battleground states that have touted his record and slammed presumptive GOP nominee Romney's business career.

Nearly half of the contributions to Obama's main campaign account last month came from donors who gave $200 or less, contributors he will need to tap again as he tries to match Romney's fundraising, which surged ahead of Obama's last month for the first time. A quarter of Romney's May donations came in small amounts.

Romney and the Republican Party reported collecting $76.8 million in May, nearly $17 million more than Obama and the Democratic National Committee. The bulk of that, however, went to party and joint fundraising committees. Romney's campaign raised $23.4 million, records show, while Obama's raised $39.1 million.

The Republican National Committee, now an extension of Romney's campaign, ended May with $60.8 million in the bank — cash reserves that it can deploy to help build a get-out-the-vote for the former Massachusetts governor. That's twice the amount of cash reserves held by the DNC.

By Evan Vucci, AP

Mitt Romney's campaign raised $23.4 million in May.

Obama campaign officials have raised the specter of being outspent by Romney and his supporters, as wealthy Republicans continue to write big checks to conservative super PACs and non-profit advocacy groups.

Restore Our Future, a super PAC helping Romney, took in nearly $5 million in May, besting the $4 million that a pro-Obama group, Priorities USA Action, said it collected last month.

Roughly $1 out of every $5 Restore Our Future collected in May came from three Dayton companies that share an address. The three Ohio firms — CRC Information Systems Inc., Fairbanks Properties, LLC and Waterbury Properties, LLC — share a post office box with Reynolds and Reynolds, a Dayton company that provides services to auto dealers, federal records and company websites show.

Reynolds and Reynolds CEO Robert Brockman donated $5,000 to Romney's campaign in April, federal records show. Brockman did not return a telephone call Wednesday afternoon.

The $1 million in contributions from the three Ohio firms underscore the ability of wealthy donors to contribute large sums to influence the election. Recent court rulings and federal regulations have created a two, parallel campaign-finance systems - one in which individual donors can give no more than $5,000 directly to a candidate for the primary and general election, and another that allows donors to pump millions of dollars from their corporate treasuries into super PACs and non-profit groups that can raise and spend unlimited amounts to influence the election.

Other large donors to Restore Our Future include Frank VanderSloot, an Idaho businessman singled out recently by Obama's campaign after his company donated $1 million to the super PAC. VanderSloot, cast as a victim of harassment by conservatives, gave another $100,000 to the super PAC in May.

Executives at The Villages, a Florida retirement community, gave more than $400,000 last month to the pro-Romney group.

The reports offered signs that more Republicans are rallying around Romney since he has clinched the nomination. For example, Trevor Rees-Jones, a Dallas oil and gas executive who gave $100,000 last year to a super PAC aiding Texas Gov. Rick Perry's failed presidential bid, opted to donate $100,000 to the pro-Romney super PAC May 8, records show. He did not return telephone calls.

Billionaire casino executive Sheldon Adelson reportedly has donated $10 million to Restore Our Future, but that contribution has not yet been disclosed in filings with the Federal Election Commission.

Among political groups targeting congressional races:

•A super PAC established by Houston construction company owner Leo Linbeck III spent $642,181 last month to defeat incumbent congressmen in party primaries. The lion's share of the Campaign for Primary Accountability's war chest comes from Linbeck himself, who contributed $260,000 last month to bring his total contributions to $740,000. He has also loaned the super PAC $390,000.

The super PAC has taken credit for unseating a number of incumbents already, including Reps. Tim Holden, D-Pa.; Don Manzullo, R-Ill.; Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas; and Jean Schmidt, R-Ohio.

•FreedomWorks for America, a Tea Party-affiliated super PAC that spent more than $777,000 this year to oppose Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch and May with $1.2 million in cash, ahead of a June 26 GOP primary that pits Hatch, a 36-year incumbent against former state senator Dan Liljenquist.

For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

View the original article here

Richard Nixon's Model Campaign

Associated PressRichard Nixon in February 1968.

Before tacking left for the general election, Mitt Romney has to reconcile with a right flank that has never much liked him. Peace talks kicked off May 2 when Romney met with dozens of right-wing journalists and bloggers – off the record – at a private club on Capitol Hill.

Well, technically off the record. Throw a presidential candidate in a room with that many reporters and word quickly gets out. By the end of the day, The Huffington Post had the story. One of several loose-lipped attendees reported that Romney had extended “sort of an olive branch to conservative media.” A much-needed olive branch, if the primary season is any indication. During the battle for the nomination, the right dedicated a staggering amount of airtime, bandwidth and column space to thwarting Romney’s presidential aspirations.

In the fall, Rush Limbaugh made the point plainly. “Romney is no conservative,” he told his audience. “You can argue with me all day long on that, but he isn’t.” Erick Erickson, the editor of Redstate.com, piled on with a post titled “Mitt Romney as the Nominee: Conservatism Dies and Barack Obama Wins.” And at Right Wing News, John Hawkins savaged Romney as “a pampered, prissy, fake, spiteful son of a governor being served the G.O.P. nomination on a silver platter because he kissed the right establishment behinds, benefitted from an enormous media double standard, and has more money than everyone else.” Little wonder the Romney camp decided outreach was in order.

The meeting was a start, but for Romney to win in November, he has to find a way to woo, but not wed, conservative media. And there’s no better example to follow than Richard Nixon in 1968. The only president ever to resign, Nixon usually serves as a cautionary tale, not a how-to guide. But like Romney, Nixon faced a skeptical right-wing media that lambasted him as a “political weathervane” and a “dedicated phony.” Tough words, but Nixon couldn’t simply write off the conservative broadcasters who said them. As his speechwriter Pat Buchanan explained, Nixon understood that to win in 1968 “he had to make his peace with the Goldwater wing of the party.”

Unlike the “Massachusetts moderate,” Mitt Romney, Nixon should have been a shoo-in for conservative affection. As a first-term congressman and aspiring “Red-hunter,” Nixon won over the right with his service on the House Un-American Activities Committee. There he broke the Alger Hiss spy case, siding with the frumpy former Communist Whittaker Chambers to expose Hiss, a State Department employee who was later convicted of perjury for lying about his involvement in a Soviet spy ring.

But maintaining ideological purity while navigating party politics proved an impossible task. In 1952 Nixon joined Dwight D. Eisenhower on the Republican ticket. The problem? Conservatives considered Ike at best a Democrat and at worst (according to the founder of the John Birch Society) “a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy.”

By the time he ran for president in 1960, the once-popular Nixon found right-wing media particularly hostile terrain. At National Review, William F. Buckley Jr. was persuaded Nixon would prove “an unreliable auxiliary of the right.” Clarence Manion, host of the “The Manion Forum” radio program, agreed. “Like you,” he wrote Buckley, “my first 1960 objective is to beat Nixon. He is an unpredictable, supremely self-interested trimmer and has never been anything else.”

The only president ever to resign, Nixon usually serves as a cautionary tale, not a how-to guide.

So solid was the resistance to a Nixon candidacy that in 1960, no conservative media outlet endorsed the vice-president either in the primaries or in the general election. Instead, they threw their energies into last-minute long-shot candidates and third-party alternatives. Manion began organizing a Draft Goldwater movement on behalf of “the courageous leader of conscientious American conservatism.” The editors of The Independent American went a step further with their (ultimately aborted) New Party Rally.

Nixon lost but didn’t learn. In 1962 he ran for governor of California, taking out the conservative Joe Shell in the primary and alienating the state’s substantial right-wing voting bloc. Conservatives stayed home, and he lost again. The morning after his humiliating defeat, a bleary-eyed Nixon famously growled at reporters, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.” His retirement from politics didn’t stick, but the lesson about the conservatives and their media finally did. Having cast out the mainstream press, Nixon concentrated his attention on conservative alternatives.

Nixon began courting right-wing journalists and writers in August 1966, when he held his own off-the-record meeting with members of conservative media and organizations at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington. Like the Romney meeting, the secret rendezvous quickly went public. A front-page story in The Washington Post divulged all the details, including Nixon’s prediction that conservatism would be “politically respectable” by the next election. And while Nixon didn’t spell out his intentions for 1968, one attendee told the paper: “Lines of communication were opened that should be helpful later on.”

Having made his intentions known, Nixon dialed up the charm. In January 1967 he invited Buckley, Bill Rusher (publisher of National Review), and other members of the conservative media to his sprawling Fifth Avenue apartment. There he exhibited his virtuosic command of foreign and domestic policy. Rusher remained unmoved — Rusher would always remain unmoved when it came to Nixon — but Buckley? There was no surer way to Buckley’s heart than a vigorous display of intellect and insight. As Neal Freeman, Buckley’s personal aide, recalled: “I knew when we went down the elevator, early in the evening, that Bill Buckley was going to find some reason to support Richard Nixon.” True, Nixon was no conservative, but the heart wants what it wants. And a smart, experienced, electable Republican was exactly what Buckley wanted in a 1968 candidate. More than a year before the election, he was recommending Nixon as the “wisest Republican choice.”

Not everyone was so enamored. Rusher and a small contingent of fellow writers did everything in their power to forestall a Nixon endorsement at National Review. Devin Garrity, the owner of right-wing publishing house Devin-Adair, threw in for Reagan. Reagan himself had plans to swoop in and steal away the nomination, banking on Nixon’s unlikability to create an opportunity (a safe bet most of the time). Eyeing the 1968 race, Reagan dismissed Nixon as “the fellow who doesn’t get the girl.” After all, Reagan had already succeeded where Nixon failed. In 1966 he won the California governorship against Pat Brown, who had defeated Nixon four years earlier. But Reagan underestimated how much his own inexperience diminished his standing as a would-be suitor. Though he had many fans on the right, most agreed the former actor wasn’t ready for prime-time.

Eventually, conservative media lined up for Nixon. Once he clenched the nomination, endorsements sprouted up everywhere: the newsweekly Human Events, National Review, The Manchester Union-Leader. True, the editors of National Review admitted, Nixon was far from the ideal candidate. But they urged readers to keep the faith, “faith that when he gets the votes he needs, and no longer has to submit to that frightful wooing ritual mass democracy imposes on its leaders, he will speak with a clearer, firmer, less neutrally balanced voice.”

Not exactly a ringing endorsement. And it got worse. They noted that Nixon was hardly “as passionate a believer in the ingenuity of the free marketplace as, for instance, Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan.” And as president, “there will undoubtedly be plenty to criticize in his administration of the nation’s affairs.” Yet with all the ways Nixon was likely to disappoint, the editors encouraged conservatives to cast their ballots for him. At the very least he could give America “the impulse it needs on the way back to sobriety.” Nixon couldn’t take the nation to the Promised Land, but he could at least help them survive the wilderness.

In 1968, members of right-wing media fell in line, if not in love, hoping to make a go of pragmatic politics. Just as his failed campaigns taught Nixon to move right, Goldwater’s catastrophic 1964 loss persuaded conservatives they would have to move left. “No sense running Mona Lisa in a beauty contest,” Buckley said in 1967 before clarifying: “I’d be for the most right, viable candidate who could win.”

Associated PressRichard Nixon at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Fla. on Aug. 8, 1968.

But in making Nixon “their president,” right-wing media swung too far in the other direction. Tom Huston, a conservative White House aide, begged National Review to come down hard on “the disastrous series of liberal appointments” following the inauguration. But the resulting editorial shrugged off Huston’s concerns, calling the appointments “mostly of non-ideological types.” The editors instead counseled conservatives to wait for a major foreign crisis to test the president’s mettle. “Then we shall see what stuff Nixon is made of,” they held, “then and not before.”

It would be one thing if they were Republican partisans, but these messengers of the right were keepers of a different faith. Their calls for patience, both during Nixon’s campaign and his presidency, cost conservative media their readers, their reputations and ultimately their leadership role in the movement. In its inaugural issue in November 1955, National Review had declared itself a “vigorous and incorruptible journal of conservative opinion.” Could it still make that claim when backing Nixon, a president who supported a guaranteed annual income, extensive environmental regulations and détente?

It turned out there was, briefly, a limit to how far they would follow “their president.” After he announced his plans to open relations with Communist China, the leaders of right-wing periodicals and publishing houses broke with Nixon. Rusher and Tom Winter of Human Events even spearheaded the search for another leading man, recruiting Ohio Congressman John Ashbrook to challenge Nixon in the 1972 primaries.

But just as they were reclaiming their oppositional voices, conservative media relinquished them again. When the Ashbrook candidacy failed to take off, National Review endorsed the Nixon-Agnew ticket. The editors chided their readers: “Now is not the time to be churlish.” Their advice went unheeded. The magazine had traded ideological purity for a seat at the table, and readers began to slip away. By 1973, National Review’s circulation lagged 20 percent behind its pre-Nixon heights. As Rusher explained in a memo to the editors: since National Review had failed to provide real opposition to the Nixon administration, “the conservative troops increasingly march off to tunes drummed out by latecomers.”

With this year’s nomination battle winding down, conservative media are making the same pivot toward Romney. As the nominee, he is their only chance to beat President Obama. And they are his only chance to keep the base on board while he Etch A Sketches his way to the center during the general election. Aware that full-throated conservatism won’t win over those crucial swing voters come November, some members of the right-wing media are willing to provide cover for Romney. National Review, which half-heartedly came out in support of Romney last December, has now thrown itself fully behind him. As the magazine’s editor Rich Lowry declared to Howard Kurtz at The Daily Beast: “If I have to manufacture enthusiasm, I’ll happily do so.”

Not everyone shares Lowry’s conviction. Erick Erickson claims that many on the right still “think Romney is not really a whole lot better than Obama.” He criticizes the Romney campaign for not reaching out to evangelicals, a group already hesitant to fully back a Mormon candidate. “Romney just expects their vote,” Erickson argued in a recent post. “He may get it, but not their passion or energy.” How much to stir up that passion and energy is a critical question facing conservative media. If Romney’s moderate turn toward the general election is actually a permanent return to his technocratic, nonideological roots, how far will conservative media follow him down that path?

Yet the partner most at risk in this relationship isn’t the media; it’s Mitt Romney. There’s an important difference between 1968 and 2012, one Romney must heed if he wants to successfully navigate the general election. In 1968, conservative media lost their identity as they compromised in favor of pragmatic politics. But today’s conservative media are far more powerful than their predecessors, and politicians far more likely to play second-fiddle to them.

The danger in 2012 is not that pragmatism will blunt conservative media. Rather, if these media insist on ideological purity, they could cost Romney both conservatives and moderates. His history of flip-flopping ensures he’ll never persuade conservatives that he shares their core values. And any attempt to prove he’s “severely conservative” will drive away independents wary of extremes.

Nothing highlights this danger more than the coming debate over same-sex marriage. When Obama declared his support for marriage equality on Wednesday, he forced Romney into a precarious position. If he fails to take a strong enough stand in opposition, Romney risks losing evangelicals’ already-soft support. If he fails to distance himself enough from same-sex marriage’s more provocative opponents, he risks losing swing voters with little appetite for cultural crusades.

Here Nixon is again a valuable guide. Richard Nixon never claimed to be a movement conservative, just someone who would attend to the right’s political desires. Like Nixon, Romney is a pragmatist who changes his views to match the political mood. From the perspective of the right, what Romney must now demonstrate is his belief that the current mood is fundamentally conservative, and that he will do what he must to keep the right on board. True, it’s not particularly inspiring. It’s practical and calculating, just like Nixon — who, remember, won a close election in 1968, won re-election in a historic landslide and built a coalition that sustained the Republican Party for 40 years.

Nicole Hemmer is a postdoctoral fellow at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.

View the original article here

GOP builds national campaign network from its grass roots

The Republican Party over the next few weeks will open a series of local campaign offices in a half-dozen key swing states to help mobilize GOP voters this fall and catch up with President Obama's head start in campaign organization.

By Jessica Kourkounis, Getty Images

Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks during a campaign stop Monday in Aston, Pa.

By Jessica Kourkounis, Getty Images

Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks during a campaign stop Monday in Aston, Pa.

Over the next two weeks, these "victory offices" opened jointly by the Republican National Committee and state GOP committees will develop and share voter contact information, grass-roots organizing and get-out-the-vote efforts with state party committees. By summer, the network will be at the service of the party's nominee, presumably former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

The new offices being established by mid-May in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Mexico, Iowa and Wisconsin join those opened by the Republican National Committee in March and April in Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Nevada, Michigan and Colorado.

The plan, RNC Political Director Rick Wiley said, is create the network to get Republicans to the polls in the 12 battleground states that will determine who wins in November. The offices, he said, are "the ground game run by the RNC in conjunction with the states."

That ground game will ultimately become part of the Romney campaign.

Federal campaign law requires that the state party, national party and presidential campaign pay for some services themselves and not share money.

But as a practical matter, "There is not going to be an inch of daylight between us and the RNC," said Colorado Republican Party chairman Ryan Call. And once the Romney campaign ramps up, "there will not be an inch of daylight between us and the campaign either."

Much of the work has already been taking place, said Annaliese Wiederspahn, spokeswoman for the Republican Party of New Mexico. There, the state party has already been on the ground contacting voters for months, focusing particularly on state House races, where Republicans are only three seats shy of a majority.

"We have spent so much time, district by district, learning what's going on in these districts" that the state party can provide the national party a tremendous road map of what issues resonate in the state, she said. The big benefit the state party receives from the partnership is "having them on the ground and helping us to build infrastructure … and help us ramp up and scale up quickly," she said.

Republicans and Democrats agree that the Obama campaign has a head start in setting up state offices for the presidential campaign. "We did that slow build while they were in primaries," said Obama campaign spokeswoman Katie Hogan.

The RNC wanted to open offices in the 12 battleground states by May, even without an official nominee, Wiley said. That's because the Obama campaign has been "building this for a year. They have had an opportunity to get out ahead of us."

Obama's campaign claims to be a 50-state operation, and has offices in states such as Wyoming and Nebraska that the president has little chance of winning in November. Even if Obama won't carry those states, Hogan said, volunteers there "can just as well make phone calls into a battleground state."

Not so with the RNC, Wiley said. It won't open "victory offices" in states such as Alabama and Mississippi that are expected to vote Republican. "We don't have to," he said.

But in states such as California, New York and Illinois, "there will be places where the RNC spends money to ensure or maintain our House majority," Wiley said. There will be "some victory programs in those congressional districts as well," even where there is not a statewide effort.

Republicans generally believe that Democrats will need a bigger ground game effort because they face an "enthusiasm gap" — young voters, minorities and other parts of the giant coalition that elected Obama in 2008 are simply less excited about him and less motivated to get to the polls than they were four years ago.

"We're fortunate in the sense that there is a great deal of Republican enthusiasm to make Obama a one-term president, so the task is to harness that excitement and turn it into a network that gets voters to the polls," said New Hampshire GOP Chairman Wayne MacDonald.

For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

View the original article here

The Next Phase of the G.O.P. Campaign

Re “Santorum Quits Race, Clearing a Path for Romney” (front page, April 11):

Whether it’s Rick Santorum or Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich or Rick Perry, whether it’s packaged as a return to “values,” a call for “fiscal discipline,” or a restoring of America’s “place in the world,” it’s the same product under a recognizable Republican brand: merchandise that promises tax cuts for everyone, especially the rich; deregulation for business, belt-tightening for everyone else; and war or the threat of war all over the world.

In other words, the Republican nominee, whoever he is, advocates a return to the policies of 2001 to 2008 that got us into the mess, one from which President Obama has been extracting the nation. All of these Republicans present a distorted picture of the president and his record of achievement against impossible odds these last three years.

Republicans say this is a watershed election. It is; it will test whether Americans are paying attention, whether they can see that Republicans are offering their same old product, whether the label on the outside is “Romney” or “Santorum” or “generic Republican.”

JOHN E. COLBERT
Chicago, April 11, 2012

To the Editor:

The Republican Party can breathe a sigh of relief over the long-awaited exit from the presidential race of mean-spirited, short-tempered, sanctimonious Rick Santorum.

I did not want to believe that the electorate at large would crown someone like Mr. Santorum to be the leader of the free world, but he came too close to achieving that goal for my comfort, demonstrating significant appeal to a certain swath of America that wishes to take us back in time and in the wrong direction on many issues.

Mitt Romney is by no means a giant of the political world or a savior for our country, but he might be a “good enough” leader and one who can defeat President Obama. That would bury at least for the moment the president’s misguided, unsustainable, expensive vision for the nation, in which government and what it can do for us is the focus of our lives as the national debt continues to explode.

With a giant thorn removed from the side of Mr. Romney through Mr. Santorum’s exit, there is opportunity for the G.O.P. to unite behind the leading vote-getter, assuming that the party can survive frequent Democratic replays of some of the disparaging comments that Mr. Santorum has made about the man who will be the Republican nominee.

OREN M. SPIEGLER
Upper St. Clair, Pa., April 11, 2012

To the Editor:

It’s a good thing that Rick Santorum dropped out of the Republican presidential race. He had no chance of winning and was doing more harm than good.

Now Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul need to follow. There’s a better chance of reviving the woolly mammoth than their campaigns.

MARK R. GODBURN
North Canaan, Conn., April 11, 2012

View the original article here

Santorum Says Campaign is 'Burning Through Our Savings'; SuperPAC Spends in South

PELHAM, Alabama-Rick Santorum asked the Alabama crowd here to deliver him a win in this state Tuesday and pitched to them he's a better choice than either of his opponents because of his working class background and blue collar roots.

"I've basically given up all my sources of income almost a year ago. We're burning through our savings," Santorum said to the enthusiastic crowd at a conference center. "People say, 'Well did you ever think you'd get this long and have to worry about all the bills you'd have to pay? Well, I was praying I'd get this long, now I have to pray we can somehow or another stretch the budget a little bit more."

He continued the theme of a candidate who is more in touch with his supporters and the electorate because he doesn't have the fortune of his opponents or other politicians. "We need a candidate who can go out and deliver a message when it comes to energy who maybe doesn't own oil wells, but his grandfather was a coal miner so I was in the energy industry too," Santorum said to the crowd of about 200. It wasn't clear who he was referring to whether it be former President George W. Bush, whose family was in the oil business or just trying to portray himself as the hardscrabble underdog to Mitt Romney's wealth. The campaign did not return requests for clarification. According to his tax returns, Santorum made about one million dollars last year.

Despite the former Pennsylvania senator's need for Newt Gingrich to abandon his bid-an aide to the former House Speaker said this week Mississippi and Alabama were must wins-he hardly mentioned Gingrich and focused almost completely on President Barack Obama and Romney.

He told voters they need a nominee "who can go out in the general election and not just spend millions and millions of dollars trying to beat up the other person" and even insinuated the press favored the former Massachusetts governor because he will not be able to defeat Obama.

"Every time we've nominated a moderate in the last 30 or 40 years, we lost. Every time so now you know why the media's for him," Santorum said, referring to Romney. "They don't want him to win. You know who they want to win."

Santorum's superPAC "The Red, White, and Blue Fund" announced Thursday they were running a negative ad jabbing both Romney and Gingrich in Mississippi and Alabama. They also called for Gingrich to get out of the race Wednesday to try and consolidate the more conservative electorate around one of the GOP candidates. The fund says the ad buy is "well over half a million dollars."

If Santorum beats Gingrich here and in Mississippi it could very well be a fatal blow to the speaker's candidacy, although Gingrich has stressed he is going all the way to the convention. "If you elect, here in Alabama, and I'll tell you what, a conservative will be nominated by the Republican party in the next few months. And if a conservative is nominated, we will win the general election," Santorum said.

Also Read

View the original article here

Ron Paul, Rick Santorum to Make Missouri Campaign Stops

The Missouri GOP caucus will be held Saturday, March 17. Locations in all of Missouri's 114 counties will hold caucus meetings in the mid-morning or early afternoon. Ahead of those caucuses, two of the four mainstream Republican candidates for president will make campaign stops in Missouri. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas and Rick Santorum will be campaigning in the Show-Me State on the same day as Kansas holds its caucus meetings March 10.

Here's a breakdown of when and where the candidates will be.

Ron Paul

Paul will start out in St. Charles, Mo., at Hyland Arena on the campus of Lindenwood University at 3 p.m. March 10. Admission is free and is on a first-come, first-served basis. Expect Paul to be there for about an hour. KMOX reports Paul spoke in Kansas City in February and this will be his second stop in Missouri.

The candidate then travels about 200 miles to the southwest for a stop in Springfield, Mo., at a town hall meeting at the Hillcrest High School gymnasium at 7:30 p.m. The Springfield News-Leader states Paul will speak for about 15 minutes and then have a 15-minute question and answer session with the public. After he speaks to those in attendance, Paul will be available for the media for about 15 minutes.

Rick Santorum

Santorum will also make two stops in Missouri March 10. At 2 p.m., Santorum will hold a rally at Digital Monitoring Products at the Partnership Industrial Center in northeast Springfield. Digital Monitoring Products has been headquartered in Springfield for 35 years and specializes in manufacturing central security monitoring devices.

Later in the day, Santorum will go to Cape Girardeau, Mo., at 6:30 as the keynote speaker of the Cape Girardeau County Lincoln Day banquet hosted by the local Republican Party. Tickets are $20 for the event if you want to attend. At 8 p.m., Santorum will hold a rally at the Cape Girardeau Regional Airport.

Venues

Paul's rally at Hyland Arena is on the campus of Lindenwood University. The basketball venue is capable of seating 3,000 people in seats around the floor. When Paul comes to Springfield, he will be at Hillcrest High School located on Grant Avenue just north of Kearney Street in Springfield.

Santorum will speak at Digital Monitoring Products, a factory in northeast Springfield off Kearney and U.S. 65. In Cape Girardeau, the Plaza Conference Center is capable of hosting 750 people at a banquet-style event. The airport in Cape Girardeau is located on Rush H. Limbaugh Jr. Memorial Dr. just west of Interstate 55 to the northwest of the city.

William Browning, a lifelong Missouri resident, writes about local and state issues for the Yahoo! Contributor Network. Born in St. Louis, Browning earned his bachelor's degree in English from the University of Missouri. He currently resides in Branson.

View the original article here

Cain suspends campaign shifting GOP race (AP)

ATLANTA – A defiant Herman Cain suspended his faltering bid for the Republican presidential nomination Saturday amid a drumbeat of sexual misconduct allegations against him, throwing his staunchly conservative supporters up for grabs with just one month to go before the lead-off caucuses in Iowa.

Cain condemned the accusations as "false and unproven" but said they had been hurtful to his family, particularly his wife, Gloria, and were drowning out his ability to deliver his message. His wife stood behind him on the stage, smiling and waving as the crowd chanted her name.

"So as of today, with a lot of prayer and soul-searching, I am suspending my presidential campaign because of the continued distractions and the continued hurt caused on me and my family," a tired-looking Cain told about 400 supporters.

Cain's announcement came five days after an Atlanta-area woman, Ginger White, claimed she and Cain had an affair for more than a decade, a claim that followed several allegations of sexual harassment against the Georgia businessman.

"Now, I have made many mistakes in life. Everybody has. I've made mistakes professionally, personally, as a candidate, in terms of how I run my campaign. And I take responsibility for the mistakes I've made, and I have been the very first to own up to any mistakes I've made," he said.

But Cain intoned: "I am at peace with my God. I am at peace with my wife. And she is at peace with me."

White's attorney said in a statement after the announcement that Cain had disparaged his client and should apologize. Cain had called her a "troubled Atlanta businesswoman" whom he had tried to help.

"We continue to encourage Mr. Cain to retract these statements and apologize for the way he has characterized these women in the media," Edward Buckley said. Cain's campaign had no immediate response.

Cain's announcement provides a new twist in what has already been a volatile Republican race. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has, so far, been the biggest beneficiary of Cain's precipitous slide. Polls show Gingrich and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney atop the field in what is shaping up as a two-man race heading into early voting states.

But others, such as Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, will likely make a strong play for Cain's anti-establishment tea party backing as they look to rise as a viable alternative to Romney, whose conservative credentials are suspect in some GOP circles.

Cain said he would offer an endorsement, and his former rivals were quick to issue statements on Saturday praising his conservative ideals and grassroots appeal.

At a tea party rally in Staten Island, Gingrich praised Cain for bringing optimism and big ideas to the race.

"He had the courage to launch the 9-9-9 plan, which, whether you liked it or disliked it, was a big idea and started to elevate the debate toward big solutions and not the usual nitpicking, consultant-driven negativity," Gingrich said. He was referring to Cain's catchy but controversial plan to scrap the current tax code for a 9 percent tax on personal and corporate income as well as a new 9 percent national sales tax.

Some disappointed Cain supporters were clearly in search of a candidate on Saturday following his withdrawal.

"I don't know where I will go now," Janet Edwards, 52, said following Cain's announcement. "I guess I have to start looking at the rest of them."

Cain told supporters he planned to continue his efforts to influence Washington and announced "Plan B" — what he called a grassroots effort to return government to the people.

"I am not going to be silenced, and I am not going away. And therefore, as of today, Plan B," he said.

Plan B includes formation of TheCainSolutions.com, which he described as a grassroots effort to bring government back to the people. It would also continue to push his signature 9-9-9 plan.

Cain's announcement was a remarkable turnabout for a man that just weeks ago vaulted out of nowhere to the top of the GOP field, propelled by a populist, outsider appeal and his tax overhaul plan.

Saturday's event was a bizarre piece of political theater even for a campaign that has seemed to thrive on defying convention.

Cain marked the end of his bid at what was supposed to be the grand opening of his new campaign headquarters in Atlanta. Minutes before he took the stage to pull the plug, aides and supporters took to the podium to urge attendees to vote for Cain and travel to early voting states to rev up support for his bid.

"Join the Cain train," David McCleary, Cain's Georgia director, urged the audience.

Volunteers had been up through the night preparing the former flooring warehouse to open as the new hub of Cain's early-state outreach.

He marveled at rising from a childhood in Atlanta marked by segregated water fountains and poverty to what he called "the final four" of the presidential contest.

The former Godfather's Pizza chief executive, who has never held elective office, rose just weeks ago to lead the Republican race. But he fumbled policy questions, leaving some to wonder whether he was ready for the presidency. Then it was revealed at the end of October that the National Restaurant Association had paid settlements to two women who claimed Cain sexually harassed them while he was president of the organization.

A third woman told The Associated Press that Cain made inappropriate sexual advances but that she didn't file a complaint. A fourth woman also stepped forward to accuse Cain of groping her in a car in 1997.

Cain has denied wrongdoing in all cases and continued to do so Saturday.

Polls suggest his popularity had suffered. A Des Moines Register poll released Friday showed Cain's support plunging, with backing from 8 percent of Republican caucus goers in Iowa, compared with 23 percent a month ago.

___

Follow Shannon McCaffrey: http://www.twitter.com/smccaffrey13

View the original article here

How Scandal Brought Down Cain's Campaign (ContributorNetwork)

In a Public Policy Polling poll released on Oct. 12, Herman Cain was atop the GOP presidential primary heap, leading former Gov. Mitt Romney by 30 percent to 22 percent. Then, beginning on Halloween, his campaign was rocked by scandal. In just one month, Cain came crashing back to earth. Five women made similar claims of sexually inappropriate behavior toward them, forcing Cain to suspend his campaign for president, according to The Ticket. The following timeline outlines the scandal from beginning to inglorious end:

Oct. 31: Politico reports that two women accused Cain of "sexually suggestive behavior" while working with him in the 1990s at the National Restaurant Association. Both women received financial settlements in exchange for leaving the association. The agreements included barring the two women from disclosing anything about the accusations in the future.

Nov. 2: Cain accuses the Gov. Rick Perry campaign of "orchestrating a smear campaign" against him. A Perry spokesman denies the charge.

Nov. 3: A third woman accuses Cain of "sexual suggestive remarks and gestures" during his time as head of the NRA. She chooses to remain anonymous.

Nov. 7: Sharon Bialek publicly accuses Cain of trying to get sexual favors from her in exchange for help finding a job. Bialek said that, while sitting in a car after she asked him for help, Cain tried to put his hand in her crotch, saying, "You want a job, right?"

Nov. 8: Karen Krushaar goes public as one of the women in the initial report after her name was leaked into the public sphere. In an interview with the New York Times, she explained why she initially stayed anonymous. "When you are being sexually harassed in the workplace, you are extremely vulnerable," Krushaar said. "You do whatever you can to quickly get yourself into a job some place safe and that is what I thought I had achieved when I left."

Nov. 14: Gloria Cain defends her husband on Fox News. "I know that's not the person he is. He totally respects women."

Nov. 28: Ginger White, in an exclusive interview with the Atlanta affiliate of Fox News, claims to have carried on a 13-year affair with Cain. She further claims to have telephone records backing up her statement.

Dec. 2: Cain's poll numbers among likely Republican voters in Iowa sink back into the single digits.

Dec. 3: After a few days to "reassess" his campaign, Cain announces he is suspending his campaign for the GOP Presidential nomination.

View the original article here

Who Benefits From Herman Cain Suspending Campaign? (ContributorNetwork)

COMMENTARY | Herman Cain put the Republican National Committee on its heels with his 9-9-9 tax plan and his message of reforming the political machine in Washington. Now with Cain's announcement to suspend his Republican nomination bid, reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitutional, which candidate will benefit from his removal from the process?

Many political pundits are saying Newt Gingrich will benefit the most. Other supposed experts say Mitt Romney will become the clear leader in the polls. One question for Cain supporters should steer them clear of Romney and Gingrich: tax reform.

Cain's campaign became so popular based on two important factors: His ability to speak and motivate crowds, and his tax reform platform. Cain vows to keep tax reform top of mind through a new website name that will replace his presidential campaign website.

Now the key for Cain is his political clout. Will Republican presidential hopefuls be actively seeking his support? Will Cain's endorsement have a negative impact? Overnight Cain has become a political power instead of a fading presidential candidate. His impact on the next man or woman to sit in the Oval Office is real.

The candidate who wants Cain supporters will have to take an aggressive stance on tax reform. The tax reform platform of Cain garnered attention from Democrats and Republicans and even if a candidate does not adopt the 9-9-9 plan, a flat tax or dramatic across the board tax will attract Cain supporters.

Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry have discussed the fair tax, which is the across the board flat rate at a rate of 10 percent, but Gingrich and Romney have avoided the tax reform discussion while appeasing the Republican establishment.

The candidate who takes up tax reform in earnest will jump through the roof in the polls but will either Romney or Gingrich take that chance? The answer is no and this is why the Republican elite is no better than President Barack Obama. If tax reform dies with the Cain candidacy the U.S. will be bankrupt in the near future.

View the original article here

Romney Campaign Stop Knee-Deep in Allentown Weeds (ContributorNetwork)

ALLENTOWN, Pa. -- Mitt Romney stood knee-deep in weeds beside the locked gates of an abandoned Allentown metal fabricating building. It was the same factory President Obama touted in 2009 as an example of what the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act could accomplish.

Like other manufacturing concerns in the former steel city, the Allentown Metal Works went out of business due to the economic downturn and has remained shut since December 2010. Before that, the huge building was a Mack Truck plant, also a casualty of tough economic times.

Sweden's Volvo Group has owned Mack since 1990 and in 1995 moved its headquarters from Allentown to Greensboro, North Carolina. The Charlotte Observer touted the 493 North Carolina jobs the move would produce for the state.

Like neighboring Ohio, Pennsylvania's best economic years depended on a lively manufacturing base. Now, it's part of the "Rust Belt." The downturn picked up speed in the 1980s as singer Billy Joel wrote a song called "Allentown." The popular refrain struck Lehigh Valley residents with a mix of sadness and nostalgia.

"We're living here in Allentown, and they're closing all the factories down," the song went.

The Lehigh Valley, where Allentown is located, grew at a pace with its burgeoning steel industry. Bethlehem Steel was both symbol and sustenance, providing good paying jobs for thousands of blue collar and professional workers.

During the 80s and 90s, global competition for steel production and legacy costs turned the vast Bethlehem Steel empire into a giant rusting hulk, a monument to America's past. Bethlehem Steel closed its doors for good in November of 1995.

In place of the once vibrant steel industry of the Lehigh Valley, there are guided tours of the towering steel manufacturing facility, and the Sands Casino. The Lehigh Valley is suffering from a downturn that began before President Obama took office, and Romney said that, while Mr. Obama had not made conditions worse, neither had he made them better.

"If he couldn't get the economy turned around in three years, his (administration) will be a one-term proposition," Romney told a throng of news people and curious onlookers.

In Pennsylvania, the dominant majority of voters are registered Democrats so the state figures less as a player in the GOP primary process than it does in the general election, seventeen months from now.

Pennsylvania voted heavily for Obama in 2008, with 111,000 newly registered Democrats in that year, while Republican voter rolls declined by 13,000.

But dissatisfaction with the president's policies has grown in Pennsylvania and the official unemployment rate, though lower than the national average, remains high at 8.3 percent.

Romney charges that President Obama, campaigning on the same day in Philadelphia, is detached from the nation's economic problems. Philadelphia County, where the city is located, struggles along with 10.8 percent unemployment.

"It's (the economy) not turned around, not at 9.1 percent, with 20 million people unemployed," Romney said.

With a sweeping gesture at his surroundings, Romney sailed into attack mode.

"Look around you. This is what he called the symbol of hope. These are weeds not windows of hope. I didn't pick this spot. This is the spot he (Obama) picked as a symbol of the success of the stimulus. My eyes tell me it ain't (sic) working."

Anthony Ventre is a freelance writer who has written for weekly and daily newspapers and several online publications. He is a frequent Yahoo contributor, concentrating in news and financial writing.

View the original article here