I was wondering if and when Team Romney would dust off some of 2008's oldies but goodies to use as a cudgel against The One, and now we have our answer:
Our first hints that Romney would target the Hillary vote arose during the firestorm over Hilary Rosen's attacks against Ann Romney, but this spot takes the tactic to a much more overt and aggressive level. Will it work? On one hand, last cycle's PUMA ("party unity my a**") phenomenon among disaffected Clinton backers almost completely receded by election day. The overwhelming majority of Hillary's supporters hopped aboard the Obama train, especially after the Clintons played starring and strongly supportive roles at his nominating convention. On the other hand, I'd wager that blue collar, predominantly white 'Hillary Democrats' and indies are the lowest hanging fruit for Republicans to reap this cycle. Reminding this group about the president's profoundly underwhelming record and his lack of fealty to facts in his quest to attain and maintain political power could certainly do some damage. Back to the other hand for a moment: Aren't most voters smart enough to understand that rivals within any political party sometimes say harsh things about each other during contested primaries? It's not as though the Clintons are backing Mitt Romney for president, right? Then again, now that I mention it...
Incidentally, the Obama lie cited in Romney's ad is the discredited outsourcing garbage Chicago has been peddling for a few weeks. We wrote about the Post's destruction of Obama's claims at the time -- they awarded his camp "Four Pincocchios" on two consecutive days last week -- and cited Jim Pethokoukis' careful reporting on the same subject. (Cliffs Notes version of the truth: The "outsourcing" attributed to Romney either occurred after he left Bain Capital, involved domestic outsourcing [moving jobs among states, not overseas], entailed companies that already had existing overseas holdings and jobs when Bain invested in them, or addressed firms that expanded their international operations to include overseas call centers in order to service local populations in their native languages). The Obama campaign, unable to run on the president's dismal record, has obstinately refused to correct the record. Now the nonpartisan FactCheck.org has examined these outsourcing allegations -- their verdict? There's "no evidence" to substantiate the mendacious anti-Romney narrative:
But after reviewing numerous corporate filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, contemporary news accounts, company histories and press releases, and the evidence offered by both the Obama and Romney campaigns, we found no evidence to support the claim that Romney — while he was still running Bain Capital — shipped American jobs overseas.
Couple this utterly false storyline with Team Obama's ongoing (!) and pathetic spin that the Obamacare mandate tax isn't a tax, and one has to wonder what, if anything, these guys aren't lying about. I'll leave you with three items: (1) American Crossroads' latest ad, slamming the Obamacare mandate tax:
(2) Since Obama is endlessly shanking Romney with factually inaccurate accusations of "outsourcing," might he care to offer the country an explanation for this?
The Obama campaign spent nearly $4,700 on telemarketing services from a Canadian telemarketing company called Pacific East between March and June, a Washington Free Beacon study of federal election filings shows. Pacific East is not the only foreign telemarketing firm raking in cash from the president’s reelection campaign. Obama paid a call center in Manila, Philippines $78,314.10 for telemarketing services between the start of the campaign and March.
(3) A delicious bonus question: Does anyone remember why Hillary held that "shame on you, Barack Obama!" press conference in the first place? Answer: She was upbraiding Captain Hopenchange for distributing campaign mailers that she said unfairly distorted her position on healthcare. What was her stance on that issue throughout the '08 campaign? She supported...wait for it...an individual mandate, which Obama sharply criticized over and over again, calling it a tax on the uninsured. Today, his unpopular law revolves around that very same tax, even as he laughably insists that it's not a tax, despite having hailed the Supreme Court's decision upholding the legislation as a tax. Too rich. What do they say about karma, again?
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