Score one for Team Romney. They're finally and explicitly drawing attention to the root of the Obama campaign's surreal nastiness: The man at the top. This is about Barack Obama's character, his win-at-all-costs desperation, and his thirst for power:
This isn't just a one-off web ad (which would have generated a fair amount of earned media, given the intensity of this controversy); it's a television spot that will air in swing states. And before lefties launch into their predictable histrionics about the inaccuracy of blaming Obama's campaign for a SuperPAC attack, BuzzFeed sets the record straight:
A SuperPAC supporting Obama is under fire for airing an ad in which a steelworker accused Romney of making decisions that led to his wife's death. The Obama campaign has kept its distance from the ad — but it made the same charge, in a screenshot that appeared in an official Obama campaign slideshow:
The campaign lied about Joe Soptic and they lied about the genesis of this attack. A corrosive, deceit-filled, substance-free campaign goes to the heart of the man leading it. The Romney campaign is right to question his character, but will an ad like this deter the Obama campaign from further outrages? Doubtful. And does it help extricate Romney from the vicious, drive-by cycle Democrats have set up for him? Three parting quotations for your edification. Hope:
(1) Former Obama campaign spokesman (and current Obama SuperPAC director) Bill Burton, in 2008: "How does it strengthen our country to pollute our politics with false and mean-spirited attacks?"
Change:
(2) ABC News' Jonathan Karl: "The single most outrageous ad of the campaign comes fro a Super PAC supporting the president and run by his former spokesman."
(3) The Chicago Tribune, Obama's home-town newspaper, which endorsed him in 2008: "What a vicious, shameful ad...Call this ad what it is: A disgrace."
UPDATE - Is slash-and-burn backfiring? Rasmussen's daily tracker posts a four-point Romney lead, and Gallup shows The One's approval plunging to 43 percent, with disapproval spiking to 51 percent. The latter pollster has the race tied at 46/46. It's just one day of data and could be an outlier, but it certainly seems to resoundingly contradict some of the gloomy numbers in other new surveys.
UPDATE II - Obama's anti-Romney tax ad we discussed earlier has been examined by FactCheck.org. Their verdict: "There's so much deceit here, we don't even know where to start." Surprise! The entire ad is bogus. Has there been a single major Obama attack on Romney that hasn't been utterly demolished by fact-checkers? Honest question. Outsourcer/felon/tax cheat/killer/tax cheat II have all been decimated.