Club for Growth president: Mitt Romney is 'a mixed bag'
Chris Chocola, president of the influential free-enterprise and anti-tax group the Club for Growth, called GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney “a mixed bag” in a sign of the remaining challenges the party standard-bearer faces in energizing conservative Republicans. Mr. Chocola, a former member…
If you were watching Fox News or reading The Drudge Report on Thursday morning, you might mistakenly believe that President Barack Obama blew off the prime minister of Israel this week to chat up a colorfully costumed man who looks more like "Captain Morgan" than any government leader.
"TOO BUSY FOR ISRAEL," a "Fox & Friends" kicker headline read in all-caps, stamped below a photo of Obama sitting next to man dressed like a pirate. "PRESIDENT FINDS TIME FOR PIRATE, LETTERMAN." Hosts Brian Kilmeade and Steve Doocy piled on, attributing the photo to "International Talk Like A Pirate Day," an unofficial holiday marked every year on Sept. 19.
Co-host Gretchen Carlson added: "I'm going to have to see more on that story because it doesn't totally seem to gel." Still, the show went on, with the "Fox & Friends" production team repeatedly displaying the pirate photo and even cuing up pirate music. Doocy later said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was "getting the Clint Eastwood treatment" from Obama, and showed a photo of the Israeli president cross-cut with an image of an empty chair.
Matt Drudge, the conservative media aggregator behind The Drudge Report, took the bait. "BUT NO TIME FOR NETANYAHU..." a headline on his popular conservative website declared, according to a record of the post captured by liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America.
It didn't take long for savvy web users to point out that the pirate photo not is new. It turns out the image was taken as part of a Twitter joke for the White House Correspondents Association dinner, which typically features a night of political comedy and a satirical speech by the president. It has been available online since May 2009.
Reacting to the obvious blunder, a Twitter account for "Fox & Friends" corrected the repeat error. "The picture we aired this morning of the President & the pirate was from 2009," they explained. Drudge, however, did not offer a correction.
This video is from "Fox & Friends," broadcast Thursday, Sept. 20, 2012, as snipped by Talking Points Memo.
A Republican state representative in Pennsylvania is defending the state's voter photo ID law by claiming that people who were too "lazy" to have identification were probably included in the 47 percent of Americans who Mitt Romney claims don't pay income taxes.
During a radio interview with KDKA on Wednesday, Rep. Daryl Metcalfe defended Pennsylvania's controversial photo ID law by bringing up a recently-released leaked video of Romney telling wealthy donors that it wasn’t his job to worry about the 47 percent of people who refused to “take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
"I don’t believe any legitimate voter that actually wants to exercise that right and takes on the according responsiblity that goes with that right to secure their photo ID will be disenfranchised," Metcalfe insisted. "As Mitt Romney said, 47 percent of the people that are living off the public dole, living off their neighbors’ hard work, and we have a lot of people out there that are too lazy to get up and get out there and get the ID they need."
The lawmaker added: "If individuals are too lazy, the state can’t fix that."
Earlier this year, state officials estimated that 758,00o registered voters in Pennsylvania did not have valid photo IDs.
Listen to this audio from KDKA via Think Progress, broadcast Sept. 19, 2012.
(h/t: Philly.com)
[Photo: YouTube]
A Republican man in Austin, Texas this week lynched a chair which many are interpreting to be a threat against President Barack Obama because of Clint Eastwood's bizarre speech at the Republican National Convention last month.
"We have a sad and awful history of white people lynching African-Americans in Texas, and this history is exactly what this Republican's front yard display taps into," the Burnt Orange Report's Katherine Haenschen, who obtained a photo of the lynching, wrote on Wednesday.
"This is the specific and deliberate use of a racially charged act of violence -- lynching -- perpetrated by white men against African-American men and women," she added. "When you add a Republican symbol for the first African-American President into the mix, you get a pretty awful picture -- the one you see at right, and one that can be seen on a front lawn here in leafy, quiet Northwest Austin."
When Haenschen contacted the homeowner on Thursday, he made it clear that the first African-American president was on his mind when he decided to lynch the chair.
"I don't really give a damn whether it disturbs you or not," Bud Johnson reportedly said. "You can take [your concerns] and go straight to hell and take Obama with you. I don't give a shit. If you don't like it, don't come down my street."
Johnson won "Yard of the Month" from the Spicewood Estates Homeowners Association on at least two occasions in 2010.
Over the weekend, photos emerged of another chair with the word "Nobama" being lynched in Virginia.
[Photo courtesy of the Burnt Orange Report]
(h/t: Gawker)
A 14-year-old video of President Barack Obama promoted by the Romney campaign this week over a comment about "redistribution" also features the president pushing for marketplace "competition" and market-driven "innovation," according to a complete record of his speech obtained by NBC News.
The president's spokespeople have since explained that the speech was about using city government resources in a way that's more fair and efficient, but Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has zeroed in on the word "redistribution," and appears to have refocused his whole campaign squarely upon these few seconds of carefully edited audio.
"Frankly, we have two very different views about America," Romney told Fox News on Tuesday. "The president’s view is one of a larger government. There's a tape that just came out today where the president is saying he likes redistribution. I disagree."
In footage promoted by the Romney campaign and Fox News, taken from a public speech then-State Senator Obama gave at Loyola University in Chicago, the president explains: "I think the trick is figuring out how do we structure government systems that pool resources and hence facilitate some redistribution because I actually believe in redistribution, at least at a certain level to make sure that everybody’s got a shot."
But that's not all he said. In a portion of the footage that was edited out, Obama continues: "How do we pool resources at the same time as we decentralize delivery systems in ways that both foster competition, can work in the marketplace, and can foster innovation at the local level and can be tailored to particular communities?"
Conservative outrage over the footage is not dissimilar from Obama's claim that business owners did not build the roads or the public infrastructure. Republicans took careful edits of his comments to make him sound like he was telling business owners that they did not build their own companies, although greater context reveals that's not what he said. The clip ultimately became a centerpiece in Romney's ads and even the theme of the 2012 Republican National Convention.
In the wake of his own scandal-making video, Romney urged the video's source to release his full comments. When Mother Jones magazine complied, the scandal only got worse, engulfing the media's national political discussion going on four days now.
"These are people who pay no income tax," Romney said at a private fundraiser in May, apparently filmed by a member of the wait staff. "Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn’t connect. So he’ll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean, that is what they sell every four years. And so my job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."
Despite Romney's comments, The Washington Post pointed out that he's also repeatedly insisted that he wants to keep virtually every entitlement program, albeit with as-yet-undeclared cuts, and vows to continue America's progressive tax structure. He's also put forward a tax plan that, according to the Tax Policy Center, would grow the deficit, cut the burden for the wealthiest Americans and raise the burden on the poor and middle class.
Individuals who do not pay income tax do pay other taxes, including sales tax, payroll tax and Medicare tax, which usually amounts to a greater share than income taxes. Additionally, only about 37 percent of Americans receive Social Security, Medicare or food stamps, and the vast majority are children, senior citizens or students, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
This video is from NBC News, broadcast Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2012.
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) is stepping down as co-chair of the campaign to elect former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) president. According to CNN, Pawlenty has been tapped as president and CEO of the Financial Services Roundtable, a Washington-based group that lobbies for banks.
The Hill's "On the Money" blog quotes Allstate CEO and Financial Services Roundtable chairman Tom Wilson as saying, "Tim’s leadership, vision and ability to find common ground make him the right choice to represent the broad membership of the Financial Services Roundtable. He is exactly the kind of leader we need to continue to improve our industry’s reputation, advocate firm-but-fair regulation and help maintain our global leadership of the financial markets.”
Gov. Romney said that he will miss Pawlenty's contribution to the campaign, but that the Minnesota governor and former state representative is taking up noble work as a banking lobbyist.
"He’s brought energy, intelligence and tireless dedication to every enterprise in which he’s ever been engaged, and that certainly includes my presidential campaign," Romney said. "While I regret he cannot continue as co-chair of my campaign, his new position advancing the integrity of our financial system is vital to the future of our country."
Pawlenty's new job begins November 1.
[Image via Shutterstock]
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney used the slur "illegal aliens" on Wednesday while telling a Hispanic audience that he would not "round up" undocumented immigrants if he is elected in November.
During a Univision candidate forum on Wednesday, the former governor, who has promised to veto the DREAM Act, said that he favored a "permanent solution" for children who were brought to the United States illegally, but refused to give details on how he would handle the over 1 million young undocumented immigrants who are eligible for work permits under a plan implemented by the Obama administration.
"I am not going to be going around the country and rounding them up," Romney promised. "When I'm president, I will actually do what I promise, I will put in place an immigration reform system that resolves this issue."
"For those who are already here and that are undocumented and were brought here by their parents and are therefore illegal aliens in this country, my view is that we should put in place a permanent solution," he explained.
In 2010, Colorlines began their "Drop the I-Word" campaign to eradicate "illegal" from public discourse because they said the term "opens the door to racial profiling and violence and prevents truthful, respectful debate on immigration."
Romney also renewed his call for "self-deportation," which he first made during the Republican primary debates earlier this year.
"I believe people make their own choices as to whether they want to go home and that's what I mean by 'self deportation,'" Romney told the audience. "People decide if they want to go back to their country of origin and get in line legally to be able to come to this country."
Tickets to the Univision event were only handed out to groups that tended to support Romney so their reaction to his remarks was unsurprisingly enthusiastic.
The Obama campaign, however, offered a less favorable response.
"On critical issues, he continued to refuse to answer any of the tough questions or provide any specifics on what he’d do as president," Obama campaign spokesperson Lis Smith said, according to Talking Points Memo. "We are just two weeks away from the first presidential debate, where the American people will demand more than vague answers and empty platitudes. It’s time for Mitt Romney to come clean and get specific about his policies."
Watch this video from Univision, broadcast Sept. 19, 2012.
Daily Show host Jon Stewart mocked Fox News on Wednesday night, describing their coverage of a secret video of Mitt Romney as "chaos on bullshit mountain."
In the video, Romney says he will not bother trying to convince the 47 percent of government-dependent "victims" who pay no income taxes to vote for him.
"Lets drill down to the core of this thing," Stewart said, playing a clip of Fox News host Sean Hannity decrying the so-called entitlement society fostered by Obama. Hannity said that 49 percent of Americans received government handouts under Obama.
"This is the core of bullshit mountain," Stewart said. "The 49 percent entitlement society Obama enables -- that is the core of the bullshit nation fiction. That somehow, only since Obama, the half of Americans who love this country and work hard and are good have had the fruits of their labor seized and handed over to the half of this nation that is lazy and dependent and the opposite of good. Now in that 49 percent, Hannity is including those on Social Security and Medicare, or as I like to call them, his audience."
Stewart continued, noting that Hannity had forgotten a certain demographic that received plenty of government handouts. Corporations have taken in billions in federal subsidies, but “at least Exxon-Mobil and AT&T give us back cheap gas and reliable cell phone service," Stewart mockingly said.
Watch video below:
On her show Wednesday night MSNBC host Rachel Maddow explained how Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney could hurt other Republican candidates if his image does not improve before November.
"As Mr. Romney has been dropping in the polls, so have been Republican Senate candidates," she noted.
Romney’s campaign has faced criticism after the release of video where he claimed nearly half of Americans were government-dependent "victims" who paid no taxes and therefore going to vote for Obama. Romney said he would “not to worry about those people” because he could “never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
His comments, which were published by Mother Jones, appear to have resulted in his own poll numbers going down, as well as the poll numbers of some of his fellow Republicans.
"We are now seeing some of those candidates who stand to maybe lose an otherwise close race thanks to Mitt Romney calling half the country a bunch of lazy moocher bums, we are seeing those Senate candidates flee from Mr. Romney and his rhetoric, at least on this issue," Maddow said.
Watch video, courtesy of MSNBC, below:
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Molly Ball, political correspondent for The Atlantic, said Wednesday that recently unearthed audio of President Barack Obama endorsing the concept of redistributing government resources was not likely to harm his re-election campaign.
"I don't think [redistribution] is a popular concept with the public, but this is also not a shocking revelation about President Obama," she said on Current TV. "This is essentially the same thing he said much more recently in 2008 to Joe the Plumber, when he said that he believed in spreading the wealth around. This is not a real gotcha, this is something that a lot of liberals and indeed most Republicans agree with on some theoretical level."
Conservative news outlets like The Drudge Report have posted an audio clip of Obama speaking at a conference at Loyola University in 1998. In the clip, Obama says it is necessary to “resuscitate the notion that government can be effective at all.”
“I think the trick is figuring out how do we structure government systems that pool resources, and hence facilitate some redistribution, because I actually believe in redistribution, at least at a certain level, to make sure that everybody has got a shot,” he explains.
Romney highlighted the video on Tuesday, saying "the right course for America is to create growth, create wealth, not to redistribute wealth."
Watch video, courtesy of Current TV, below:
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said Wednesday that he was proud of the health care law he implemented while governor of Massachusetts, which was used as a blueprint for President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
"First of all, I would repeal all of Obamacare and replace it with the kinds of reforms we really need," he said at the Univision Meet the Candidates forum. "And I have experience in health care reform. Now and then the president says I’m the grandfather of Obamacare. I don’t think he meant that as a compliment, but I’ll take it. Now and then the president says I’m the grandfather of Obamacare. I don’t think he meant that as a compliment, but I’ll take it. This was during my primary we thought it might not be helpful."
"But I have actually been able to put in place a system that fit the needs of the people of my state and I'm proud of the fact that in my state after our plan was put in place, every child has insurance, 98 percent of adults have insurance, but we didn't have to cut Medicare by $716 billion to do that. We didn't raise taxes on health companies by $500 billion as the president did."
Earlier this month, Romney said he liked certain provisions of Obamacare and was not "getting rid of all of health care reform." However, his campaign later told the National Review that Romney "was not proposing a federal mandate to require insurance plans to offer those particular features.”
Watch video, clipped by Think Progress, below:
Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah on Wednesday blasted the fact-checkers who claimed the GOP was wrong to accuse President Barack Obama of undermining welfare reform.
"Now, before the legion of purportedly objective Fact Checkers begin Fact Checking me, let me just say that my hope here today is to turn the tables a bit," Hatch said during a speech at the conservative Heritage Foundation, which first claimed Obama was undermining the welfare program. "Somebody needs to be Fact Checking the Fact Checkers. Fair is fair. What goes around, comes around. A number of self-proclaimed Fact Checkers have criticized Republicans for concluding that this new waiver authority undermines welfare reform."
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced in July that it was seeking to provide states with more flexibility to administer the Temporary Assistant for Needy Families (TANF) program. George Sheldon, acting assistant secretary for the Administration for Children and Families, said the law contained “mind-numbing details about how to run a welfare-to-work program” and offered to waive some of those federal regulations.
Republicans have claimed that the Obama administration was seeking to roll back the work requirements in the law, a claim that multiple fact checkers have said is false.
The waivers, which have been requested by the Republican governors of Utah and Nevada, would only allow states to test pilot programs designed to improve employment outcomes in the welfare program. As an example, Sheldon said that states could "coordinate employment programs for low-income parents funded by Department of Health and Human Services with workforce training programs funded by the federal Department of Labor."
But Hatch claimed that the Obama administration was actually trying to make it so those who receive TANF benefits could fulfill their work requirements through bed rest and journaling. He noted that a Government Accountability Office report from 2005 found "states were counting as work such activities as massage, motivational reading, and weight loss promotion."
A provision in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 limited the types of activities that could be considered as work. As a senator, Obama voted against the bill, which also cut $26.1 billion from Medicaid.
"It seems fair to assume that when President Obama talks today about promoting state flexibility, he is really talking about restoring some of the activities such as bed rest and journaling that he believed were inappropriately denied to the states through the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005," Hatch said. "Now, I’m no Fact Checker myself. But if I was, that might be some interesting background material that could be used in interpreting the intent of his administration’s new policy."
"Governor Romney’s campaign has said that they are not going to let their strategies and message be determined by fact checkers," he added. "Based on what I have seen from these so-called Fact Checkers over the past few months, that makes sense to me."
A study published in the September issue of Children and Youth Services Review found the 1996 welfare reform law that implemented the work requirements made extremely poor Americans worse off, while helping the near poor.
Watch video, courtesy of the Heritage Foundation, below:
ATLANTA, Georgia — Mitt Romney accused President Barack Obama on Wednesday of fostering a "web of dependency," amid a sharpening electoral battle over their competing visions for US society.
Under attack due to videotaped comments dismissing 47 percent of Americans as looking for government handouts, the Republican presidential nominee defended his views as the path to prosperity.
"My course for the American economy will encourage private investment and personal freedom," Romney wrote in an opinion piece in USA Today. "Instead of creating a web of dependency, I will pursue policies that grow our economy and lift Americans out of poverty."
He doubled down on the concept at a high-end Atlanta fundraiser, the third finance event in two days in which he has attacked Obama for embracing a more socialist-styled role for government.
America "does not work by a government saying 'become dependent on government, become dependent upon redistribution.' That will kill the American entrepreneurship that's lifted our economy over the years," Romney told donors here.
"The question of this campaign is not who cares about the poor and the middle class?" Romney went on.
"I do. He does. The question is who can help the poor and the middle class? I can! He can't!"
Romney trails in the polls with just 48 days to go before the November 6 elections. Deficits in key battlegrounds like Ohio and Florida are especially worrying for the Republican challenger as they could decide the race.
Romney has acknowledged that his bombshell comments at a May fundraiser, which were secretly videotaped and then made public this week by Mother Jones magazine, were badly phrased.
But the former Massachusetts governor and his campaign have stepped up their attacks on social welfare "entitlements" as they seek to frame a philosophical debate over the choices facing Americans.
In doing so they have seized on a 14-year-old audio recording from 1998 in which Obama, then a state senator in Illinois, can be heard advocating for government-backed wealth redistribution.
"The trick is figuring out how do we structure government systems that pool resources and hence facilitate some redistribution because I actually believe in redistribution, at least at a certain level, to make sure everybody's got a shot," Obama says in the audio.
The White House responded Wednesday by saying Romney's camp was adopting "desperate" tactics that were examples of a campaign "having a very bad day or a very bad week."
"You sometimes witness an effort -- that seems desperate -- to change the subject. We might be witnessing that now," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
Romney, who has been holding a series of fundraisers in California, Utah and Texas, heads to key swing state Florida on Wednesday to hold his first public campaign event since late last week.
It has been an awkward period for the nominee, who has fended off a backlash from Republicans worried about his gaffe-plagued campaign.
Last week, Romney set off a furor by criticizing the administration as being too sympathetic to Islamic militants just as the nation learnt that its ambassador to Libya and three other citizens had been killed in an attack on the Benghazi consulate.
Release of the fundraising video, and reports of internal campaign disarray, plunged team Romney into deeper turmoil, but their decision to embrace the anti-dependency message appears to have energized the campaign.
"Mitt Romney's vision for America is an opportunity society, where free people and free enterprise thrive and success is admired and emulated, not attacked," Romney campaign manager Matt Rhoades said in a statement.
Romney has also unleashed running mate Paul Ryan and several surrogates to help frame the economic debate as the campaign heads into the home stretch.
"Mitt Romney and I are not running to redistribute the wealth. Mitt Romney and I are running to help Americans create wealth," Ryan told supporters at a campaign stop in the battleground state of Virginia.
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