The Metrosexual Abe Lincoln

++The right always blamed John McCain for not waging the "proper" campaign against President Obama in 2008. They urged more ads about Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers against then Senator Obama. Now they want to run it right. With SuperPacs springing up galore their dream may come true. The owner of the Chicago Cubs, a billionaire, reportedly considered an ad campaign against President Obama calling him a "Metrosexual Abe Lincoln". The 50 page plus memorandum outlining the ad campaign acknowledged that it could stir up some backlash. The thesis is that Rev. Wright was President Obama's mentor and therefore Obama can not make the right decisions for the country because he believes America is evil and wrong. This theme has run through the last three years as Republican candidate after candidate claimed that President Obama always apologized for America's actions and that President Obama did not believe in American exceptionalism. Word of this campaign proposed by a Republican operative who had worked on the McCain campaign today and now the sponsor retracted the idea. Naturally, the Obama campaign fund-raised over the news of a racist campaign and cut a short video outlining the plot.


++Mitt Romney had gently suggested that this campaign was wrong-headed but reporters asked him about his own remarks about President Obama and Jeremiah Wright on the Sean Hannity Show. He said that he didn't remembered them but he stood by them. In effect, he argued the same thing as the premise of the ads--President Obama is not a real American because he was under the influence of the "black liberation theology" of Jeremiah Wright.


++A side story to the latest Jeremiah Wright flap is that Wright has been organizing black counter-weights to the new black evangelical pastors who are preaching the "Gospel of Prosperity". 


++I thought the Wright ads might provoke a counter ad "Who is the Real Patriot?" This would contrast Wright's service in the Navy and LBJ crediting him with saving his life during one of his heart attacks to one presidential candidate who has no veterans in six generations of his family, whose fortune is in foreign banks, who has been a bishop of a cult that had a vow of vengeance against the United States until the late 1920s and who believes Jews can never get into heaven. With such attacks, you open the whole Mormon issue, which has been swept under the rug during the whole campaign. Naturally the Obama people won't do such a thing--too bad I would enjoy it.


++Karl Rove's America in the Cross-Hairs SuperPac launched a $24 million ad campaign against Obama claiming he broke several campaign promises. The Obama campaign immediately responded with a point by point refutation of the ad. One key element in the ad comes from Rove's concern that Obama has the advantage in the tax debate.The polling data shows that is true. He claims in the ad that Obama broke his pledge to cut middle-class taxes. This has been effective in the 2010 congressional elections. The fact is that President Obama and the Democrats really did cut middle-class taxes. This is one thing the Democrats will have to be on the watch for. There is a general public perception that taxes have actually risen over the past three years. False.


++Willard Romney launched an ad on the unemployed, which he could care less about. The problem was the character in the ad was a felon, who had been arrested 20 times over the years in Iowa. So wags raised the question whether President Obama should be responsible for getting this man a job.


++Romney tried to compare Bain creating 100,000 jobs to Obama losing 100,000 jobs in the auto bailout. Romney has been stuck trying to get out of the Bain attacks and trying to turn Obama's auto bailout plus into some kind of negative. For accuracy sake, Romney's own ads in his Senate race against Ted Kennedy claimed that his years at Bain created only 10,000 jobs. The attack on Obama is an old saw from the early days of the auto bailout when Republicans on the Hill claimed that auto dealerships were going out of business because they were not included in the deal. Always a murky and disputed point, somehow becomes a major talking point of a presidential candidate.


++Romney is really bugged by the Obama campaign's Bain ads. He is rattled. He called them "really off-target" and a "distraction". But he was greeted in Miami yesterday by ads in the local papers asking him why so many jobs were destroyed by Bain in Florida. As a result,his campaign refused to allow reporters to ask him questions during the daily events.


++Meanwhile in Ohio, Joe Biden went all working-class hero in a speech best titled "They don't Understand us" , which was a thumping recital of Romney's economic views and how any positive toward the middle class from any of his actions is accidental because he only cares about the rich. Biden got into thumping Romney's brag of claiming credit for the auto bailout. "That's like me getting credit for the landing on the moon." Note: 11% of Americans actually believe Romney had something to do with it.


++Romney has tried a new trick--he is taking the national debt clock around the country and naturally blaming President Obama for the national debt and saying the President hasn't done anything about it. In fact, much to Paul Krugman's chagrin, President Obama cut $1 trillion in programs and saved another with his healthcare reform and has $5 trillion in savings over the next 10 years. But the Democrats are slow in responding to Romney's charges. All they have to do is point out how the Romney and Ryan plans vastly increase the debt and give more tax breaks ti the super wealthy. This is an area where the Obama campaign needs to go on the offensive in a very specific way.


++A large plurality of Americans actually support Romney's plan for another 20% tax cut. What no one points out is how this distorts the already threatening inequality of wealth in the country and also how this vastly increases the national debt. It is still true that Republicans as a party really, honestly believe that tax cuts do not affect government revenues.


++Meanwhile in Washington,D.C. the Tan Man Boehner is making noises about another debt ceiling debate. Again, he argued for budget cuts but no additional new revenues. Timothy Geitner doesn't know what he's talking about since the debt ceiling issue doesn't come up until January of next year. Of course, it is all election year hijinks. 


++A last sobering thought. If there had not been the government budget cuts, the unemployment rate would be 7.1% today.