Showing posts with label 2008. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2008. Show all posts

Friday, July 26, 2013

Krauthammer’s Take: Voter-ID Laws ‘Utterly Logical’

Charles Krauthammer defended the constitutionality of voter-ID laws and criticized Attorney General Eric Holder for seeking to re-establish Justice Department review of Texas election law under the Voting Rights Act. “It seems utterly logical that you would have to ask for a simple demonstration that you are of age, that you live where you live, you aren’t a felon, and in fact that you haven’t voted an hour and a half before,” Krauthammer said.

The syndicated columnist also argued that case law is on the side of the states; he referred specifically to the 2008 Supreme Court case Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, in which a six-justice majority led by John Paul Stevens found that an Indiana law requiring voters to show an official photo ID was not unconstitutional. “What Holder is doing is, he wants to stigmatize [mandatory voter ID] and to go after any state that actually institutes it,” Krauthammer said, adding, “I think he’s got a very weak case.”

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Eleven Major Newspapers Switch To Romney, Only One To Obama


According to the University of California, Santa Barbara American Presidency Project study of the top 100 newspaper editorial endorsements, Mitt Romney has seen a vast wave of switches from 2008 Obama endorsers. Obama, meanwhile, has seen only one newspaper that endorsed John McCain come around to endorse him. At the same time, many newspapers have also switched from Obama to “no endorsement.”

Here are the stats. As of today, 11 newspapers that endorsed Obama in 2008 have now endorsed Mitt Romney:
  • The New York Daily News;
  • Long Island Newsday;
  • Houston Chronicle;
  • Fort Worth Star-Telegram;
  • Orlando Sentinel;
  • Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel;
  • Nashville Tennessean;
  • Des Moines Register;
  • Illinois Daily Herald;
  • Los Angeles Daily News;
  • Los Angeles Press-Telegram.
The only newspaper that endorsed McCain in 2008 and has switched to Obama now is the San Antonio Express-News. Meanwhile, another seven papers that endorsed Obama in 2008 have switched to no endorsement.

Friday, November 2, 2012

BIG MO: RYAN TO MINNESOTA SUNDAY


This morning, the Romney campaign announced that Paul Ryan would go to Minnesota on Sunday for a pre-election campaign rally. Its a clear sign that the Romney campaign thinks Minnesota is winnable.  Where campaigns spend their time in the closing days of a race says much more about their view of the election than words repeated by campaign flacks. Candidates' time is a campaign's most precious resource, and it is deployed only if it's needed or can have an impact. 

You don't waste a candidate's time on a bluff in the final 48 hours. 
Last night, the campaign announced that Mitt Romney would go to Philadelphia on Sunday for a campaign rally. It is telling that both Romney and Ryan are spending some of the campaign's final hours in a bid for states that haven't voted GOP for president in decades. 
The Obama campaign has dismissed this as a sign the Romney campaign is "flailing." Yet, they have matched the GOP ads buys in the state and have dispatched Biden and Clinton to Pennsylvania and Minnesota. They have to be at least somewhat concerned that Romney could steal these states from them if they don't respond. That's a tell. So to that end, Obama will spend this weekend doing at least five events in Wisconsin and Iowa, two states he won by double-digits in 2008. 
Remember, in the closing days of the 2008, Obama devoted lots of time to states that had traditionally voted Republican. That wasn't a campaign "flailing", but rather one riding a wave of momentum and deep dissatisfaction with the Bush Administration. 
We'll know Tuesday if Romney will be able to repeat history.

Shift in proportion of white, minority vote could decide Obama-Romney race


The ethnic mix of this year’s electorate could decide the winner of the race between President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
It’s a reality that gives both campaigns sleepless nights, since a shift of a percentage point or two in the turnout of any major racial group could swing the outcome on Nov. 6.
For Obama, the question is whether he can limit his losses among white voters — and whether minority turnout will remain strong enough for him to emerge victorious.
Romney’s challenge is to hold down his deficit among Hispanic voters, hope that black turnout does not match or even exceed 2008 levels, and pull out all the stops to push white turnout high enough to win.
According to exit polls from 2008, Obama lost the white vote to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) by 12 percentage points (43 to 55 percent). But Obama won black voters overwhelmingly (95 to 4 percent) and Hispanic voters by more than a two-to-one margin (67 to 31 percent).
The downward pressure on Obama’s poll numbers among whites is clear. But polls, even from the same organization, disagree about its extent.
Washington Post/ABC News tracking poll from Oct. 25 put Obama’s shortfall among whites at 23 percentage points (37 to 60 percent), a finding that sparked confidence from Republicans and inspired dread among Democrats.
The most recent iteration of the same tracking poll, however, found the margin to be 5 percentage points tighter, with Romney leading, 57 to 39 percent.
Given that whites represent about three-quarters of all voters, that 5-point shift would equate to a 3.75-point change in the overall national result — more than enough to produce a completely different winner.


Tuesday, October 30, 2012

GALLUP: OBAMA'S EARLY VOTE ADVANTAGE COLLAPSES 22-POINTS OVER 2008

My pal Guy Benson found a juicy nugget that helps to bring more clarity to the news from Gallup yesterday that shows Romney leading Obama in the early vote by a full seven points, 52-45%. Almost exactly four years ago (October 28, 2008),  according to Gallup, Obama was massacring John McCain among early voters with a fifteen-point lead, 55-40%. That means, at least according to Gallup, that Obama's early vote advantage has dropped 22 points when compared to '08.
Benson also notes that the percentage of voters who have or intend to vote early was 33% in 2008 and remains at 33% today. As Don Surber said in this tweet, "People don't wait in line to vote for the status quo[.]"
In his email to me, Benson makes The Point: "Obama had a 55/40 lead on McCain with early voters in '08, but only led by 3 pts with the election day crowd.  He ended up winning by 7 overall."
In other words, among those who actually voted on Election Day, Obama's advantage over McCain was only three points. Obama won by seven overall because of the early vote margins he had accumulated. If Gallup is correct about 2012 and Romney being ahead by seven with early voters, that means Obama's in very deep trouble. Even polls that show Obama with a small lead in states like Ohio confirm Romney will win among those who vote on Election Day.
Like me, Benson is skeptical of Gallup because, like its daily tracker that gives Romney a five point lead over Obama nationally, this early voting poll defies the CorruptMedia's conventional wisdom. But there are a few things you have to keep in mind.

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Virtual tie in … Minnesota?


I’d be the first to tell people that my state is a quadrennial sucker bet for Republicans.  In 2008, no one thought we had a prayer, but in 2000 and 2004, Republicans actually thought they had a chance to break the Democrats’ presidential winning streak, as the state last went to the GOP in 1972.  I’ve been hearing Republicans get optimistic here again, but I’ve been highly skeptical of the prospects for Mitt Romney to even get close here.
As the presidential race tightens across the country, a new Star Tribune Minnesota Poll has found that it is narrowing here as well, with President Obama holding a 3-point lead and Republican Mitt Romney making gains in the state.
The poll shows Obama with support from 47 percent of likely voters and Romney earning backing from 44 percent — a lead within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
Last month, Obama had an 8-percentage point advantage in the Minnesota Poll. Romney has apparently cut into the Democrat’s advantage among women since then and picked up support from Minnesotans who were previously undecided or said they would vote for a third-party candidate.
Independents, on the other hand, are leaning more toward Obama. Barely a third supported him last month, but that number has grown to 43 percent. Romney’s support among independents remains virtually unchanged, with 13 percent of that group remaining undecided.
Bear in mind that this is the Star Tribune’s Minnesota Poll, which has a long and (un)glorious history of leftward tilt.  Mitch Berg has long documented this trend.  One has to wonder whether we’ll need to send paramedics to his house this morning after he reads Rachel Stassen=Berger’s report from the survey.
Snark aside, this looks like a relatively solid poll.  The sample is D+5, with a D/R/I of 38/33/29.  In 2008 when Obama won by 10 points, it was D+4 at 40/36/22, and I suspect that Republicans are going to be more motivated this time around. Obama wins the core counties in the Twin Cities, but only by a relatively weak 57/35.  Romney wins the Metro suburbs with a majority 51/39 and edges Obama 46/44 in the rest of the state.
In 2008, Obama had a 19-point edge in the gender gap, +3 among men and +16 among women.  This time, Obama has only a +1 — he’s up 14 among women but down 13 among men.  Obama still leads by 6 among independents, which he won by 17 points in 2008, but he’s only got 43%.  Late breakers are not likely to flow to the incumbent at this stage of the election; if the were inclined to support Obama, they’d already be in his corner now.
That’s true of the overall number as well. If Obama can only get to 47% in the Star Tribune poll with nine days left to go before the election in Minnesota, which has gone Democrat every presidential election over the last four years, this state is in play — and that’s why both campaigns are suddenly starting to spend money here.

Thursday, October 25, 2012

The Least Shocking Endorsement Of All-Tima: WaPo Backs Obama…


(CNN) – The Washington Post announced in an editorial Thursday their endorsement of President Barack Obama.

The Post, which also endorsed then-Illinois Sen. Obama in 2008, said that while much of the campaign for the White House has “dwelt on the past,” Obama is in a better position to lead in the challenges that lie ahead.

The Washington-based newspaper, whose editorial page leans left, said their endorsement comes recognizing disappointments in Obama’s first term but said the president “is committed to the only approach that can succeed: a balance of entitlement reform and revenue increases.”

The editorial contrasts this with what it said is Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s future – “one in which an ever-greater share of the nation’s wealth resides with the nation’s wealthy, at a time when inequality already is growing.”

The Post notes dissatisfaction that Obama failed to reach a fiscal deal with Congress in 2011, the president’s isolation “inside a tight White House circle” as well as his attitude toward business as an “obstacle rather than a partner.”


Romney by a landslide


A deeply troubled and deeply troubling administration that will do anything, no matter how cynical and venal, to protect its hold on power


When it comes to predicting the outcome of presidential races most pundits refuse to go out on a limb in predicting probable outcomes. Let’s face it; it’s a risky business that could leave one’s face covered with egg. However, in the case of the current election I will happily stick my neck out and risk being seen as a blowhard who believes himself up to predicting the future.

n a word, I predict a Romney landslide and here’s why: despite the fact that the famous 47% who to whatever degree depend on the government for their daily bread is expected to look for more of the same, I believe that if this percentage could have their druthers, they’d opt for having a well-paying job that left them self-sufficient, rather than dependent on the government.

I think that at some level most people in America understand that socialization would result in an overall lower standard of living. I also believe that despite all the class envy and hatred that’s been ginned up against the 1% by this administration, there is a basic understanding that private business, not the government, creates wealth. In my experience, most Americans understand that socialism doesn’t so much “spread the wealth” as it imposes equal degrees of misery.

Obama has incurred close to $6 trillion in new debt through deficit spending, the majority of which has gone to “stimulate” the economy. Counting the massive $821 billion stimulus bill and several additional stimulus bills and three Quantitative Easing initiatives (that’s government speak for printing extra money), the net effect has been that the American economy remains in the doldrums with unemployment in real terms approaching 15%. But even that failure might be forgiven if Obama hadn’t taken his role as messiah so seriously and make grandiloquent promises that could never be kept. I recall writing in these pages on November 11, 2008:

Pennsylvania Ripe for the Picking


Pennsylvania is approaching the Nov. 6 presidential election with 3 percent fewer registered voters than in fall 2008, an unusual slip that political analysts blame on a drop in voter enthusiasm across the country.
Democrats especially experienced a slump, bleeding 229,396 registered voters in Pennsylvania since the last presidential race, state data show. Republicans are down 112,796 registrants, but voters unconnected to either major party grew by 7 percent, or 73,043, according to Pennsylvania Department of State figures. As of Monday the state had 8,487,093 voters, down from 8,755,588 in November 2008, despite a 2 percent population gain. Democrats still hold a 50-37 percentage registration edge over Republicans, down one point from 2008.
The registration deadline for the election was Oct. 9.
“This year, we don’t have such a sense that this election is going to make history the way we did in 2008,” said Pat Dunham, chairwoman of the political science department at Duquesne University. “Enthusiasm in general may have dampened a little. Three-and-a-half years after electing Barack Obama, we see it’s not that easy to change things. ”
For Democrats in particular, “there’s not the same excitement” as four years ago, when the party tallied thousands of registrations, said political analyst Geoffrey Skelley of the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
“There are probably no states that have had incredible increases in voter registration” this time, Skelley said.
Swing states that are losing that status may experience declines in voter registration when candidate visits and advertising shift to areas more in play, political scientists said.
Pennsylvania, which typically votes Democrat for presidents, joined Michigan, Indiana and Missouri to become less of a swing state, said Keystone College professor Jeff Brauer.
Via: Trib Live

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BARACK IN TIME: “Man, This Is The Same Guy”


Obama Claims He Is The Same Guy He Was 10 Years Ago, But His Words Tell A Different Story


Obama: “You Could Take A Videotape Of Things I Said 10 Years Ago, 12 Years Ago And You Would Say, Man This Is The Same Guy.” OBAMA: “And you know what? You can — like this guy right here who I served with in the United States Senate, George Shadid. And you know, you could take a videotape of things I said 10 years ago, 12 years ago and you would say, man this is the same guy.” (President Barack Obama, Remarks At A Campaign Event, Davenport, IA, 10/24/12)

IN 2008, OBAMA CALLED ADDING $4 TRILLION TO THE DEBT “UNPATRIOTIC”


In 2008, Obama Said Adding $4 Trillion To The National Debt Was “Irresponsible” And “Unpatriotic.” OBAMA: “The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents – number 43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.” (Sen. Barack Obama, Remarks At A Campaign Event, Fargo, ND, 7/3/08)\

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

NYT: Obama’s Aura of Defeat

In an argument that was echoed and amplified around the liberal twittersphere yesterday, New York’s Jonathan Chait made the case that the Romney campaign has bluffed the press into covering the last two weeks of the campaign as though Obama’s losing. Like George W. Bush in 2000, who famously (and probably foolishly) campaigned in California to lend himself an air of inevitability in the closing days of the campaign, Team Romney’s current brash confidence is designed to persuade the media to overlook the underlying numbers that still point to an advantage for the incumbent. And it’s working, Chait argues: The “widespread perception that Romney is pulling ahead,” he writes, “is Romney’s campaign suckering the press corps with a confidence game.”
I agree with Chait that the numbers still show Obama with a slightly clearer path than Romney to an (excruciatingly narrow) electoral college victory. But if you’re looking for a reason (besides, of course, the national polling showing an ever-so-slight Romney edge) why the media narrative has tilted toward the Republicans over the last week or so, I think the Romney campaign’s guarantee of victory has mattered much less than the Obama campaign’s recent aura of defeat.
Losing campaigns have a certain feel to them: They go negative hard, try out new messaging very late in the game, hype issues that only their core supporters are focused on, and try to turn non-gaffes and minor slip-ups by their opponents into massive, election-turning scandals. Think of John McCain’s desperate hope that elevating Joe the Plumber would change the shape of the 2008 race, and you have the template for how tin-eared and desperate a losing presidential campaign often sounds — and ever since the first debate cost Obama his air of inevitability, he and his surrogates have sounded more like McCain did with Joe the Plumber than like a typical incumbent president on his way to re-election. A winning presidential campaign would not normally be hyping non-issues like Big Bird and “binders full of women” in its quest for a closing argument, or rolling out a new spin on its second-term agenda with just two weeks left in the race, or pushing so many advertising chips into dishonest attacks on its rival’s position on abortion. A winning presidential campaign would typically be talking about the issues that voters cite as most important — jobs, the economy, the deficit — rather than trying to bring up Planned Parenthood and PBS at every opportunity. A winning presidential campaign would not typically have coined the term “Romnesia,” let alone worked it into their candidate’s speeches.
Via: New York Times

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Monday, October 22, 2012

IPT: Scores of Radical Islamists Made Hundreds of Visits to the Obama White House


A year-long investigation by the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) has found that scores of known radical Islamists made hundreds of visits to the Obama White House, meeting with top administration officials.
Court documents and other records have identified many of these visitors as belonging to groups serving as fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and other Islamic militant organizations.
The IPT made the discovery combing through millions of White House visitor log entries. IPT compared the visitors' names with lists of known radical Islamists. Among the visitors were officials representing groups which have:
  • Been designated by the Department of Justice as unindicted co-conspirators in terrorist trials; Extolled Islamic terrorist groups including Hamas and Hizballah;
  • Obstructed terrorist investigations by instructing their followers not to cooperate with law enforcement;
  • Promoted the incendiary conspiratorial allegation that the United States is engaged in a "war against Islam"— a leading tool in recruiting Muslims to carry out acts of terror;
  • Repeatedly claimed that many of the Islamic terrorists convicted since 9-11 were framed by the U.S government as part of an anti-Muslim profiling campaign.
Individuals from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) visited the White House at least 20 times starting in 2009. In 2008, CAIR was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorist money laundering case in U.S. history – the trial of the Holy Land Foundation in which five HLF officials were convicted of funneling money to Hamas.
U.S. District Court Judge Jorge Solis later ruled that, "The Government has produced ample evidence to establish the association" of CAIR to Hamas, upholding their designations as unindicted co-conspirators. In 2008, the FBI formally ended all contact with CAIR because of its ties to Hamas.

Sunday, October 7, 2012

TEAM OBAMA BLAMES JOHN KERRY FOR DEBATE LOSS


The Obama campaign has been reeling since losing the first Presidential debate of this election cycle in front of 67 million viewers.  They've tried--and thus far failed--to craft a narrative to explain away the debacle in Denver.  Previously, we reported to you that Obama Senior Advisor David Plouffe, who ran the President's successful 2008 campaign, (falsely) accused Mitt Romney of lying.  In a rare comedic moment from the typically robotic former Vice President Al Gore, he suggested on Current TV that the Mile High City's altitude was the reason Obama was low on energy and enthusiasm.  And, of course, Obama's chronically dishonest deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter and several others passed the buck to the moderator, Jim Lehrer. None of the above caught on, even with the mainstream pro-Obama media. 

Now the Obama Administration is floating their latest excuse: that the campaign, particularly John Kerry (who played the role of Romney in simulated debates), did not channel Mitt's aggression enough.
From CBS's "This Morning":
Norah O'Donnell: "Some Democrats say [Obama's] campaign needs a wake-up call.  Bill Plante is here with that part of the story.  Bill, you've been talking to your sources; what are they saying?
Correspondent Bill Plante: "Well Norah, they're simply upset and really outraged.  They blame the President's team, first of all, for not preparing him to meet the challenge of an aggressive Mitt Romney.  They say that nobody in the room challenged him, including the guy that he was debating with, John Kerry, because, as they say, he wants to be Secretary of State so he's not going to get in the President's face. And Presidents are used to deference; they're not used to people challenging them like that.  So they think that the debate prep was terrible, but they also fault the President himself for not understanding that Romney was going to be more aggressive."
The 2012 Obama campaign continues to be a stark contrast from their 2008 effort.  In 2008, then Senator Obama used youthful ebullience, soaring rhetoric, and a precise campaign infrastructure to capture the hearts and minds of the American people.  In 2012, the President seems increasingly lethargic and quick to make excuses for missteps on the campaign trail.
What once was "Hope and Change" is now "Mope and Blame," and this time it's John Kerry under the President's bus.

REPUBLICAN YOUTH VOLUNTEERS HIT THE ROAD IN SWING STATES


The Republican National Committee is deploying as many grassroots supporters as it can to go door-to-door for the Republican presidential ticket in three swing states, starting this weekend.
“Deploy to Ohio, Virginia, or North Carolina to knock on doors and make phone calls for Romney-Ryan 2012 and other Republican candidates,” reads the flyer for the Republican National Committee Swing State Bus Deployment.
The Republican campaign effort for this election cycle has vastly outpaced that for previous presidential elections. This year, volunteers for the Republican National Committee have made nearly 5 times more phone calls than in Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)’s 2008 campaign for president, according to a statement from Kirsten Kukowski, Communications Director for the RNC.
“We’ve already contacted more voters than both the 2004 and 2008 cycles and we still have 5 weeks left,” she said.
The bus deployment that starts this weekend is part of the larger Get Out the Vote ground game, she said.
Keegan Conway, a recent college graduate volunteering at the RNC headquarters, hopes to make the cut for this weekend’s bus trip to North Carolina, he said.
“I’d be going with another intern from the office and some of my friends at the phone bank,” he said.
Conway came to Washington from California’s Central Valley 3 months ago to educate people about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s message, he said.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Was Obama Rattled By Looming Donor Scandal?…


President Obama's reelection campaign, rattled by his Wednesday night debate performance, could be in for even worse news. According to knowledgeable sources, a national magazine and a national web site are preparing a blockbuster donor scandal story.
Sources told Secrets that the Obama campaign has been trying to block the story. But a key source said it plans to publish the story Friday or, more likely, Monday.
According to the sources, a taxpayer watchdog group conducted a nine-month investigation into presidential and congressional fundraising and has uncovered thousands of cases of credit card solicitations and donations to Obama and Capitol Hill, allegedly from unsecure accounts, and many from overseas. That might be a violation of federal election laws.
The Obama campaign has received hundreds of millions in small dollar donations, many via credit card donations through their website. On Thursday, the campaign announced a record September donor haul of $150 million.
At the end of the 2008 presidential campaign, the Obama-Biden effort was hit with a similar scandal. At the time, the Washington Post reported that the Obama campaign let donors use "largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor's identity."

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

FLASHBACK: JournoList plotted to kill Jeremiah Wright story in 2008


Now that The Daily Caller has uncovered and published video of President Barack Obama’s “other race speech,” liberal media figures are once again trying to quell coverage of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright story — just like in 2008.
Records obtained by TheDC in mid-2010 showed that “at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate,” after ABC News’ Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos asked then-Sen. Obama about his controversial reverend during an April 2008 debate.
“Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage,” TheDC’s Jonathan Strong reported.
Among those who were uncovered to be part of the plan to quell Wright coverage were Richard Kim of the Nation, Michael Tomasky of the Guardian, Thomas Schaller of the Baltimore Sun, Holly Yeager of the Columbia Journalism Review, Slate magazine contributor David Greenberg, columnist Joe Conason, Chris Hayes of the Nation, and Spencer Ackerman — then of the Washington Independent.
Strong reported that Ackerman even once “urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, ‘Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.’”
Before TheDC even released this new video, the Democratic Party tried to discredit it by citing JournoList members like the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein and Ben Smith — now the editor of BuzzFeed but formerly of Politico — commenting on the video before they had seen it.
Via: Daily Caller

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Monday, September 24, 2012

Blamer-In-Chief: I Bear “Full Responsibility For Everything”…


(CNN) – President Barack Obama discussed his frustration with gridlock in Washington, saying his "biggest disappointment" in his nearly four years in office has been the failure to oversee change in the nation's political climate.
"My biggest disappointment is that we haven't changed the tone in Washington as much as I would have liked," Obama said in a CBS News interview that aired Sunday.
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Asked if he bears any blame for the stalemate, Obama said the buck stops at his desk.
"I think that, you know, as president I bear responsibility for everything, to some degree," he said on CBS' "60 Minutes."
Throughout the presidential campaign, Mitt Romney's campaign and Obama’s critics have dogged the president for failing to get certain legislation passed in recent years, while Team Obama responds by faulting congressional Republicans for not compromising.
The tension has especially heightened as Congress faces a looming, end-of-the-year deadline to avoid the "fiscal cliff," a massive amount of tax hikes and spending cuts set to take place at the beginning of 2013 if Congress fails to act. Lawmakers on both sides have already showed signs of firm partisan division on the issue.
Obama's comments aired days after the president drew criticism from Romney over separate remarks about change in Washington, comments that suggested a slight tweak in Obama's 2008 ideals of "hope" and "change."

Monday, September 17, 2012

'THE HOPE AND THE CHANGE' MOVIE TO AIR ON BROADCAST, CABLE TV


"The Hope and the Change,” the movie about Democrats and independents who voted for President Barack Obama in 2008 and will not do so in 2012, will air on a dozen television stations this fall leading up to the presidential election, Citizens United announced on Monday.  

Citizens United produced the film and has struck a deal to begin airing the movie on six broadcast stations and six cable stations beginning Tuesday on HDNet and through November’s presidential election. It will reach 130 million households and air on broadcast stations in Indiana, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Hawaii, and Colorado. The movie will air on cable channels such as FamilyNet, Rural TV, and HDNet movies. 
Sean Hannity said “The Hope and the Change” was the “most powerful documentary” he had “ever seen,” and the movie could only be produced because of the Supreme Court decision that did not place limits on political speech. 
“It is important to note that these distribution opportunities would have been against the law a mere three years ago. This is why I went to the United States Supreme Court – to fight for the right to produce a political documentary,” said Producer David N. Bossie. “’The Hope and The Change exposes the hard truth that many Democrats and independents are suffering at the hands of President Obama’s failed policies, and we will aggressively market this film so Americans can finally have an unfiltered conversation they deserve."
Stephen K. Bannon, who directed the film, said “the ability to reach 130 million American cumulative households with this historic deal is astonishing.”
“The power of the film comes from the collective unscripted and unrehearsed voices of the participants - ordinary Americans from every walk of life - who broke through the white noise of political speak,” Bannon said. 
Pat Caddell, the former Jimmy Carter adviser who helped conduct the film’s focus groups of Reagan Democrats from swing states like Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Colorado, said “this documentary gives real voice to ordinary Americans, Democrats and independents, who are, until now, unheard and ignored by the political class and mainstream media.”
“The power of these 2008 Obama voters comes from the fact that they were unscripted and spoke from their hearts,” Caddell said. 

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