No Drama Obama’s Dramatic 2012 Reelection Campaign

The press liked to call their style No Drama Obama. 

It was a nice turn of phrase that matched the mood of the candidate in 2008. 

But that all changed with the reelection. The personal tensions started earlier and rapidly worsened. They fought in private and in the open. There was plenty of simmering, and often a high boil. The team of rivals rarely achieved a spirit of cooperation and seemed more inclined to bitter, dogged rivalries. 

There was a new actor in the campaign drama: Jim Messina. Obama convinced Messina to leave his political father, Sen. Max Baucus, by calling him the day after Hillary Clinton dropped out of the Democratic primary contest. The sales pitch was neither about hope nor change. “You’re really going to get to run a business,” Obama told Messina. 

Seven days later, Messina was in Chicago with control of the campaign staff and its budget. On his first day at work, David Plouffe handed him a list of half a dozen people.

“Fire them,” Plouffe said.

So he did. Messina would introduce himself to bemused staffers and ask them to visit his office for a second or two. That was the last conversation they would have with him at campaign headquarters. Other staffers might be unhappy at taking the ax to new coworkers; Messina was not one of them. He was in Chicago to bring some order to an operation that had outlived the structure of the primaries. If that meant he was unpopular, so be it.

Just five months after President Obama signed his historic health-​care reform into law, he shared his armored limo with Messina in Seattle, where they had traveled for an event to help reelect Sen. Patty Murray.

Via: The Daily Beast,

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OBAMA CAMPAIGN SCRAMBLES TO DISCREDIT ROMNEY'S 'JEEP' AD

President Barack Obama's campaign went apoplectic Monday over a commercial by Mitt Romney's campaign that alleges Chrysler, despite Obama's bailout, was sold to the Italian company Fiat that intends to build Jeeps in China. 

Obama's campaign manager Jim Messina said "everyone" just had to know the ad is false. And the campaign ran a commercial of its own trying to tear down Romney's commercial. Except Romney's commercial is correct. 

The New York Times reported Romney's commercial says, “Who will do more for the auto industry? Not Barack Obama.” The commercial continues: “Fact checkers confirm his attacks on Mitt Romney are false. Obama took G.M. and Chrysler into bankruptcy, and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China. Mitt Romney will fight for every American job.”

Via: Breitbart

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The Washington Times: The President’s Popularity Bubble Has Burst

Mitt Romney continues his surge in the polls two weeks after the first presidential debate. Democrats keep waiting for Barack Obama’s free-fall to stop, but the polling is looking less like a fleeting bounce than a strong market correction.

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Bounces are temporary. What goes up comes down. They are the products of momentary enthusiasm, like the national-convention spike enjoyed by both sides. Mr. Romney’s rise since the Oct. 3 debate has been more durable. It’s more like what happens when artificially inflated prices dramatically change course. In this case, the Obama bubble — which had been gathering steam the previous weeks — suddenly and dramatically burst.

President Obama remains in a state of denial and maintains electoral prosperity is just around the corner. “What’s important is the fundamentals of what this race is about haven’t changed,” he chirped last week. To the contrary, the fundamentals are driving his numbers down. Economic growth is shrinking. Jobs are scarce. Mr. Obama has amassed two times the federal debt in one term that President George W. Bush did in two terms. These are the inconvenient truths that have driven the correction in the polls. Mr. Romney’s debate performance was the catalyst for Mr. Obama’s collapse, but the ruinous economic reality has kept the Democrat’s downslide going.

The Obama contraction has been most dramatic in battleground states. Three weeks ago, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said, “There are two different campaigns, one in the battlegrounds and one everywhere else. That’s why the national polls aren’t relevant to this campaign.” At the time, the political operative might have had a point. Many poll-aggregation sites showed a steady state-by-state run-up for Mr. Obama. Those charts now show dramatic contractions, wiping out months of gains overnight. It’s a classic correction curve.

Via: The Washington Times

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Obama Campiagn: Messina: Forget The Tied National Polls, We're Winning

Obama campaign manager Jim Messina told reporters on Saturday that despite national tracking polls showing the president and Romney tied, Obama is still winning.

"In all the battleground states, we continue to see all our pathways there," he told the White House pool at an Obama fundraiser in Milwaukee. "We're either tied or in the lead in every battleground state 45 days out."

Messina, who drove from Chicago to Wisconsin to be with Obama on his first trip to a state that appears to have come into play when Paul Ryan was selected to be Romney's running mate, predicted that the national polling will get even closer, but that the president's lead will hold in key swing states.

"I think you will see a tightening in the national polls going forward," he said. "What I care way more about it Ohio, Colorado, Virginia, Wisconsin, etc. In those states, I feel our pathways to victory are there. There are two different campaigns, one in the battlegrounds and one everywhere else. That's why the national polls aren't relevant to this campaign."

In Wisconsin, Messina said the GOP is stronger than they are nationally, but maintained that the Obama campaign still has an edge

"This is one where ... because of the recall election, they test drove their car whereas in other states they haven't. It would make sense they're strong here, as are we. They are stronger than McCain was in '08, no question, on the ground. But we continue to have a strategic advantage" because of more field offices and infrastructure.

UPDATE: Romney Political Director Rich Beeson sends this statement in response to Messina:

“Governor Romney is seeing strong support across all the battleground states, including those President Obama won with close to double digit margins or more. We’ve had more people come out to knock on doors and make phone calls in support of Governor Romney because they understand we can’t afford four more years of policies that increase our debt, don’t create jobs, and have people working more for less. It’s why we now see states like Wisconsin, which Republicans haven’t won since 1984, now in play.”

Via: Buzz Feed

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Obama cuts Medicare more than Romney would

To borrow a phrase from President Reagan, there they go again.

As soon as Mitt Romney announced Congressman Paul Ryan as his vice presidential running mate the Democrats again started with their debunked and discredited MediScare campaign. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee called Ryan “the architect of the Republican plan to kill Medicare” in a fundraising message sent by DCCC Executive Director Robby Mook. A false charge that the left-leaning Politifact called the 2011 “lie of the year.”

As pointed out by The Washington Examiner’s Joel Gehrke, Politifact rebuked Democrats for engaging in such scare tactics:

“A complicated and wonky subject with life-or-death consequences, health care is fertile ground for falsehoods,” the fact checker said. “The Democratic attack about ‘ending Medicare’ was a pervasive line in 2011 that preyed on seniors’ worries about whether they could afford health care.”

The Democrats didn’t stop there. Obama spokesman Jim Messina said Ryan’s plan “would end Medicare as we know it by turning it into a voucher system, shifting thousands of dollars in health care costs to seniors.” That is no more true than the DCCC’s MediScare claim. As explained by Avik Roy, the Wyden-Ryan plan would only apply to Americans younger than 55 years of age, and gives those younger individuals the option of remaining in the traditional Medicare program, or choosing a comparable private-sector insurance plan.

Via: RedState

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