Obama campaign launches voter drive around gay marriage
President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, looking to tap support for the president’s embrace of same-sex marriage, launched a voter drive in key electoral states on Wednesday, saying a Mitt Romney presidency would be the “ultimate deal breaker” for proponents of “marriage equality.”
The campaign’s effort to mobilize lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgender voters and those who back their rights to wed is called “Obama Pride: LGBT Americans For Obama” and will combine on-the-ground operations in Pennsylvania, Colorado, Nevada, and Florida with an enhanced digital footprint.
“The President fights for our equality because he believes we are equal. Mitt Romney would fight against our equality because he believes we do not deserve it,” said Joe Solmonese, an Obama campaign co-chair and president of the Human Rights Campaign, an advocacy group. “We can not afford to go back.”
The campaign is highlighting Romney’s opposition to same-sex-marriage and his support of a federal amendment to the constitution that would define marriage as between one man and one woman. It’ll make its push during parades, phone banks, house parties, and other get-out-the-vote maneuvers.
Romney “has pledged to write discrimination into the Constitution of the United States,” Solmonese said, calling a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman the “ultimate deal breaker” for the LGBT community.
The campaign juxtaposed Romney’s public statements with the president’s legislative record, which includes ending the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that prevented gays from serving openly in the military and signing into law the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, making it a federal hate crime to assault people based on sexual orientation, gender, and gender identity.
The Democratic incumbent in early May became the first sitting president to embrace same-sex marriage, which analysts say is particularly important to voters under age 35, a voting bloc that helped lead Obama to the White House in 2008. The campaign immediately rallied around the shift, which sparked passionate debates and a money rush on both sides.
Washington Extra – The Pentagon and the poor
Never ones to shy away from a budget fight, the current crop of House Republicans pushed ahead with their latest deficit-reduction ideas – ones that weren’t exactly designed to win bipartisan support.
By throwing last summer’s delicately-crafted budget deal overboard, this updated plan mandates deeper cuts to social programs for the poor while adding money to military accounts. Food stamps, child tax credits and Medicaid healthcare would all feel the knife, while the Pentagon would escape all of the cuts that otherwise would begin triggering in January.
Nobody is under the illusion that Democrats will let this fly in the Senate. But the House Budget Committee maneuvering is an important exercise anyway as it gives an early glimpse at how a spending-cut debate could be waged at the end of this year – after the Nov. 6 presidential and congressional elections.
That debate will be shaped by the outcome of the vote. In the meantime, get ready for a lively conversation throughout the U.S. over how best to shrink the government’s economic footprint and tame huge budget deficits.
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Washington Extra – Moonshot no more
Earth calling Newt: When the biggest news of your presidential campaign is the penguin biting your hand at the zoo, it’s probably time to pack it in.
Even though Newt Gingrich’s odds of winning the Republican nomination were about as long as those of realizing his dream for a moon colony, the 68-year-old seemed to enjoy himself to the end. “I never got the sense that he was quote-unquote down,” said adviser Charlie Gerow. “I got the sense on a couple of occasions that he was tired. Really tired.” And really in debt. His campaign spent $4.3 million more than it brought in.
For all his offbeat ideas, Gingrich did bring a dose of seriousness to this campaign. With some stellar debate performances and a deep knowledge of politics and history, he probably made Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum study more and work harder to win support.
Members of the media, targets of some of his most vicious attacks, may not miss Newt much. But there’s no denying that, for the world of news, Gingrich was the gift that kept on giving, right up to his encounter with a penguin.
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US high court appears to back Arizona on immigration – Conservative justices who hold a majority on the Supreme Court appeared to endorse Arizona’s immigration crackdown, rejecting the Obama administration stance that the federal government has sole power over those who illegally enter the United States. During 80 minutes of oral arguments, the justices suggested by their questions and comments that states have significant latitude to adopt laws that discourage illegal immigrants from moving to and staying in the country. For more of this story by James Vicini and Joan Biskupic, read here.
Washington Extra – Gift of the gas
After negotiating a tricky stretch of road, the Obama campaign may be easing into the straightaway in the gas-driven presidential race.
News on Monday of a delay in the planned closure of the largest refinery on the East Coast could mean an end to skyrocketing gas prices. And that would effectively take the wind out of a forceful Republican line of attack — that the president is to be blamed for $4 a gallon gas, arguably the most visible price in the American economy today.
The narrative was working against the president, who currently gets some of his lowest poll marks for his handling of energy prices, even though the causes of higher prices are largely beyond his control. Even so, we shouldn’t expect the Republicans to simply drop the rhetoric.
“Until we are at the point where people don’t feel like they’re squeezing their entire paychecks into the gas tank, it’s an issue that Republicans are going to keep talking about,” said a Senate Republican aide.
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Signs of cheaper gas could brighten Obama campaign – New signs of lower gas prices could give a boost to President Obama’s re-election hopes and blunt a potent weapon that Republicans have used to attack him. News of a month long delay in the planned closure of the largest refinery on the East Coast was the latest indication sky-rocketing gasoline prices may have peaked. Industry experts say keeping Sunoco’s Philadelphia refinery open will ease supply concerns and help underpin a gradual decline in gasoline prices during the summer. For more of this story by Alister Bull, read here.
No privilege for most stay-at-home moms -poll
The recent flap over women voters — especially stay-at-home mothers — has sent both Republican and Democratic pundits scrambling and with good reason: many stay-at-home moms aren’t affiliated with either party and are a ripe target for swing votes, a new poll shows.
The survey from Gallup Inc also finds that moms who don’t work aren’t exactly a pampered lot, despite Ann Romney – the wife of a multi-millionaire businessman – being portrayed as their standard bearer. It found most moms who stay home are more economically disadvantaged than their working peers.
Women with more education and those with higher family incomes are far more likely to work after having children than lower-income women and those who have less schooling, the polling firm found.
“It does appear that stay-at-home mothers are more economically disadvantaged than working mothers, rather than more advantaged. And this may be directly related to education,” Gallup said in its poll released this week.
The dust-up over whether women who don’t work and instead stay home with their children are privileged arose last week when Democratic pundit Hilary Rosen made comments that seemed to criticize Ann Romney, whose husband Mitt is one of the wealthiest people to ever seek the U.S. presidency and who has never been employed outside her home.
According to Gallup, which interviewed more than 45,000 U.S. adult women over three months earlier this year, most mothers with children under age 18 work outside the home — 63 percent. Thirty-seven percent stay home.
The survey found 84 percent of moms with young kids who have postgraduate-level education also have a job along with 75 percent of college graduates and 66 percent of those with just some college coursework. That compares with 48 percent of those who have at most a high school education.
Washington Extra: Sayonara Santorum
It began and ended at a kitchen table in Pennsylvania. Rick Santorum’s improbable and surprisingly long run for the White House is over. But the Republican Party will feel the effects of this game-changing gambit cooked up in a kitchen for some time to come.
Santorum offered disgruntled voters true conservative credentials. He brought social issues and religious freedom to the forefront of the national debate. He made Mitt Romney work much harder for the nomination than expected, and lurch to the right in the process. His supporters may not go away quietly or fall behind Romney in lockstep.
Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, already put his demands out there: “If the Republican establishment hopes to generate this same voter intensity in the fall elections, Santorum voters must see it demonstrate a genuine and solid commitment to the core values issues.”
Santo said he was suspending his campaign – which could be interpreted as suspending it until 2015. Surely, he’ll be back. And meanwhile, he needs help covering his campaign debt. He asked today for “one more contribution of $25, $50, or $73.10.”
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The tunnel to political prominence
A new report on the controversy that helped launch New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to national prominence – and make him a vice-presidential contender – has reignited debate over one of the country’s most popular and polarizing Republicans.
A General Accounting Office report on Tuesday examined the impact of Christie’s decision in October 2010 to cancel a multibillion-dollar rail tunnel linking commuters in his state of New Jersey to midtown Manhattan.
Though the report didn’t reveal any secrets, it gave Christie’s supporters and opponents a new opportunity to define him: as either a maverick fiscal conservative fighting wasteful government, or as a political opportunist willing to trample working people for his political ends.
Christie backs Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney and is frequently mentioned as a possible vice-presidential candidate who could possibly move a Democratic-leaning state into the Republican column in November.
The $8.7 billion Hudson River tunnel project, also known as ARC, would have dug a new rail tunnel under the Hudson river, creating tens of thousands of jobs and meet growing demand for mass transit in the nation’s largest metropolitan area. New York, New Jersey and the U.S. government would have shared the costs.
But the potential for billions of dollars in cost overruns hung over the massive project, and New Jersey taxpayers would have been responsible for most of them.
Estimates varied for much the tunnel would ultimately cost. Christie assumed the most costly estimate in the report to justify its cancellation – and rounded up from $13.7 billion to $14 billion. In short, after the report, the facts remained the same, as did the political spin.
Perry attacks more conservative rivals, ignores Romney
Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s latest ads don’t even bother attacking Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney. With polls showing him in fifth place among Republicans in Iowa and seventh in New Hampshire, Perry’s aim is now to emerge as one of the top two conservative options to Romney.
To get there, he needs to knock off some of the other candidates polling immediately in front of him — which is why his latest TV ad in Iowa attacks Rep. Ron Paul, Rep. Michele Bachmann, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and ex-Sen. Rick Santorum, but doesn’t mention Romney.
“The fox guarding the hen house is like asking a congressman to fix Washington,” the ad’s narrator says. “Bad idea. Their years in Congress left us with debt and bailouts.”
Here’s the video, via RPerry2012/YouTube:
With Santorum seeing a boost in Iowa polls — a CNN/Time magazine poll yesterday found him in third place in Iowa, with 16 percent — Perry is doubling down on the former Pennsylvania congressman. In a new Iowa radio ad, which takes the format of a TV game show, Perry highlights Santorum’s record of supporting earmarked federal monies for his constituents:
“Who personally demanded more than $1 billion of earmarks in his 16 years in Congress?” a narrator asks. “Jay, from Ames?”
“Rick Santorum?” answers the fictitious Jay.
“Right,” the narrator says. “Santorum grabbed for a billion in earmarks, until voters kicked him out of office in a landslide.”
Watch a video version of the radio ad, courtesy of RPerry2012/YouTube:
New Hampshire paper, Huntsman launch fresh attacks on Ron Paul
New Hampshire’s largest newspaper, the Union Leader, suspended its attacks on former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney on Thursday to turn its editorial fire on Texas Rep. Ron Paul. The newspaper, which helped fuel Newt Gingrich’s rise in the polls in late November after it endorsed the former House speaker, published a front page editorial, titled “Ron Paul is truly dangerous,” criticizing Paul’s dovish views on Iran and the treatment of captured terror suspects. Paul’s views, in the words of publisher Joe McQuaid, are “warped” and “nuts.”
McQuaid writes:
Never mind Paul being the favored candidate of the lunatic fringe (see white supremacists, anti-Semites, truthers, etc.). Never mind his refusal to disavow a third-party run (which would only help President Obama’s reelection). His defenders say they admire Ron Paul’s “consistency.” It is true, Paul has been consistently spouting this nonsense. It is about time New Hampshire voters showed him the door.
Meanwhile, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who has staked his entire campaign on the Granite State but has seen Paul surge ahead of him in polls there, is out with a hard-hitting new ad highlighting some loony statements contained in Paul’s newsletters. Among them: a claim that Martin Luther King was a “pro-communist philanderer,” another claim suggesting “90 if not 95 percent of black males in [Washington, D.C.] are semi-criminal if not entirely criminal” and the suggestion of a “federal-homosexual cover-up of AIDS.” Paul has said he wasn’t the author of the controversial statements, which appeared in letters with names like Ron Paul’s Freedom Report, the Ron Paul Survival Report and the Ron Paul Investment Letter.
Watch Jon Huntsman’s new anti-Paul ad, “Unelectable”:
Credit: Jon2012HQ/YouTube
Hmmmmm ….. The slander has to match the character and that aint happening so, …. Like Ron Paul said before concerning this lie, ” IS THAT THE BEST YOU CAN DO ” ? …. P.S, What a waist of campaign money .
Gingrich attacks Romney, a week after promising a positive campaign
A week ago, Newt Gingrich vowed to follow Ronald Reagan’s famed “11th Commandment” and withhold attacks on fellow Republican candidates for president.
But last night his campaign e-mail blasted reporters a lengthy opposition sheet on former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, ripping Romney’s latest television ad, “Conservative Agenda.”
In the oppo sheet, the Gingrich campaign calls Romney “Mitt the Massachusetts Moderate” and highlights a number of his past, more moderate positions that may be at odds with his current stances. These include Romney’s health care reforms in Massachusetts, his support for universal health insurance and abortion rights, his vote for Democrat Paul Tsongas in his 1992 bid for president and his renunciation of the Reagan/Bush era.
“Can we trust a Massachusetts Moderate to enact a conservative agenda?” Newt 2012 Communications Director Joe DeSantis said in a statement. “Our campaign might have plenty of things to say about that, but the best response certainly comes from Mitt Romney himself [who in 2002 told a television reporter]:
“I think people recognize that I am not a partisan Republican. That I’m someone who is moderate, and that my views are progressive.”
Romney’s latest ad, airing in Iowa, is below. The Gingrich campaign’s opposition sheet on Romney follows.
Between Republicans and Democrats, it’s always the choice of the lesser of two evils.
Republicans are completely greedy, selfish, self-absorbed, money hungry party who would sell their own mother while Democrats are so fixated on “rights and freedoms” with no boundaries they are just completely immoral who would sleep with their own mother.