President Descends to Periscope Depth: Obama's Increasingly Desperate Campaign Tactics "Plumb New Low"
August 8th, 2012
President Descends to Periscope Depth: Obama's Increasingly Desperate Campaign Tactics "Plumb New Low"
Published on August 8th, 2012 @ 09:53:02 am , using 574 words
Barack Obama was accused of plumbing a "new low" in campaign tactics, as allies suggested Mitt Romney was partly to blame for a woman's death.
UK Daily Mail
By Jon Swaine, WashingtonThe President meanwhile labelled him a "Romney Hood" who would rob from poor Americans.
Priorities USA Action, a campaign group backing Mr Obama, released an advertisement in which a steelworker said his wife died from cancer with no health insurance after his factory was closed by Bain Capital, the private equity firm where Mr Romney made his $250 million (£160 million) fortune.
"Mitt Romney and Bain closed the plant, I lost my health care and my family lost their health care," said Joe Soptic, of Missouri. "And a short time after that, my wife became ill." Priorities USA Action, a so-called "Super PAC", is led by a former senior White House aide to Mr Obama.
Republicans said the clip was "dishonest" as it emerged that Mrs Soptic died in 2006, several years after both the factory's closure and Mr Romney's departure from Bain.
Matt Mackowiak, a Republican strategist, described the advertisement as "absolutely deplorable" and urged Mr Romney to demand that Mr Obama publicly denounce it.
"This is a new low and tells us the campaign is about to get a lot nastier," Mr Mackowiak told The Daily Telegraph. "First they called him a felon, now a murderer. What's next: a child rapist?"
Mr Obama meanwhile attempted to coin a new nickname for his Republican challenger by highlighting a study that estimated Mr Romney's economic plans would give millionaires an average tax cut of $87,000 (£55,591) but raise taxes for 95 per cent of people.
"It's like Robin Hood in reverse," Mr Obama told a campaign rally in Connecticut, to boos from the crowd. "It's Romney Hood." Mr Romney has pledged to cut income taxes by 20 per cent and eliminate inheritance tax, while not adding to America's $1.5 trillion (£960 billion) budget deficit.
The non-partisan Tax Policy Centre said that this leaves a $360 million (£230 million) black hole. Even if Mr Romney first closed tax breaks benefiting top earners, it said, he would also need to remove breaks that most benefit middle-class families, leaving their overall tax bills increased.
Mr Romney yesterday dismissed the allegations as "Obamaloney". His campaign denounced the report as a "liberal study" and stressed that one of its three authors had served on Mr Obama's economic advisory council. Another served on the council of George H.W. Bush, a Republican.
"President Obama recently said the biggest regret of his first term was not telling better stories," said a Romney spokesman. "He's trying to make up for it now, but his stories just aren't true.
The new accusations of low politics came after Harry Reid, the Senate leader of Mr Obama's Democratic party, was called a "dirty liar" by Reince Priebus, the Republican party chairman, for alleging without evidence that Mr Romney had paid no tax for a decade.
Mr Romney has firmly refused to release any further tax returns. He also offered no further detail on how he would implement his plan without raising taxes on middle-class households.
The former Massachusetts governor yesterday attacked Mr Obama for dismantling a crucial element of Bill Clinton's 1990s welfare reforms, which required able-bodied recipients of jobless benefits to work or train for work.
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