Romney's campaign has acknowledged Obama was actually quoting a John McCain aide- a point that the Obama campaign has made aggressively, branding Romney’s ad a "deceitful and dishonest" attack. White House press secretary Jay Carney called the commercial "blatant dishonesty."
None of that bothers Romney media strategist Stuart Stevens, who needled the Obama camp for what he called an overreaction to "a small buy on one station in New Hampshire."
"It is now my goal for every ad we make to so upset the White House that they will force Jay to go out with his light saber and do his thing," Stevens said in an email, pointing out that Democrats have been more than willing to target his candidate in harsh terms.
"These guys have attacked Romney in one form or another hundreds- yes, hundreds- of times over just the last few weeks," Stevens said. "Everyone from multi-millionaire investment banker and brother to Ari, Rahm, to Wesley Clark to the legions of interns they have tweeting away as if they are trying to write Moby Dick by tweet every week."
He continued: "We’re not going to run this campaign by their D.C. Green Room Rules. These are the same guys who savaged Hillary, made Bill Clinton sputter that he wasn’t a racist, attacked good people on behalf of candidates like [former New Jersey Sen. Robert] Torricelli and [former Philadelphia Mayor] John Street. Sorry."
Obama campaign senior adviser David Axelrod fired back that the Romney campaign's comments were a thin attempt to justify a "fraudulent ad"- and sharpened the Democratic argument that Romney’s commercial is part of a larger pattern of deception on Romney’s part.
"They tried to get away with a blatant deception and got caught. Now they're frantically scrambling around, looking for a justification," Axelrod said. "Well, there is none."
The former White House aide predicted: "The longer that fraudulent ad plays, the more it will come to characterize a candidate and a campaign who think nothing of fudging facts and changing positions on fundamental issues from day-to-day and even minute-to-minute."
Democrats have cried foul over Romney’s ad since it first hit the airwaves in New Hampshire onMonday night. Some have also complained about the media’s coverage of the commercial, accusing reporters of treating it like a he-said, he-said debate ("Romney’s campaign claims Obama said X, Obama’s campaign insists he said Y").
The reality is that political campaigns constantly manipulate the public record. Indeed, one of Romney’s biggest vulnerabilities as a candidate is his tendency to say things- "I’m running for office, for Pete’s sake"-that sound awkward in the moment and worse out of context, to the delight of Democrats.
The ultimate judgment on attacks like this one comes from the voters, who will end up deciding whether they’re more persuaded by Romney’s economy-themed blast, or by Obama’s sharp, character-focused retort. As Maggie wrote yesterday, it’s not a risk-free exchange on either side.
Stevens said, however,that Romney has no intention of backing away from delivering his message in exactly this way.
"Pick any day between now and the election and go back to what candidate Obama was saying at that time. We will use that to run against President Obama," Stevens said. "When he was gloating that the McCain campaign didn’t want to talk about the economy he knew it wasn’t true. So now let’s see if they think they can talk about the economy and win. It’s a challenge."
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