Friday, May 11, 2012 2:37 PM EDT
Obama ‘evolves’ and Romney ‘flip-flops’: Is it fair?
AFFAN CHOWDHRY
President Barack Obama made history this week becoming the first sitting U.S. president to openly support gay marriage – completing his self-described ‘evolution’ from a position that once described marriage as between a man and woman.
But that is not how many conservatives viewed it. In fact, some senior Republican strategists view Mr. Obama’s evolution through an entirely different lens.
One Republican senator described the president’s new position as a broken promise. Mitt Romney, who opposes same sex marriage and spent most of the week on the back foot, told Fox News: “You don’t change your positions to try and win the states or certain subgroups of Americans, you have the positions you have.”
He added: “And as you know, for a long time, I think from the beginning of my political career, I’ve made it very clear that I believe marriage should be a relationship between a man and a woman.
In other words, Mr. Romney – who was plagued during the Republican leadership race for his ‘flip-flops’ on abortion and health care – is looking to shift the ‘flip-flop’ label to his rival.
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Wednesday, May 9, 2012 3:17 PM EDT
Federal prisoner gives Obama a run for his money in West Virginia primary
AFFAN CHOWDHRY
President Barack Obama lost the state of West Virginia in the 2008 presidential election to Senator John McCain, and in the state primary of that year he was handily beaten by rival Hillary Clinton.
No one is holding their breath over Mr. Obama’s 2012 chances of carrying the Appalachian state.
So, in the West Virginia Democratic primary last night, you would think – with the absence of any real challenger – Mr. Obama’s win would be a non-story.
Except there was a challenger.
“More than 40 per cent of Democrats voting chose to cast their ballot for Keith Russell Judd, an inmate at the Beaumont Federal Correctional Institution in Beaumont, Texas, where he’s doing time for extortion and threats made at the University of New Mexico in 1999,” writes Jake Tapper, ABC’s White House correspondent.
Wednesday, May 9, 2012 7:31 AM EDT
Where’s the love? Why Santorum’s lukewarm backing of Romney is a new low
AFFAN CHOWDHRY
Mitt Romney earned the leadership nod the hard way – through a long, gruelling campaign and a display of organization and money power.
While he did not move hearts, he did appeal to the intellectual sense of Republican voters – that an ‘electable’ candidate is needed to go up against President Barack Obama in November.
So why can’t the former Massachusetts governor earn an enthusiastic, I-love-this-guy endorsement from one of his former opponents?
Because the love just isn’t there. And nothing quite captured it like Rick Santorum’s late Monday night e-mail to supporters, which set a new low for lacklustre endorsements.
The statement called for an “all hands on deck” approach to defeating Mr. Obama.
While Mr. Santorum said he intended “to keep lines of communication open” with Mr. Romney and his campaign – something once-warring campaigns should probably do as they turn their attention to a general election campaign – there was no indication of a joint Romney-Santorum campaign appearance any time soon.
If the aim was to give Mr. Romney the biggest possible bump from a Santorum endorsement, the former Pennsylvania senator achieved the opposite: an endorsement that instead fell flat and highlighted the ongoing divisions in the party.
Mr. Santorum talked about how it was “impossible” to endorse Mr. Romney until he had the opportunity to assess Mr. Romney’s commitment to conservative issues and ensuring that the voices of “social conservatives, tea-party supporters, lower- and middle-income working families” were heard.
Mr. Santorum got his opportunity to sit down with Mr. Romney at an hour-long meeting in Pittsburgh last Friday.
The Santorum letter posted late Monday night is largely an attempt to protect the Santorum brand, which, as the former candidate was keen to point out, earned the support of over 3-million voters and 11 state contests.
Mr. Santorum wants to show that even in endorsing Mitt Romney, he continues to kick the candidate’s tires on key social and economic issues – a tactic that will no doubt help Mr. Santorum in 2016, if Mr. Romney loses this November.
To be clear, Mr. Santorum did at least use the word ‘endorsement.’
“Governor Romney will be [the Republican presidential] nominee and he has my endorsement and support to win this, the most critical election of our lifetime,” read the statement, which was also posted on his web site.
Compare that to Newt Gingrich’s ’kind-of’ endorsement last week when he suspended his campaign and ‘embraced’ Mr. Romney.
“As to the presidency, I’m asked sometimes, ‘Is Mitt Romney conservative enough?’ And my answer is simple: ‘Compared to Barack Obama?’ This is not a choice between Mitt Romney and Ronald Reagan, this is a choice between Mitt Romney and the most radical leftist president in American history,” Mr. Gingrich told reporters in Arlington, Virginia.
And that has been the trend – endorsements characterized by faint praise, lack of enthusiasm and being very late.
Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann endorsed Mr. Romney four months after dropping out of the race.
In late April, Texas Governor Rick Perry, who once described Mr. Romney as a “vulture capitalist” instead of a venture capitalist, issued a statement saying “...Mitt’s vision and record of private-sector success will put America back on the path of job creation, economic opportunity and limited government.”
Former Utah governor and U.S. ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, who once said Mr. Romney lacked a “core” because he had changed his policy positions so many times, offered a tepid endorsement during a Florida news conference in January after dropping out of the race.
“I believe it is now time for our party to unite around the candidate best equipped to defeat Barack Obama. Despite our differences and the space between us on some of the issues, I believe that candidate is governor Mitt Romney,” Mr. Huntsman told a news conference.
Mr. Santorum delivered some of the sharpest criticisms of the Romney candidacy during the leadership campaign.
He questioned whether Mr. Romney and his track record in health-care reform while governor of Massachusetts – a model that has been described as a template for Obamacare – was the best candidate to make the case for repealing Mr. Obama’s signature legislation.
Mr. Santorum’s statement on Monday night indicated that he had no doubt that “if elected [Mr. Romney] will work with a Republican Congress to repeal it and replace it with a bottom-up, patient, not government-driven system.”
That is a sharp turn from his statement about Mr. Romney in the heat of the leadership contest: “Pick any other Republican in the country. He is the worst Republican in the country to put up against Barack Obama.”
Saturday, May 5, 2012 5:16 PM EDT
Disappointing U.S. job numbers cloud Obama’s excellent week
Affan Chowdhry
Slow job creation is not the narrative the Barack Obama re-election campaign wants American voters to wake up to. But that is exactly what Friday’s numbers show: employers hiring 115,000 workers in April, a figure well below expectations.
The unemployment rate may have dropped a notch to 8.1 per cent from 8.2 per cent, but that is largely due to people giving up on the job market altogether.
With six months until election day, the U.S. economy continues to send mixed messages, which only meddles with the Obama campaign’s own message of an economy on the mend.
For the Mitt Romney campaign, an opportunity to make its own case: Mr. Obama is presiding over the slowest economic recovery since the Great Depression and that the country needs an able economic steward with a proven private sector track record.
Yet, in spite of the disappointing job creation numbers, the Obama campaign can still count its wins this week.
Wednesday, May 2, 2012 3:54 PM EDT
Five things to miss about Newt Gingrich (Hint: fly me to the moon)
AFFAN CHOWDRY
He gave the Republican leadership campaign big ideas, bombast and a never-give-up attitude.
On Wednesday afternoon, in an address from Virginia, Newt Gingrich officially ends his campaign after conceding that Mitt Romney will be the Republican party’s presidential nominee.
There are still some loose ends to tie up: a $4-million Gingrich campaign debt, which the Romney campaign has kindly offered to help with; and how exactly to embrace front-runner Mitt Romney’s candidacy. Lacklustre seems to be the pattern among former GOP candidates.
As Newt Gingrich’s candidacy draws to an end, here are five things people are likely to miss about a candidate who provided campaign drama and chuckles:
1. His grandiose ideas
“By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American,” Mr. Gingrich told a Florida audience in January.
No idea generated as much interest and fun as Mr. Gingrich’s goal to put a human colony on the moon – a display of American science and space ambition intended to impress Republican voters ahead of the Florida primary in late January.
Except few were impressed, and the jokes about ‘Astro-Newt’ were unrelenting.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012 3:53 PM EDT
Mitt Romney ought to take a cue from the Cookie Monster
Zosia Bielski
From crate-gate to ‘cookie-gate,’ Mitt Romney is struggling with the warmth quotient.
The latest blunder came as the Republican presidential nominee joined some Pennsylvania residents around a picnic table on April 17 to chat about economic woes, including falling home values and rising gasoline prices.
On the table sat some lemonade, chips and cookies.
“I’m not sure about these cookies,” he said, scanning a plate of “five dozen lady locks, thumbprints and other delicacies made by a beloved local bakery,” Bloomberg reported.
“They don’t look like you made them,” he said to a woman grimacing next to him, as several ladies giggled nervously around the table.
Mr. Romney didn’t follow.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012 3:47 PM EDT
Rocker Ted Nugent earns date with Secret Service after ‘threat’ against Obama
AFFAN CHOWDHRY
Take an aging 1970s rock star known for making controversial statements, a National Rifle Association gathering, and a general election contest in which the rhetoric (and spin) has reached November levels, and you get an aging rock star who now has a date with U.S. Secret Service on Thursday.
Ted Nugent, or the Nuge as he is often called, made the following comment at the NRA meeting over the weekend: “I'll tell you this right now: if Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.”
That’s not the only thing he said. Here is a short collection below. Also, you can watch the video here.
“We are patriots, we are bravehearts. We need to ride into that battlefield, and chop their heads off in November. Any questions?”
“If you don't know that our government is wiping its ass with the constitution, you're living under a rock.”
Mr. Nugent, or the Motor City Madman, endorsed Mitt Romney in early March after the Michigan primary. It was an endorsement embraced by the Romney campaign and family.
Now the Romney campaign is distancing itself from Mr. Nugent’s comments. “Divisive language is offensive no matter what side of the political aisle it comes from,” the campaign said, later adding that it had never sought Mr. Nugent’s endorsement.
The White House sought to downplay the comments with press secretary Jay Carney telling reporters on Tuesday: “I think the president has said and I and others have said that, you know, we can’t be policing the statements of supporters across the board.”
Last week, a comment by Democratic party strategist on CNN – that Ann Romney had “never worked a day in her life” – triggered the Mommy Wars as the Obama campaign came to the defence of stay-at-home mothers while the Romney campaign saw it as an opportunity to soften the image of Mitt Romney by showcasing his wife Ann’s struggles to raise five boys.
This week it was the Democratic party’s chance to pounce.
“Romney surrogate Ted Nugent's comments about Pres. Obama are vile & beyond the pale – and the Romney campaign should denounce them immediately,” tweeted Democratic National Committee chairman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
On Tuesday, her comments were put to Mr. Nugent who responded by describing Democratic leaders as “varmints.”
“Wasserman Schultz is such a brain-dead, soulless idiot,” Mr. Nugent said during a radio program. “I could not be more proud that this soulless, heartless idiot feebly attempts to find fault with Ted Nugent, because I am on the right track and she just encourages me to stand stronger.”
And that is the way Ted Nugent rolls, as political observers have pointed out.
“It's really ridiculous for the Secret Service to ‘investigate’ Nugent for his comments. TIP: He is Ted Nugent. He talks like this,” tweeted Slate magazine political reporter Dave Weigel.
Mr. Nugent has made controversial comments about Mr. Obama in the past. During a 2007 concert, he delivered a tirade against Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
During an interview this morning, Mr. Nugent confirmed his Thursday meeting with the U.S. Secret Service, which has been plagued by its own controversy around allegations involving Secret Service members at a summit in Colombia last week. The Secret Service confirmed that it was investigating Mr. Nugent’s comments, but offered no date of any meeting with the musician and conservative activist.
“We’re going to have a little barbecue get together,” Mr. Nugent told the Glenn Beck radio program. “And I’m not trying to diminish the seriousness of this, because if the Secret Service are doing it they are serious. They are dedicated and I will be as polite and supportive as I possibly can be, which will be thoroughly.”
Mr. Nugent added, “I‘ve never threatened anybody’s life in my life. I’ve never threatened. I don’t waste breath threatening.”
The Christian Science Monitor’s DC Decoder raises the point that Mr. Nugent’s latest comments would not likely make a list of “Top Ten Crazy Ted Nugent Moments.”
The DC Decoder points to an incident in which Mr. Nugent required 40 stitches to close a gash in his leg during a chainsaw mishap while filming for the miniseries “Surviving Nugent: The Ted Commandments” in 2004.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012 12:06 PM EDT
A tightening race, a volatile electorate: 6 polls on Barack Obama vs Mitt Romney
AFFAN CHOWDHRY
In a week that saw a dramatic turn in the Republican leadership contest and the U.S. general election campaign begin in earnest, new voter surveys offer a glimpse early in the season of a tightening race.
Six national polls surveying voter opinion on a Mitt Romney versus Barack Obama contest have been conducted after, or overlapping, the period Rick Santorum dropped out of the race.
The New York Times/CBS News poll released this morning shows a 46-46 dead heat, a change from last month when a similar poll showed President Obama edging Governor Romney 47-44. But the poll also indicates a lingering “lack of strong enthusiasm” among GOP voters for the Romney candidacy.
The general election campaign will be long with plenty of gyrations in the polls not unlike what happened in the Republican leadership race.
Here are the other polls which show a similar tightening of the general election contest.
Pew Poll: President Barack Obama leading Mitt Romney 49-45, compared to a March poll in which President Obama led by 12 percentage points. The economy and jobs creations ranked as “very important” to voters - issues on which Mr. Romney has an edge.
“Obama continues to owe his lead to support from women, college graduates, blacks, Latinos and lower income voters -- all of whom support him over Romney by double-digits.”
Friday, April 13, 2012 2:12 PM EDT
Killer chickens and other U.S. politics stories you may have missed
AFFAN CHOWDHRY
It was ‘game on’ in U.S. politics this week.
Rick Santorum’s exit from the Republican leadership race meant the presidential election showdown between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney could begin in earnest.
But the truth is that the last five days produced a stream of examples showing how U.S. politics can surprise, shock and entertain.
In case you missed them, here are the top five – from the Mommy Wars to the killer chickens and everything in between:
Who ‘dissed’ Mother Romney?
A Democratic party strategist managed to achieve the impossible this week: rallying the Romney and Obama campaigns to the defence of Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann Romney.
Over what? The important and hard work of stay-at-home moms.
Hilary Rosen’s comment on CNN on Wednesday night that Ms. Romney, a stay-at-home mother who raised five boys, had “never worked a day in her life” produced 2012’s first major Twitter skirmish and the remarkable feat of making Ms. Romney more popular on social media than Justin Bieber. (For one day, at least.)
“The shift from a 24-hour news cycle to a 140-character one has dramatically reshaped the rapid response game,” said Adam Sharp, Twitter’s senior manager of government, news and social innovation.
“The whole action-reaction-response cycle is compressed to mere minutes, and Twitter users have a front-row seat to a back-and-forth that used to be witnessed only by the ‘boys on the bus.’”
Obama campaign senior strategists were first out of the gate tweeting that the comment was offensive and that the families of candidates should be off limits.
Michelle Obama also tweeted: “Every mother works hard, and every woman deserves to be respected.”
The Romney campaign, sure-footed and nimble, set-up an Ann Romney Twitter account and quickly produced her first tweet: “I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work.” In her second tweet: “All moms are entitled to choose their path.”
Twenty-four hours after the original comment, for which the strategist eventually apologized, the story landed with President Obama: “There’s no tougher job than being a mom,” the president told an Iowa TV station on Thursday.
The general election is over 200 days away.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012 7:38 PM EDT
Live long, prosper and get re-elected: Obama displays his Vulcan salute
AFFAN CHOWDHRY
While campaigning to become the Democratic party nominee in 2008, candidate Barack Obama revealed his Trekkie roots: “I grew up on Star Trek. I believe in the final frontier.”
Well, here is a picture to prove that President Barack Obama, known to Star Trek fans as the first Trekkie president, remains an enthusiast. He can be seen showcasing a Vulcan salute for the camera during Nichelle Nichols’s – who plays Star Trek’s Lieutenant Uhura – February visit to the White House.
Ms. Nichols tweeted about the visit: “Months ago Pres Obama was quoted as saying that he'd had a crush on me when he was younger. I asked about that & he proudly confirmed it!”
And it’s by no means his first encounter with a member of the original Star Trek cast.
U.S. Election watch Contributors
Affan Chowdhry
Affan Chowdhry is the Globe’s multimedia reporter specializing in foreign news. Prior to joining the Globe, he worked at the BBC World Service in London creating international news and current affairs programs and online content for a global audience.
Read more from Affan and follow him on Twitter @affanchowdhry
Konrad Yakabuski
Konrad Yakabuski is The Globe and Mail's chief U.S. political writer, based in Washington. He covers all aspects of the American political scene, including relevant social and cultural issues.
Read more from Konrad and follow him on Twitter @KonradYakabuski
Paul Koring
Paul Koring, the Globe’s Washington-based International Affairs and Security Correspondent, has covered conflicts and crises from the Cold War to Afghanistan, reporting from Europe, the Middle East, South Asia and Africa.
Read more from Paul and follow him on Twitter @PaulKoring
