Year: 2012

Boring But Important: Obama Sheds Business Ally Chief of Staff for Old School Liberal

Trish
obamachiefs
Out with the old, in with the Lew: from left, Lew, Obama, Daley

There was an important development in the 2012 presidential election this week, but it had nothing to do with Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, or Ron Paul. And truthfully, its importance goes far beyond the perpetual campaign.

White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley resigned. Chris Cillizza described Daley’s departure in his Washington Post blog, The Fix.

Aide: ‘Business refused to make nice regardless of what Daley did. Wall Street was just never going to be there.’

Brought in to rebuild the White House’s relationship with the business community and Congress, Daley leaves the job as Obama seems to have found his stride by explicitly running against Congress and, to a lesser extent, the business community.

“What he learned was that business refused to make nice regardless of what he did,” said one former White House aide of Daley. “Wall Street was just never going to be there.”

The departure* comes at the same time as the release of a new book, The Obamas, by New York Times reporter Jill Kantor. The book, which I have not read, is said to show that Michelle Obama had philosophical differences with Pres. Obama’s first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, and that the president might have been better off listening to her than him.

[…]

GOP Race — Deja Vu All Over Again

Buck Banks

I’m thinking of a Republican primary. It starts with a candidate (John McCain/Mitt Romney) who ran once before, came in second place, and won over the party’s elite class without winning over its base. Other candidates, understandably unwilling to accept this, line up: An under-funded social conservative (Mike Huckabee/Rick Santorum), an elder statesman who’s walked to the altar three times (Rudy Giuliani/Newt Gingrich), a libertarian who wants to bring back the gold standard (Ron Paul/Ron Paul). The conservative base is displeased. In the year before the primary, it pines for a perfect candidate. At the end of summer, on (September 5/August 13), it gets him: (Fred Thompson/Rick Perry). The dream candidate immediately rises to the top of national polls, but collapses after lazy, distaff debate performances… The Republican base looks at the wreckage and shudders. It can never allow this to happen ever again.

— Dave Weigel on Slate, running down the striking similarities between this year’s slate of Republican presidential candidates and the one in 2008.

S.C. is Romney Campaign’s ‘Lee Atwater’ Moment

Buck Banks

The Mitt Romney campaign has now arrived at its Lee Atwater moment. Having won the New Hampshire primary decisively, Boston must now decide how much fire-power to focus on the South Carolina primary. … If Lee Atwater were alive, he would answer with three words: ‘All of it.’ … Mitt Romney now has his opponents by the throat. When you have your opponent by the throat in presidential politics, you best finish the job. For Romney, that means imitating Atwater and going all in on South Carolina.

— John Ellis, writing on Buzz Feed.

The White House Just Can’t Keep a Secret

Trish

If we wanted this event to be a secret, we probably wouldn’t have invited the press corps to cover it, release photos of it to Flickr or post a video from it on the White House website.

The White House, quoted by Politico, reacting to assertions made in a new book called “The Obamas.” The book claims the president and first lady threw an Alice in Wonderland themed Halloween party on the down-low, hoping to avoid Marie Antoinette comparisons during the recession.

Romney Pulls a Palin – Reads NH Victory Speech from Teleprompters

Jon Ponder
Mitt Romney, with one of two teleprompters he used to deliver his victory speech after the New Hampshire primary
Mitt Romney, with one of two teleprompters he used to deliver his victory speech after the New Hampshire primary

One of Sarah Palin’s favorite digs at Pres. Obama is that he often reads speeches from teleprompters.

photos-palin-teleprompter-montage-verticalIf you are a liberal or not a political junkie, you probably found Palin’s harping on Obama’s use of teleprompters confusing. “So what?” you may have said to yourself. “So did Reagan, the Bushes and Clinton. They all do it.”

Or, if you were paying close attention to Obama on the campaign trail, you might have noticed that he hosted dozens of town hall events during which he spoke extemporaneously for 90 minutes or more. (For teavangelical types who may be reading this, “extemporaneously” means “without the aid of a teleprompter.”)

What liberals and other regular Americans were missing in Palin’s sneering about Obama and teleprompters was a dog whistle message to the Republican Party’s half-witted racist base. What she was really saying was, “Pssst. See, he’s black, so not smart enough to think up all those big words on his own. He only got where he is because of affirmative action.”

Reality has a left-wing bias, as Stephen Colbert has said, so it did not matter that Palin — who, pssst, really is a dumbass — used teleprompters just about every time she spoke in public during her failed vice presidential run in 2008. (For your convenience — and, we can only hope, to make tea baggers heads explode — we have compiled a photo set of about two dozen different events in which Palin read her speeches from teleprompters and posted it here.)

In the current campaign, after making some seriously stupid gaffes while campaigning in New Hampshire, Mitt Romney took no chances when it came time to read his victory speech last night, according to his hometown paper, the Boston Globe:

[…]