This morning on CNN, Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was asked, "Why is it not hypocrisy for the president to take campaign donations from private equity when he's attacking private equity making that an essential part of his campaign?"
The chairwoman responded, "It's not comparing apples and oranges, it's comparing apples and coconuts."
Here's the video:
When asked what she meant by "coconuts," Wasserman Schultz went to say, "Accepting a contribution from a particular person involved in venture capital and criticizing Mitt Romney, who has made his record as a venture capitalist at Bain the essential focus of his credibility and qualification for being president, are completely different things."
Yet a little later in the interview she was stumped. "Let's compare apples to apples," the other CNN host said to the DNC chair. "It seems to me the criticism you're offering is that Mitt Romney went into businesses and laid people off. But wouldn't the apples to apples comparison be that's exactly what Barack Obama did when he touts the auto industry as a feather in his cap, didn't the federal government and Barack Obama go in and layoff thousands of autoworkers to save that industry?"
Wasserman Schultz then ducked by changing the topic.
President Obama, envious of China’s economic model, proclaimed his admiration for the high-speed railways, bridges, skyscrapers, and solar panels that China is building. (“That used to be us,” he famously said – a line apparently so powerful it became the title of a book.) But even the Chinese know that Obama’s envy is misplaced.
For some reason, the ABC News/Washington Post poll really gets the tongues wagging. I'm not exactly sure why; as polls go, it is one of my least favorite, in part because it often has a ridiculous tilt toward the Democrats. I suppose because it is the Post poll, and that's the newspaper of record in the government town.
Reporting from Carrollton, Arkansas, the Washington Post finds some locals still upset with actions of a "Mormon militia" over 150 years ago. The Post reports:
The New York Times gushingly describes how President Obama’s unique background — he’s “a man from many worlds,” “a transcender of tribes,” and, yes, “a former constitutional law professor” — has allowed him to unearth a creative “middle way” on the question of redefining marriage. That “middle way,” according to the Times’s account, is to come o
In 2007, Mitt Romney, facing a surging Huckabee campaign in an Iowa caucus that was supposed to launch him to the nomination, delivered a speech about the role of faith in public life. As eloquent as the speech, entitled “Faith in America,” may have been, it did little to bolster his Iowa campaign. He lost badly, in large part because of Huckabee’s evangelical supporters.
There is something very strange about the 2012 presidential race so far. The election comes at a time of extraordinary public unease, which clearly demands some response from the political system, and especially from the men running for the highest office in the land. But the two presidential candidates are both running campaigns oddly detached from what is rightly worrying voters.
Now that Mitt Romney has sewn up the Republican presidential nomination, the general election battle has begun. Team Obama obviously recognizes this; since Romney basically sealed the deal after the Wisconsin primary in April, the president and his team have launched a series of attacks designed to distract the country from the real stakes of this election.
That's the subject of Mitt Romney's latest ad, wherein he promises on his first day to approve Keystone and begin the process of cutting taxes and repealing Obamacare:
Earlier today, Vice President Joe Biden said of auto workers who lost pensions and benefits, "Some of them got hurt. The vast majority, because of the federal pension board they have out there to make up differences when companies go under like this. Most did fine." The Romney campaign has responded with a new web video titled, "A Few More Of The 23 Million."
A newly released PPP/Daily Kos poll shows President Obama and Mitt Romney locked in essentially a dead-heat in Wisconsin — where Obama beat John McCain by 14 percentage points in 2008. The poll (which was taken shortly after Obama came out in favor of redefining marriage) shows Obama with 47 percent support and Romney with 46 percent support. The previous PPP/Daily Kos poll from Wisconsin, taken
