RNC, DNC out with dueling new negative videos
(CBS News) With less than a week until the Republican national convention, both the Republican and Democratic parties are out with brutal new videos that stretch the truth with regard to the other side's presidential candidate.
A new ad from the Republican National Committee (RNC), suggests President Obama is unconcerned about "the truth."
The web ad, called "Willing," features remarks made by President Obama at a press briefing Monday, in which, responding to a question about the tone of the campaign, he argued that "nobody accused Mr. Romney of being a felon."
The 30-second spot then cuts to audio of Stephanie Cutter, deputy campaign manager for the Obama campaign, addressing questions about Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital on a conference call in July: "Either Mitt Romney through his own words and his own signature was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the SEC, which is a felony."
The RNC ad replays audio of the first half of the quote twice in the ad, and shows an extended version of the quote on the screen: "Either Mitt Romney through his own words and his own signature was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the SEC, which is a felony, or he was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the American people..."
"President Obama: Willing to ignore the truth," reads text that flashes subsequently in the RNC ad.
In her full statement, which is not played as audio in the video, Cutter says that misrepresenting one's role to the SEC is a felony. She does not directly accuse Romney of being a felon. Still, Republicans argue that the president's message "has fallen."
"President Obama had a chance yesterday to stand up and denounce these attacks at his press conference. Yet, he chose to continue denying these claims were ever made, even though one of his senior advisors is at fault," said said RNC Chairman Reince Priebus in a statement. "The 2008 Obama wouldn't even recognize the 2012 Obama--he's just another typical politician."
Meanwhile, the DNC is out with a new ad targeting Romney over his education policy, and playing up the notion that the former Massachusetts governor is unsympathetic to the needs of the middle-class. The DNC has released the ad on the day when Mr. Obama is hitting Romney on education on the campaign trail in Ohio and Nevada.
The ad features a clip of Romney advising a student to "shop around" when asked what he would to help students find affordable college tuition.
"The best think I can do for you, is tell you to shop around," Romney says, as the ad, accompanied by the Motown song "Shop Around," launches into a montage of Romney making similar comments on the campaign trail.
"Shop around? Students can't afford Mitt Romney," the ad says.
In at least one of the clips featured, however, when Romney is shown advising a crowd to "borrow money, if you have to, from your parents," he's not talking about paying for college - he was referring to business loans.
This week's 4 political ads that stretch the truthMoreover, the ad claims that "Romney would slash Pell grants for nearly 10 million students." The Romney campaign does write in its education plan that Romney would tackle the challenge of rising higher education costs "by making clear that the federal government will no longer write a blank check to universities to reward their tuition increases, and by supporting institutions that are pursuing innovative operating models to drive down costs." It's unclear, however, how many Pell Grant recipients would be impacted by Romney's policies -- most likely, it wouldn't be all 9.6 million of them.
Still, the Obama campaign argues that while Mr. Obama "has a record of making investments in education," Romney has a "severely out-of-touch vision on education."
