Romney campaign counterattacks DNC claims on conference calls
Responding to the Democratic National Committee's airing of anti-Mitt Romney commercials in six different states, the Romney campaign on Monday had surrogates from 12 different states - including onetime GOP rival Tim Pawlenty -- hold conference calls attacking President Obama and defending Romney.
The DNC's ad, "Mitt vs. Mitt", depicts Romney making claims both supporting and opposing abortion rights, and also shows him saying he's "glad to hear" the president talking up the health care policy he helped enact in Massachusetts when he was governor there.
The DNC released the ad in several areas they are taking especially seriously -- Albuquerque, N.M.; Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; Columbus, Ohio; Pittsburgh and Milwaukee in addition to Washington, D.C. It represents the most states in which it has released a single ad in this campaign cycle. According to the Washington Post, the ad buy was $14,000.
The Romney campaign released several links to articles that showed the full context of Romney's remarks on the Obama health care plan. The clip in the ad is from an interview on CBS Early Show in 2009, and Romney went on in his answer to say "But you don`t set up a government insurance plan because it`s going to end up costing billions of dollars in subsidy. It`s the wrong way to go."
The campaign did not send out any formal response to the attacks on Romney flip-flopping on his abortion stance, but it did come up on some of the calls. Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., said Romney "has stated clearly that his position has evolved" on abortion, and that he is comfortable knowing Romney would be a pro-life president.
On the first call of the day, former presidential candidate and current Romney campaign co-chair Pawlenty called Obama "the Barney Fife of presidents," a reference to the bumbling character on television's "Andy Griffith Show." Pawlenty also compared him to former President Jimmy Carter.
Reporters repeatedly asked the campaign if it was hypocritical to cry foul over Romney's words being spliced in the ad, when they had similarly taken a clip of Obama campaigning in 2008 out of context in a recent New Hampshire ad. In that commercial, which ran last week only in the Granite State, Obama is depicted as saying, "If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose" - a quote actually made by his Republican challenger, Sen. John McCain.
Spokeswoman Gail Gitcho responded that the campaign had been transparent in informing the press of the context of this quote, by sending it out in press releases regarding the ad. She said that they had purposely formulated the commercial in a way not to mislead anyway, while the current DNC ad spliced up Romney's words unfairly and gave no context to his remarks.
"I didn't expect the Democrats to like that ad, but if they're going to go into hysterics every time we put up an ad, that's just something they're going to have to deal with," Gitcho said.