Mitt Romney has disavowed a plan by an outside PAC to spend $10 million on an anti-Obama campaign focused on the president’s controversial former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. But a prominent Republican consultant said to be involved in the effort has worked closely in the past with a top Romney campaign aide.
According to the proposal, revealed by the New York Times today, the plan to tie Obama to Wright has been discussed “in highly confidential terms” with a list of several conservative operatives. “All are ready to jump into action upon plan approval,” the proposal says.
One person listed as a potential team member is Whit Ayres, who would be responsible for generating “earned media” – that is, news coverage – for the campaign. Ayres runs North Star Opinion Research, a public opinion research firm whose heavyweight list of corporate clients has included outfits like PhRMA, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and AT&T.
He also appears to be tight with Ed Gillespie, a senior adviser to Romney’s campaign. In 2009, Ayres and Gillespie – a former RNC chair, Bush White House official, and Washington lobbyist – together co-founded the conservative advocacy group Resurgent Republic, and, according to the group's website, served together on its board until last month, when Gillespie left to sign on with the Romney camp. The two men have also teamed up on op-ed pieces and media appearances.
Despite the past ties between Ayres and Gillespie, there's no evidence whatsoever that Gillespie or the Romney campaign had any knowledge of the Super PAC's plan -- indeed, such co-ordination would be illegal, a point Gillespie himself made today to The Daily Beast. But if nothing else, the history between the two men underlines that those behind the Wright plan are far from fringe players in Republican circles.
Ayres told Lean Forward Thursday that he wasn’t involved with developing the proposal, but referred further questions to Brian Nick, a spokesman for Strategic Perception, a political advertising firm whose logo appears on the proposal. Nick, who is also listed in the proposal as a potential team member, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ayres in the past has sounded enthusiastic on the idea of pushing the Wright controversy. In 2008, several months after the Jeremiah Wright controversy first exploded, he continued to raise the issue at a time when it no longer dominated the airwaves.
"Jeremiah Wright is not going away," Ayres told CNN in May of that year, recounting focus group research his firm had conducted. "There are an awful lot of people, when you just ask, 'What do you think of when you think of Barack Obama?' who bring up Jeremiah Wright's name. They bring up the anti-Americanism. They wonder why it took him so long to separate himself from him. Jeremiah Wright is an albatross around Barack Obama's neck that he's going to have to carry all the way to the election."
Ayres added that white blue-collar voters “don't believe that Barack Obama has the same cultural outlook on the world and on America that they do. They know that, and they don't like it."
Earlier Thursday, Romney told a conservative website he doesn’t support the proposed campaign. “I repudiate the effort by that PAC to promote an ad strategy of the nature they’ve described,” he said.
And the billionaire backer of the PAC, Joe Ricketts, also has disavowed the idea, releasing a statement saying it "reflects an approach to politics that Mr. Ricketts rejects."
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What's this deal with NY Times going on a witch hunt in Republican circles? I believe it was their syndicated collumnist Ed Klein that broke the Rev. Wright payoff of $150K to shut up during the 2008 Obama campagn after interviewing Wright for 3 hours. And I seem to remember the Hillary Clinton camp raking Obama over the coals for his association with the racist US hater Rev. Wright; hence the paoff to buy Wright's silence, and the subsequent throwing of him under the bus by Obama, the candidate!
Wright said that Obama murdered bin Laden. Klein is on Hannity now.
Romney and his Etch-a-Sketch...
From February, 2012...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Rr4eTdpfCo#t=68
And this morning...
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/romney-campaign-rejects-using-the-rev-jeremiah-wright-against-obama/
Just more right wing turd tossing, that's all folks.
I hope the SuperPacs destroy Romney.
Don't you mean the "Super Hero's" Have you made your call to the "Justice League"? yet.
You started out an idiot, and you remain one.
Yea, I'm an idiot, me all the rest of the morons, all believe that, the over 8% unemployment, over 40 million on food stamps, over 12 million people out of work.
Is a bad thing... Sorry you don't agree with that point of view.
All 3 of you. You don't have a point of view you have misinformation and fake outrage over the stupidest, racist, homophobic, sexiest thing that Fox news tells you that you need to be outraged over. To bad pretty much like your hero Reagan you live in a delusional land instead of the real world.
Thanks, Whom. Appreciate it.
And notice how stupida can't get off the 8% unemployment rate? I've read that same post for over 3 weeks now. But also notice how she never posts links, never acknowledges that it's GWB's recession causing any problems. Also NEVER mentions her radical right wing do nothing but obstruct congress. Listening to the right wingers, hell, Obama started WWII. Nothing started before Obama.
Stu
The real unemployment rate will show up at the polls in November. Way to many unemployed aren't being counted for various reasons, but they're still unemployed.
And then theres fact free jerry who hasn't seen a talking point that he wasn't willing to post and pass it off as his opinion. Poor jerry just can't grasp that he and his opinion from Fox news land have no meaning here nor do they show more then why children should not be home schooled or put into one of those private day care centers the right try to pass off as schools.
How is it MSNBC can attack Romney's Mormon faith they can attack his wife they can go back 50 years and dig up dirt on him in high school but anything about Obama's past is off limits even his recent past
How is it the left can play by one set of rules but if the right plays by the same set of rules the left cries foul its not fair Boo Hoo
One reason is Obama's record is a real disaster.
Notice the left never talks about how well things are going under their rule.
It's how bad the GOP is, war on this, war on that, nothing of any merit what so ever.
Unlike how the GOP's talked about Obama for 3 1/2 years.
Trolls.
And what did the liberals do the 8 years Bush was in office???
The door swings both ways there liberal.
Mostly got called terrorists and communists by the GOP, fascist.
Stupida, ever heard of "bipartisanship"? We worked with GWB on many issues. Too bad you can't say that about your obstructing friends.
Unfortunately, it's the only way we will ever get out of GWB's mess.
The bipartianship that hyped the concept of an economy based on ever expanding home ownership and home valuation, that could be used as an ATM for our money hungry spend, spend, spend consumers during the 1990s and 2000s Larry. Japan went the same way in the 79s and 80s, if you will recall. Of course, that little nasty business of the intervention byh Alan Greenspan to skuttle the beginning attempts of the Republican Congress in the last years of the Clinton Administration to regulate and reign in the growing like topsy credit default derivative boondogle that awaited us in 2007 and 2008 doubled down on the going belly up alternative sub-prime mortgage industry that had been foisted on the public with the approval of the Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan, and the now Duel Chairmen of the House and Senate Finance Committe's Barney Frank (D, MA) and Chris Dodd (D,CT); both authors of the Dodd-Frank Bill that still has not done the job of attempting to bring regulation of the vast amount of credit default derivative instruments being traded in "frontier" fashion by the world's largest financial institutions.
So get your story straight before you stoop again to your platitudes and talking points, and take your own advice, and start searching for answers.
Better yet, stop watching MSNBC's commentators, and go take a couple of economics courses at your local community college instead! Its not to late to get over your ignorance of how the world really works (or doesn't work, as the case may be!).
Grandpa, this Salon piece makes a lot more sense than that awful run-on sentence you pawned off on us at the end of your first paragraph. I'll offer some remedial writing classes--at premium prices, of course, since you mentioned you're fairly flush--but you're not going to like a piece I use by a guy I like named William Zinser who noted "muddy writing is a symptom of muddy thinking."
http://www.salon.com/2011/04/19/republicans_deficit_taxes/
Now here's a graph they linked over on Maddow Blog...
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/images/deficit-causes.png
I notice you haven't been over there much, which is kind of too bad. I'd love to see you do an impression of Karloff as the Frankenstein monster running from all those angry villagers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ54uXKEGGk
Is that supposed to be a refutation of my points to Larry on the cause of the present recession, or were you just stroking yourself there as usual, Cab Driver?
It is to those who possess a bit of real knowledge and a three figure I.Q.
So many are focused on the racist views of the proposed ad campaign pitched to the Romney campaign, but I've heard nothing about the fact that campaigns and PACS are NOT supposed to be connected in any way..?? Was this PAC seeking approval and coordinating w/ the Romney campaign? That's illegal isn't it??
It is supposed to be but somehow Mittens billionaire, Frank Vandersloot or as I call him Vanderloopy, has found a way around the law.
Not only is VanderSloot national finance co-chair of the Romney campaign, his company and its subsidiaries have donated $1 million to the super PAC backing the candidate. VanderSloot personally gave the Romney campaign $2,500 -- the nominal sum that remains the maximum direct donation to a candidate -- and hosted fundraisers during the current contest and the 2008 race.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/02/24/mitts-romneys-money-man-who-is-frank-l-vandersloot/
Now, now, now! (Gotta fight the urge to use caps or the software bot will shank me)
Frank Vandersloot operates a medical products company. Bill O'Reilly said so!
You're talking like it's one of those pyramid--er network marketing operations...
/carefully removing tongue from cheek because of pain from root canal earlier today
One more on the Boise Boy Scout bullshipper....
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/17/billionaire_romney_donor_uses_threats_to_silence_critics/
How about Obama's past nefarious relationship with that Whitiker clown, his golfing buddy, who was the errend boy to Rev. Wright with the $150K offer to have him just shut up throught the rest of Obama's campaign? Wright said he turned it down, which is probably the reason behind the locked in a tight race with Hilliary Clinton Obama went public, throwing the good Rev. Wright then I could the black race".
BTW, when Obama had become an Senator, Michele Obama had been elevated from her former middle mangement position to the top managerial level in Hospital Management earning a $300+K salary in the for profit hospital in Chicago she worked for. She had instituted a policy of shipping the indigent patients off to County Hospital to maximize profits during her tenure, something her successor in the richly paid glorified position (usually held by an individual with a nursing degree only for far lesser monetary reward) by one Obama golfing buddy and shady errand boy Mr. Whitiker, assuring us that the job was simply one of politival patronage assuredly!
Uh, Grandpa, re-read your first paragraph, the second sentence. My students back in the rehab used better syntax, honest...
Now while we're on the subject of nutwads (note your argument, when it is coherent, rests on a "Rev. Wright says," and you've used your Etch-a-Sketch on the fact that the President cut his his ties to Wright), here's one of Romney's old religion professors, the late W. Cleon Skousen, whom Glenn Beck also speaks of glowingly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYvgplF0LUI&feature=related
To dot the i's and cross the t's for you, here's an article detailing Romney's opinion of ol' W.C. in a conservative journal...
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/221780/romneys-radical-roots/mark-hemingway#
Romney’s argument with the Iowa talk-radio host starts with the two discussing their shared affinity for W. Cleon Skousen. “You and I share a common affection for the late Cleon Skousen,” the radio host says. The former governor agrees, affirming Skousen was his professor and when the radio host professes his fondness for Skousen’s book "The Making of America," while he acknowledges he hasn’t read it, Mitt quickly says “That’s worth reading.”
Putrid and unabashed McCarthyism, pure and simple...
I am such a dummy I thought Rickets was a childhood diease. Here it turns out to be a GOP PAC guy. HUH Who would o thunk it? LOL
Read Sarah's book and dropped 50 IQ points huh.
I heard that Obama's and Rev. Wright's church didn't let white people serve as ministers until 1978 and had lots of crazy beliefs like converting and baptizing dead people, a sequel to the Bible, modern day prophecy, and spiritual undergarments. He'll never get elected once his bizarre religious past is made public.
Ah that would be the Church of Latter day Saints or better known as the Mormons. Who didn't let blacks be ministers until 78 as well as the rest of that nonsense. Which is the religious cult Mittens belongs to.
mr. o'donnell, what part of the word MEH TROW sexual do you not audibly or visually perceive? what's with the continuous mispronunciation? MET ER OH sexual? pulleeze...your laborious articulation of every spoken syllable is already enough of an assault on the human ear without also delivering bruising blows to human sensibility. (i otherwise find you to be one of the most profound thinkers of our time.)
Sheryn...Larry speaks in counterpuntal style like that to telegraph that his rate of stroking under his desk is at that same slow measured pace, undoubtedly!
Let's do be quiet about a president who listened to Wright say GDm America, ADM white people for 20 years !
Or admnits that he didn't find Christianity until he found the special brand of Black Theology preached by Rev. Wright, as he wrote in "Dreams of My Father". Of course, it's interesting that in the interview with Ed Klein of the NY Times Rev. Klein stats Wright apparently is not sure even today that Obama really ever accepted Chrisitianity, as he had discussions with him about Obama's Muslim heritage from his father's and step father's heritage.
What I find interesting is Grandpa Fuzz chooses, when it suits him, to suggest the President "didn't accept" Reverend Wright's teachings--with the veiled innuendo he might be a secret Muslim--but then insists the rest ought to be taken as gospel and indicative of Obama's "secret agenda" for America.
And that claim about his stepfather's "Muslim heritage" doesn't survive my fact checking either. Mr. Obama describes how as a young boy he ate dog meat in Indonesia, something faithful Muslims would never do...
FAIL...
I have to say that I love both your passion and your progressive point of view. You have, accurately, portrayed the extreme views of, in particular, those who continue to support running our country into the ground just to go after our President. That said, I have to object to your overt suggestion that investors or fans of Rickett's team should abandon him. While I totally agree (thanks for the tip actually), I do believe that as a journalist, you tend to tarnish your own brand by crossing that line into activism. I think, from watching the facts unfold and your consistently passionate coverage of what the right is up to, we, your viewers, will come to the same conclusion regarding any potential investment in Mr. Rickett's financial futures and our own money. But your advocacy for the facts should not include such direct attacks upon him as they cannot but be taken as advocacy and activism.
Please, keep up the great work. I have enjoyed your show since you first got your own show.
Jim
http://unitedrepublic.org/mccain-whitehouse/?akid=114.136857.sP5NRO&rd=1&t=1
Turn the Supreme Court ruling around NOW!
GOP and SuperPacs really think we are stupid. This was planned and Willard rebuking it means absolutely nothing. They knew this ad was being posted, but to try and keep his hands clean he tries to deny it. The damage none the less is still done. Willard Mitt Romney will do anything to win the vote so he can ensure vulture capitalism reigns in the White House. Mitt will take all the taxpayer dollars from the middle class and poor and bail out the rich. For all those who vote for him, if he wins and you have noit been impacted by this economy. Wait; you will be if Willard wins.
Romney should do every thing he can to educate the public about Obama including his relationship with Wright.