Free Republic

Oops? President Barack Obama's re-election campaign washed its hands Wednesday of an independent group's vicious (and misleading) ad effectively blaming Mitt Romney for the death of a laid-off steelworker's wife from cancer. Campaign officials flatly denied any knowledge of the facts in the case—but it turns out the widower told the same story on an Obama campaign conference call in mid-May. (The Obama campaign responded late in the day: See update below).

Representatives from the Obama campaign tried to distance themselves on Wednesday from a new ad released by the pro-Obama Super PAC Priorities USA that links actions taken by Bain Capital to the death of former steelworker Joe Soptic’s wife. Aboard Air Force One, campaign spokesperson Jen Psaki told reporters that the campaign had “no involvement with any ads that are done by Priorities USA.” “We don’t have any knowledge of the story of the family,” Psaki said when asked about Soptic’s story. On CNN’s Early Start Wednesday morning, Obama for America Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter also denied that she...

No description at YouTube, so my write up:CNN's Brianna Kielar spoke with Joe Soptic, a former steelworker featured in a new pro-Obama super PAC ad who was laid off in 2001 when Bain Capital closed the company he had worked at for a reported 30 years. Without directly accusing Soptic and Priorities USA of being despicable liars, CNN lets its reporting call them out as despicable liars. Soptic told CNN his wife had her own health insurance at her own job when he was laid off. Soptic said his wife quit her job a year or two later due to...

I hate it — hate it – when I hear liberal groups talking about “women’s issues.” Please stop lumping me in to your stupid, sweeping stereotypes and implying that, just because I am a part of the gender demographic that composes approximately half of the world’s population, I automatically agree with you. I don’t. But that’s the appeal of continuing this utterly dumb “Republicans are waging a war on women” meme, I suppose — drumming up a false feeling of mass feminist solidarity and convincing the perhaps less-informed ladies of America that they have something they need to get outraged...

President Obama’s campaign is out with a new ad going hard after Mitt Romney to release his past tax returns. The former Massachusetts governor has released his 2010 tax return and released an estimate of his 2011 taxes, with a pledge to release the full return. But he has resisted giving more information about his past taxes. Obama’s ad seizes on that fact, saying it “makes you wonder if some years he paid any taxes at all. ”

To cleanse the palate, behold the first 2012 attack ad rolled out by Priorities USA, one of those outrageously outrageous outside groups funded by anonymous donors that The One used to dump on at every opportunity. The first lesson of Hopenchange, though, is that getting elected takes priority over principles (see, e.g., his reversal on accepting public financing in 2008), so now top O-bots Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney have struck out “on their own” to form the very same kind of group in his service. (A previous ad whined about the Koch brothers.) Liberals like Russ Feingold who, contrary...