Posted today at 2:37pm
 ABC News(WASHINGTON) -- Fred Davis, the GOP media guru who pitched the attack ad campaign against President Obama focused on Rev. Jeremiah Wright, describes John McCain in the document as a “crusty old politician who often seemed confused, burdened with a campaign just as confused…”
Davis was a media consultant for McCain’s unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2008, having come up with the “celebrity” ad that generated some buzz, and an attack ad focused on Wright that McCain refused to green-light. But he retained his relationship with the Senator and came up with the media for McCain’s successful Senate re-election campaign in 2010, including the “complete the dang fence” ad.
Mark Salter, a close friend and top adviser to McCain, says of Davis, “Fred is a creative guy, but he requires round-the-clock adult supervision. If you take your eyes off him for a moment, you’re chasing demon sheep, witches and the yellow peril.”
Salter was referring to Davis ads for ultimately unsuccessful Republican candidates: one for GOP Senate candidate Carly Fiorina that depicted a primary opponent as a “demon sheep”; one for GOP Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell in which she denies being a witch; and one for Michigan GOP gubernatorial candidate Pete Hoekstra that uses some unfortunate images.
Davis could not be reached for comment, but he has said, “If I picked what’s on my tombstone, it would be: ‘If you don’t notice it, why bother?’”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Posted today at 1:40pm
 Sankei via Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- A set of lawmakers on Capitol Hill expressed frustration Thursday that states, not the federal government, will have to deal with the majority of clean-up when marine debris from last year’s tsunami in Japan hits the West Coast.
During the first hearing on tsunami debris held by the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast Guard Thursday, David Kennedy, Assistant Administrator for NOAA’s National Ocean Service, outlined the agency’s efforts to handle the debris, which includes developing models to predict the track of the debris to conducting marine debris surveys in impacted areas over the next two years.
But Kennedy also admitted states will have to assume the majority of debris clean-up responsibilities, a suggestion with which the chair of the subcommittee took issue.
In the 2012 fiscal year, NOAA’s Marine Debris Program received $4.6 million, but President Obama’s 2013 fiscal year budget proposed a 25 percent cut to the program.
“I think we should be discriminating in terms of what’s essential as a priority, and obviously this is a priority and we should have some pre-planning and some forethought involved knowing that the bulk of this degree is going to occur presumably in 2013 and 2014,” Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said. “Here we are facing reductions in the very program that’s going to be essential. Ok, well obviously it doesn’t make sense, and that’s something that needs to be remedied.”
The government of Japan estimated last year’s tsunami swept 5 million tons of debris into the Pacific Ocean. Over half of the debris sank near the coast of Japan, but 1.5 million tons of debris are still floating and while some of the debris is expected to break down, it is still expected that some products, including lumber, plastics and vessels, will hit the coasts of the United States in the next two years. Kennedy said experts say it is highly unlikely the debris is radioactive, but there is a possibility for hazardous items to drift ashore.
“I’m definitely going to react when thousands of cans of hazardous materials wash ashore and they have things like rat poisoning and gas in them. We are going to react,” Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said.
In early April, a “ghost ship” set adrift by last year’s tsunami in Japan surfaced off the coast of Alaska and eventually sank in the Gulf of Alaska after a Coast Guard cutter fired at it. Earlier this month, a Harley Davidson that was swept away by the tsunami washed up on the shores of Canada.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Posted today at 12:20pm
 ABC News(WASHINGTON) -- Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday added a new twist to Democrats’ economic argument against Mitt Romney, saying his business practices at Bain Capital resulted in costs to taxpayers.
“If the job is to make sure investors do well, at the expense of a company that employs everybody else, you all end up paying for it,” Biden told a crowd of supporters outside a car dealership in Martins Ferry, Ohio. He was speaking specifically about the case of GST Steel, which Bain acquired in 1993 and was forced into bankruptcy and shuttered in 2001.
“People who had nothing to do with it, were not associated with it, never worked at the steel mill they talked about, they all paid for it,” Biden said. “Here’s why: because we don’t let people just go out there and beg in the street. We have unemployment insurance. Taxpayers pay for that! We don’t let those guys who lost their jobs, let their kids go without healthcare; we provide it! And everybody pays for it. The taxpayers pay for it!”
Biden, on the second day of his campaign swing through eastern Ohio, also pushed back on criticism of Democrats’ assault on Romney’s Bain record, insisting it’s fair game when evaluating the economic values a candidate would bring to the White House.
“We’re not anti-capitalist! For God sake, it’s the system that built the country!” Biden proclaimed. “We hope investors do well. But you can’t build an economy, an economy of the future where the only people who do well are the investors and everybody else pays the price. You can’t do that. Workers get laid off, that’s true. Companies get shut down. Whole communities suffer from the effects when that happens. That’s no way to build an economy. That’s no way to create job creators.”
Perhaps a nod to charges that the Obama campaign is engaging in character assassination, Biden tempered his criticism of Romney by heaping praise on him personally.
“Now Gov. Romney, he loves you all, I don’t doubt that a bit,” Biden told the crowd. “Gov. Romney’s a good decent man. In my experience he’s a patriotic guy. He’s a religious man. He raised five beautiful kids. He’s got a beautiful, bright wife. But he has a fundamentally different view of how to make this country go.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Posted today at 11:31am
 Bill Pugliano/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- New Republican ads featuring President Obama’s former pastor Jeremiah Wright and his inflammatory comments may not be made after all.
The New York Times reported Thursday that a new “super PAC” supporting Mitt Romney was planning to replay the indignation over Wright’s controversial sermons that were a highlight of the 2008 presidential campaign.
The news of Wright being resurrected in 2012 threw the Obama and Romney campaigns into spin mode early Thursday.
Romney’s campaign manager quickly said in a statement that the team doesn’t support “efforts on our side” to run ads of “character assassination.”
But the leaked proposal, authored by the GOP ad man Fred Davis and brokerage firm guru Joe Ricketts, has made things complicated now that it’s public. A person familiar with the super PAC tells ABC News that the leaked document was simply a proposal that was never acted on, and that no plan had been made to make any ads.
Davis told ABC News a month ago that he’d lined up the main donors for the new super PAC to target Obama, and that he expected the war chest to be in the millions. “The money’s already here,” he said.
Obama’s campaign manager countered by saying that Romney had “fallen short of the standard” set by John McCain in 2008, when he rejected the idea of a negative campaign.
Both campaigns, however, have used negative ads. Obama’s latest ads portray Romney as a corporate “vampire” who bankrupted a steel company while profiting off of it. And Romney survived the primary season partly by flooding the airwaves with commercials that portrayed his opponents negatively.
Democrats also are highlighting an interview Romney gave to Sean Hannity in February in which he mentioned Wright unprompted, in response to a clip of Obama saying “we are no longer a Christian nation.”
“I’m not sure which is worse: him listening to Reverend Wright or him saying that we must be a less Christian nation,” Romney said at the time.
The new Republican proposal to bring Wright back into the fray says, “The world is about to see Jeremiah Wright and understand his influence on Barack Obama for the first time in a big, attention-arresting way.” The proposal reportedly involves $10 million.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Posted today at 10:04am
 Jeff Swensen/Getty Images(JACKSONVILLE, Fla.) -- Mitt Romney’s campaign manager said the campaign would “repudiate any efforts on our side” to run “a campaign of character assassination” after a New York Times story revealed on Thursday the possibility of a group of conservatives bankrolling ads that would link President Obama to the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.
“Unlike the Obama campaign, Gov. Romney is running a campaign based on jobs and the economy, and we encourage everyone else to do the same,” Matt Rhoades said in an e-mail statement Thursday. “President Obama’s team said they would ‘kill Romney' and, just last week, David Axelrod referred to individuals opposing the president as ‘contract killers.’ It’s clear President Obama’s team is running a campaign of character assassination. We repudiate any efforts on our side to do so.”
The Times reported Thursday that a $10 million plan developed by “a group of high-profile Republican strategists” and Joe Ricketts, the founder of TD Ameritrade, will seek to link “Mr. Obama to incendiary comments by his former spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., whose race-related sermons made him a highly charged figure in the 2008 campaign.”
“The group suggested hiring as a spokesman an ‘extremely literate conservative African-American’ who can argue that Mr. Obama misled the nation by presenting himself as what the proposal calls a ‘metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln,’” the Times said.
Romney was asked about the story on a charter flight between Miami and Jacksonville, Fla., Thursday morning, declining to comment and instead saying that he had yet to read the papers on Thursday, according to Bloomberg News.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Posted today at 6:18am
 Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images(JACKSONVILLE, Fla.) -- Mitt Romney’s around-the-clock fundraising schedule seems to be paying off -- literally.
Romney, with the help of the Republican National Committee, raised $40.1 million in April -- nearly matching the $43 million raised by President Obama’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee in the same month -- proving the strength of his fundraising campaign since essentially clinching the nomination.
The fundraising numbers, expected to be released formally by the campaign Thursday morning, were first reported by The New York Times and later confirmed by ABC News.
The April haul far exceeds the money the presumptive GOP nominee raised in March -- just $12.6 million -- and clearly shows the boost the campaign got from joining forces with the RNC to develop a Victory Fund, which allows donors who have already maxed out to Romney to then give more money -- and in larger amounts.
Romney, a multi-millionaire, has still not given any of his personal fortune to his campaign, which will report Thursday morning that it has $61.4 million in cash on hand.
Romney’s fundraising schedule has undoubtedly ramped up since joining forces with the RNC in early April, but the candidate spent only the later half fundraising with the Victory Fund -- the first two fundraisers officially organized by the committee not occurring until April 15 in Florida. Since then, Romney has maintained an aggressive fundraising schedule.
On Wednesday alone, Romney is said to have raised more than $4.3 million at two fundraisers in South Florida. The candidate has two more fundraisers in the Sunshine State on Thursday, and has held several earlier in the week.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Posted today at 6:17am
 Win McNamee/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has a status update for Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin: Stop attempting to dodge your taxes by renouncing your U.S. citizenship or never come to back to the U.S. again.
In September 2011, Saverin relinquished his U.S. citizenship before the company announced its planned initial public offering of stock, which will debut on Friday. The move was likely a financial one, as he owns an estimated 4 percent of Facebook and stands to make $4 billion when the company goes public. Saverin would reap the benefit of tax savings by becoming a permanent resident of Singapore, which levies no capital gains taxes.
At a news conference Thursday morning, Sens. Schumer and Bob Casey, D-Pa., will unveil the “Ex-PATRIOT” (“Expatriation Prevention by Abolishing Tax-Related Incentives for Offshore Tenancy”) Act to respond directly to Saverin’s move, which they dub a “scheme” that would “help him duck up to $67 million in taxes.”
The senators will call Saverin’s move an “outrage” and will outline their plan to re-impose taxes on expatriates like Saverin even after they flee the United States and take up residence in a foreign country. Their proposal would also impose a mandatory 30 percent tax on the capital gains of anybody who renounces their U.S. citizenship.
The plan would bar individuals like Saverin from ever reentering the United States again.
“Eduardo recently found it more practical to become a resident of Singapore since he plans to live there for an indefinite period of time,” Tom Goodman, Saverin’s spokesman, told Bloomberg News in an email.
Last year 1,700 people renounced their U.S. citizenship.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Posted today at 3:31am
 Hemera/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) -- The White House on Wednesday reacted to news that representations of President Obama’s budget had been voted down by the House and Senate by decrying the introduction of the amendments, by Republicans, as “gimmicks.”
“Gimmicks are not solutions,” White House press secretary Jay Carney emailed to ABC News. “The American people overwhelmingly support a balanced approach to our long-term budget challenges. That’s the approach the President supports. The sooner Republicans drop their intransigence and join the American people in supporting a balanced approach, the sooner Congress will be able to come together and reach a compromise.”
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Miss., introduced a budget amendment representing the president’s budget request; the Sessions amendment was voted down 99-0.
A similar effort from Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-SC, was rejected in the House 414-0.
Sessions told reporters that it was “stunning” that no one voted for the version of the Obama budget he put forward.
“A sitting president of the United States, seeking reelection, can’t lay out a plan that will gain a single vote in the House or Senate for the financial future of America,” he said. “It speaks volumes
While the Sessions and Mulvaney bills put forward the same topline numbers as those in the president’s budget, neither offered any specifics. The Sessions legislation was 56 pages long; actual budgets are closer to 2,000 pages long.
Thus, a White House official said, the Sessions proposal was a “shell that could be filled with a number of things that could hurt our economy and hurt the middle class. For example, rather than ending tax breaks for millionaires his budget could hit the revenue target by raising taxes on the middle class and rather than ending wasteful programs, his budget could hit its spending target with severe cuts to important programs.”
“This is the president’s budget,” said the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, Sen. Kent Conrad of South Dakota, indicating the voluminous budget proposal Obama offered. “This is what Sen. Sessions has presented as being the president’s budget,” he said, indicating the much slimmer document.
“I think it’s readily apparent there is a big difference between the president’s budget, which I hold in my hands, and what Sen. Sessions has presented as being the president’s budget. This is not the president’s budget. So, of course, we’re not going to support it. It’s not what the president proposed,” Conrad continued.
The White House official said the Sessions and Mulvaney’s bills were mere GOP stunts to get Democrats on record opposing "the president’s budget” as well as distracting from what the House Republican budget would do, which the official described as “protect(ing) massive tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires while making the middle class and seniors pay.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Posted yesterday at 10:32pm
 ABC News(STEUBENVILLE, Ohio) -- One of Mitt Romney’s spokesmen, in Ohio to attend Vice President’s Joe Biden’s speech Wednesday in nearby Youngstown, Ohio, got some unexpected one-on-one time with the veep that evening when he was seated next to him at dinner, where he apparently proceeded to drill him on his position on coal production.
Romney spokesman Ryan Williams told ABC News that he went to find a restaurant in Steubenville, Ohio, after the Biden event and came across Maples Spaghetti House. He and his dinner partner, Romney’s Ohio State Director Chris Maloney, walked into the restaurant, where they got swept by Secret Service, which Williams said tipped him off to Biden’s impending arrival.
Williams said he was seated at the “first available table” in the dining room when, moments later, Biden came down and sat at the table right next to him. Williams promptly tweeted a photo.
After a brief photo-op with the traveling press, Williams said a staffer leaned over to Biden and whispered something, prompting the vice president to summon the Romney spokesman over to his table.
“Oh, there’s Ryan,” Williams recalled Biden saying. “He pointed me out and called me over, and we exchanged pleasantries.”
According to Williams, while there was no mention of Romney, Biden did ask if he’d like to join his table so he’d have a better chance of eavesdropping.
Williams said he asked the vice president why he was in coal country, challenging him on his support of the coal industry. According to Williams, Biden refused to answer when he asked the vice president why he believes coal is more dangerous than terrorism.
“He disagreed with that and didn’t want to answer my questions,” said Williams, who added that Biden was “very cordial” and “seems like a nice man.”
After the exchange, Williams said he returned to his table and Biden was relocated to another area of the dining room.
Amy Dudley, Biden’s press secretary, also tweeted a photo of the run-in with the message, “So nice of @RyanGOP to join us for dinner at Naples Spaghetti House in Steubenville.”
Ben LaBolt, a press secretary for the Obama reelection campaign, seemed less amused in his tweet, writing to Williams, “Staffer apparently doesn’t believe the press is capable of asking questions, shouts his own at the candidate. #classy.”
Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, who was dining with Biden, told the Columbus Dispatch that Biden didn’t seem put off by Williams’ questions.
“The vice president did not seem to be the least bothered by it,” Strickland told the paper. "I wasn’t bothered by it, I didn’t perceive it being out of line in any way or inappropriate in any way. I think politics can be fun and enjoyable. They can be a little spicy at times.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Posted yesterday at 9:13pm
 Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Alex Wong/Getty Images(CHICAGO) -- A top Obama campaign strategist made a surprising admission Wednesday about Democrats’ efforts to undermine Mitt Romney’s economic chops: they haven’t worked.
“No one has a good understanding of what Mitt Romney’s economics are or what Mitt Romney’s business experience really was,” said deputy Obama campaign manager Stephanie Cutter on a conference call with reporters.
She was asked to explain why the former governor and private equity executive holds an edge over Obama in some public polling on who Americans believe would better improve the economy.
“In a rare moment of candor a few months ago, Mitt Romney admitted that his job was not about job creation, it was about wealth creation,” Cutter said. “So, what we have been doing today, and all week, is explaining that that ‘wealth creation’ came at a price.”
“I think that over time people will become aware of these things,” she added.
Democrats have spent months hammering Romney’s economic record as governor of Massachusetts, his lack of transparency with tax returns and his business dealings at Bain Capital -- through online and TV ads, social media campaigns, and local and network news interviews. The problem, she said, is that a clear message has yet to break through.
The Obama campaign is amplifying their case about Romney this week, through a coordinated TV ad campaign, a tour by Vice President Joe Biden through Ohio, and other public events in key states featuring laid-off workers from former Bain-owned companies.
And aides appear to be trying to further simplify their message -- avoiding the nuances of the practices of private equity -- casting Romney as a ruthless wealth seeker, not a job creator.
“You can take it from me: Mitt Romney is no job creator. He was a corporate raider. He tried every way possible to create profits for himself and his buddies instead of trying to create jobs for American workers,” Cutter said.
She underscored later, “As the CEO of Bain, Romney’s first priority was creating wealth for himself and making return on his investment for his investors, not building companies that created jobs for hard-working Americans. As president Romney would do the same.”
And again, hammering the same point home: “As a corporate buyout specialist like Mitt Romney...was very successful at one thing: creating wealth for himself and his investors, getting a return for that investment. He wasn’t successful at ensuring that people get to keep their jobs.”
The question now is whether persuadable voters are listening, and agree.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Posted yesterday at 8:03pm
 Photodisc/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) -- Despite beginning the day with a vote permitting the use of calculators on the Senate floor, Wednesday turned out to be less than productive for the U.S. senators.
The Senate spent the whole day Wednesday, with over six hours of straight floor speeches, debating five non-binding budget resolutions that everyone knew in advance would not pass. And, no surprise, none of them passed -- not by a mile.
For Republicans, it was about making a point that the Democrat-led Senate has not produced a budget. So they brought five of their own budget proposals to the floor to offer a direct comparison.
“If you’re looking for a simple three-word description of the Democrats’ approach to the problems we face, it’s this: duck and cover,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Wednesday on the floor of the Senate. “By the end of the day, we’ll know whether there is a budget that Washington Democrats support, and the American people will know without a doubt who is voting for solutions in this town and who isn’t. They will know who has got a plan to fix the mess we’re in and who doesn’t.”
Senate Democrats cast the day as a display “to waste a day with political show votes on stunt budgets.” Democrats say they already have a legally binding budget, the Budget Control Act, that is sufficient.
“They don’t mind wasting a day of the Senate’s time on useless political showboats. Republicans can say over and over they are only forcing votes on Republican budgets today because Democrats failed to pass their own budget. That couldn’t be further from the truth,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., rebutted Wednesday. “In August, Congress passed and President Obama signed a budget that reduces the deficit by more than $2 trillion...28 Republican senators, including my friend, the Minority Leader, voted for the last legally binding budget.”
Five versions of the Republicans’ proposals were voted on, all far from passing in the Democratically controlled Senate.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., based his proposal on an interpretation of President Obama’s budget, which failed badly, not receiving a single vote at 0-99. Republicans immediately jumped on this as unanimous rejection to the president’s own budget.
And the House of Representatives’ Paul Ryan’s budget failed by a vote of 41-58.
The back and forth over the existence or non-existence of a budget is nothing new around Capitol Hill. But in an election year, the votes Wednesday will provide both sides with fresh political ammunition in the key fight over deficits, debt, and which party has the upper hand in the economic recovery of the nation.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Posted yesterday at 6:33pm
 Architect of the Capitol(WASHINGTON) -- The House voted Wednesday evening to approve the Republican version of the Violence Against Women Act, also known as VAWA, 222-205. The bill would have failed had it not won the support of six Democrats.
Twenty-three Republicans voted against the bill with most of the House Democratic Caucus.
House Speaker John Boehner said that the legislation provides the tools necessary “to prevent these crimes from occurring, protect the victims of these crimes when those efforts fail, and bring those responsible to justice.” He urged the Senate to work out the differences with the GOP bill in a timely manner in order to get a final bill to the president.
“In the 18 years since the Violence Against Women Act was first enacted, Congress has twice acted in a broad, bipartisan fashion to reauthorize the law. Unfortunately, Senate Democrats are, by their own admission, attempting to exploit the issue in hopes of generating ‘fodder’ for election-year campaign ads,” Boehner, R-Ohio, wrote in a statement after the vote. “It is not only a cynical ploy, but a dangerous one for those depending on the resources and protections provided under the law.”
Vice President Joe Biden also released a statement following the vote, contending that the GOP’s version, which the White House has threatened to veto, “will roll back critical provisions to help victims of abuse.”
“I urge Congress to come together to pass a bipartisan measure that protects all victims,” Biden stated. “VAWA has been improved each time it’s been reauthorized, and this time should be no different.”
One key disagreement was over a provision for Native Americans that was included in the Senate legislation. The GOP legislation enables battered Native Americans to file in U.S. District Court for a protection order against an abusive spouse, whether Indian or not, who commits abuse on Indian land. The White House and other Democrats prefer the Senate’s version, granting tribal courts the ability to prosecute offenders -- a provision Republicans believe is unconstitutional. Current law prevents non-Indians from being prosecuted by tribal courts for crimes committed on tribal land, as decided by the Supreme Court in 1978.
The Department of Justice recommended changing the law to give tribal courts jurisdiction, but the Republican bill does not go that far.
“The Senate version extends new protections to Native Americans and to all who are targeted, regardless of sexual orientation,” Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said on the House floor before the vote. “Isn’t that our value, to protect every individual? ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all individuals are endowed by their creator.’ Shouldn’t we protect all individuals? Not exclude some?”
With two different versions having passed each chamber of Congress, lawmakers will have to come together to reconcile the differences between the two bills.
The six Democrats voting with the GOP majority were Reps. John Barrow of Georgia, Shelley Berkley of Nevada, Dan Boren of Oklahoma, Jim Matheson of Utah, Mike McIntyre of North Carolina, and Collin Peterson of Minnesota.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Posted yesterday at 5:54pm
 Joe Raedle/Getty Images(YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio) -- At a campaign stop in Youngstown, Ohio, Wednesday, Vice President Joe Biden lit into Republicans and their presumed presidential nominee Mitt Romney for what he described as a failure to understand the plight of the middle class.
“I resent when they talk about families like mine that I grew up in. I resent the fact that they think we’re talking about envy: it’s job envy, it’s wealthy envy; that we don’t dream,” an impassioned Biden told a crowd of manufacturing workers.
“My mother believed and my father believed that if I wanted to be president of the United States, that I could be, I could be vice president! My mother and father believed that if my brother or sister wanted to be a millionaire, they could be a millionaire! My mother and father dreamed as much as any rich guy dreams!
“They don’t get us! They don’t get who we are!” he yelled before the crowd, drawing loud applause.
Biden was referring broadly to Republican criticism of the administration’s push for higher taxes on wealthier Americans and expanded investment in federal programs aimed at boosting low- to middle-income families.
The vice president argued for a populist vision -- “Obama economics” -- that “believes everyone deserves a fair shot, a fair shake, and everybody should play by the same rules.”
“Then there’s the Romney philosophy,” he said. “The Romney economics which says as long as the government helps the guys at the top to do well, workers and small business communities, they can fend for themselves but the country will be OK if the big guy is doing well.”
For the first time, Biden directly and publicly critiqued Romney’s business record at Bain Capital, claiming it illustrates a worrisome approach to running the U.S. economy.
“By the way, Romney raised this. We didn’t raise this. He says it’s his business experience. So let’s take a hard look at that business experience,” Biden said. "In the 1990s there was a steel mill in Kansas City, Mo. It had been in business since 1888. When Romney and his partners bought that company, eight years later that company was in bankruptcy.”
The case of GST Steel and its 750 laid-off workers is featured in an Obama campaign TV ad running in Ohio and four other states during Wednesday night’s network evening newscasts. Romney had left Bain by the time the company went bankrupt, but he retained a financial stake in the firm, which profited from the GST deal.
“Of course, they don’t mention a couple of other things, one is we were able to create over 100,000 jobs, and secondly on the president’s watch about 100,000 jobs were lost in the auto industry and auto dealers and auto manufacturers,” Romney said in a Wednesday interview. “So you know, he’s hardly one to point a finger, and oh by the way, he has no problem, he has no problem going out and doing fundraisers with Bain Capital and private equity people.”
Biden’s event was the first stop on a two-day campaign swing through eastern Ohio, a critical general election battleground.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Posted yesterday at 3:18pm
 Ethan Miller/Getty Image(WASHINGTON) -- Former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain formally endorsed Mitt Romney for president of the United States Wednesday, telling reporters that he was making the endorsement now “for unity” within conservative circles because “in order to win, we have got to rally around our nominee.”
“This is about unity and, today, I want to formally endorse Gov. Mitt Romney for president of the United States of America,” Cain said Wednesday afternoon on Capitol Hill. “It is clear that Gov. Mitt Romney’s going to be the Republican nominee and so I wanted to formally endorse him today for president of the United States of America.”
Cain said that while many conservatives “may not be as excited” about the primary process or Romney’s candidacy, the country is at a turning point and must elect a Republican.
“Gov. Romney gets it right on the big issues,” he said. “President Obama gets it wrong on all of the big issues. That’s why we have got to have a different occupant of the White House.”
Asked why voters should listen to his latest endorsement after he initially signaled support for “the American people” and then Newt Gingrich, Cain attempted to poke fun at President Obama’s evolution on gay marriage.
“My endorsement evolved,” he said to laughter. “Early in the process is one thing, but as we converge toward the convention, what we did earlier isn’t as relevant. It wasn’t a matter of changing my mind.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Posted yesterday at 2:13pm
 Darren McCollester/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- That infamous and seemingly immortal tale of Mitt Romney crating his dog on the roof of his car during a 14-hour road trip has already weaseled its way into the narrative of the 2012 campaign and is now splashing its way onto America’s bookshelves.
The Romney family’s now-deceased Irish setter Seamus’ story is being cemented in history in a 64-page satirical book, Dog on the Roof, set to be released June 19.
And while the story has already incited pet lovers, pestered the presidential candidate and punctuated attack ads, a national book tour devoted solely to propagating the decades-old event will likely reinvigorate the Seamus saga, which Romney has tried to put to sleep.
“Now for the first time, here is the completely true—and only mildly embellished— shaggy-dog story of Seamus Romney,” reads the books description. “It is the inside (well . . . overhead) look at the Man Who Would Be President and the wild ride that’s sweeping—and bewildering—the nation.”
The authors, political satirists and frequent contributors to NPR’s All Things Considered Bruce Kluger and David Slavin, declined ABC’s request for comment.
The book is the latest edition to a growing grassroots advocacy movement using the Seamus story to point out Romney’s “overall appearance of meanness,” as Sean Crider, the founder of Dogs Against Romney, said. “It’s a character illuminating anecdote about Romney for a lot of people,” Crider said. “A lot of people are just pure dog lovers and see what he did as being abusive; others see it as a little window about what kind of guy he is.”
Romney’s treatment of Seamus represents a “pattern” of “meanness” from Romney, he said, that is amplified by the recent controversy over his high school bullying and his comments that he “likes being able to fire people.”
Crider, who is promoting the Dogs on the Roof book to the 55,000 Dogs Against Romney Facebook followers, said the book “makes Romney look silly.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
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