Mitt Romney's latest line of attack against President Obama is that the administration is "using Obamacare to impose a secular vision on Americans who believe that they should not have their religious freedom taken away." He's launched a petition against the administration's new regulation requiring employers and insurers to offer coverage for women's contraception.
Romney's attack has been called an "outright lie"—and it certainly doesn't square with his own record as Massachusetts governor, when he stood behind a state law that required all FDA-approved contraception, including emergency contraception, must be covered.
In other words, Romney is attacking President Obama for providing women with the very same access to contraception and preventive care that Romney did as governor of Massachusetts. It's another breathtaking example of Romney's hypocrisy—and his willingness to do and say whatever he thinks it takes to get elected.
This infographic shows that the Massachusetts law and the federal law are nearly identical. Share it widely.
Over at barackobama.com, Obama for America campaign manager Jim Messina has written this post on the campaign's decision to support Priorities USA to counter the outsize influence of Republican super PACs:
In 2010, the Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United case opened the door to a new wave of so-called Super PACs—non-candidate political committees that can receive and spend unlimited money from special interests. For the first time, these committees could accept money from corporations, not just wealthy individuals.
The decision has accelerated a dangerous trend toward a political system increasingly dominated by big-money interests with disproportionate power to spend freely to influence our elections and our government.
It's a trend the President has fought against, coming into office with a mission to limit special-interest influence in Washington. He put in place the most sweeping ethics reforms in history to close the revolving door between government and lobbyists. And he's overseen the most open administration ever—reversing Bush-era policies designed to limit Freedom of Information Act requests and disclosing White House visitor records so that Americans can see how their government works.
The President opposed the Citizens United decision. He understood that with the dramatic growth in opportunities to raise and spend unlimited special-interest money, we would see new strategies to hide it from public view. He continues to support a law to force full disclosure of all funding intended to influence our elections, a reform that was blocked in 2010 by a unanimous Republican filibuster in the U.S. Senate. And the President favors action—by constitutional amendment, if necessary—to place reasonable limits on all such spending.
But this cycle, our campaign has to face the reality of the law as it currently stands.
Over the last few months, Super PACs affiliated with Republican presidential candidates have spent more than $40 million on television and radio, almost all of it for negative ads.
Last week, filings showed that the Super PAC affiliated with Mitt Romney's campaign raised $30 million in 2011 from fewer than 200 contributors, most of them from the financial sector. Governor Romney personally helped raise money for this group, which is run by some of his closest allies.
Meanwhile, other Super PACs established for the sole purpose of defeating the President—along with "nonprofits" that also aren't required to disclose the sources of their funding—have raised more than $50 million. In the aggregate, these groups are expected to spend half a billion dollars, above and beyond what the Republican nominee and party are expected to commit to try to defeat the President.
With so much at stake, we can't allow for two sets of rules in this election whereby the Republican nominee is the beneficiary of unlimited spending and Democrats unilaterally disarm.
Therefore, the campaign has decided to do what we can, consistent with the law, to support Priorities USA in its effort to counter the weight of the GOP Super PAC. We will do so only in the knowledge and with the expectation that all of its donations will be fully disclosed as required by law to the Federal Election Commission.
What this change means practically: Senior campaign officials as well as some White House and Cabinet officials will attend and speak at Priorities USA fundraising events. While campaign officials may be appearing at events to amplify our message, these folks won't be soliciting contributions for Priorities USA. I should also note that the President, Vice President, and First Lady will not be a part of this effort; their political activity will remain focused on the President's campaign.
But here's what this doesn't change: the fact that ordinary people stepping up to take control of the political process is essential to our strategy.
This decision will help fill a hole on our side. But it's only one part of the overall effort.
Supporting Priorities USA means that our side will not concede the battles on the air in the months to come, but we continue to believe that this election will be won on the ground. Super PACs haven't opened offices. They haven't hired organizers. They haven't registered voters. They haven't knocked on doors or made the kind of personal contact with voters that we know is the single most effective way to persuade people and turn them out on Election Day.
And this is where we have the advantage. It will be up to us—the grassroots organization, funded by an average donation of $55—to win this election.
It's a point of pride that 98 percent of all our donations are $250 or less. Mitt Romney won't reveal that number about his own campaign, but filings show that just 9 percent of the Romney campaign's money in the fourth quarter of last year came from people giving less than $200.
Americans across the country are supporting the most extensive neighbor-to-neighbor, grassroots organization in history.
It's my hope that by making this decision and doing what we can to neutralize the onslaught of special-interest money, we can ensure that the decisive factor in this election won't be an unprecedented flood of special-interest spending, and the outcome will be back in the hands of ordinary Americans.
You might have been hearing a lot of false claims from the Republicans about the newest guidelines surrounding contraception under the Affordable Care Act. Here's the bottom line: Women will now have access to contraception with no co-pays or deductibles under most insurance plans—saving many women up to $600 a year.
For more, check out this infographic from barackobama.com—and share it with women you know.
The Atlantic has a good explanation of why Romney's Nevada victory over the weekend is "less than it appears."
On Saturday, Romney took 50 percent of the fewer than 33,000 votes cast in the Republican presidential caucuses. Compare that to 2008, when Romney earned 51 percent of 44,000 votes cast in the Republican caucuses. This year, Romney not only received numerically fewer votes, but he also earned a smaller percentage of the votes cast. The enthusiasm's clearly not there.
Molly Ball writes:
"This year, with more attention paid, Nevada was supposed to be the state that would give Romney a resounding victory and begin to seal his own unstoppable status. A 29-point victory is resounding enough, and this time, Romney had a bit more competition in the state. But the lower enthusiasm for his candidacy could be a bad sign for Romney, and for Republicans, in the general election."
This morning, we got some very encouraging news about our economy. For the 23rd consecutive month, the number of new American jobs has continued to grow. January saw an additional 257,000 private-sector jobs, bringing us to nearly 3.7 million cumulative private-sector jobs under this administration.
This is really positive news, and it's a sign that the job-creation policies that President Obama and Democrats in Congress have fought for and implemented—despite near-universal Republican obstruction—are working. But the reality is that the hard work of rebuilding our economy is far from over. We need to continue to stand behind our President and congressional Democrats to build an economy that lasts—and to ensure every American looking for a job can find one.
To learn more about today's jobs numbers, check out this page on barackobama.com.
As Mitt Romney campaigns in Nevada, a state hit hard by the housing crisis, he has yet to offer a single proposal to lend a hand to America’s struggling homeowners, make it easier for them to refinance their homes, or help them avoid foreclosure. Or, as Rep. Jan Schakowsky put it in a call slamming Romney's housing policies (or lack thereof) today: "He hasn’t offered any ideas to help these families recover their piece of the American dream and the dignity that comes with having a home to raise a family in."
Instead, he believes we should let the foreclosure process "run its course and hit the bottom." In other words, Romney would let homeowners lose their homes and let the banks make a quick buck from the wreckage of American middle-class families. And he had the gall to tell underwater Florida homeowners that the banks are "feeling the same thing" they are.
If you’re a homeowner in this country trying to make ends meet, Romney has four simple words for you: You’re on your own.
Banks, on the other hand…
Today in Las Vegas, Donald Trump added his name to a list of such esteemed luminaries as Christine O'Donnell, Robert Bork, Ann Coulter, and the Kansas secretary of state in endorsing Mitt Romney for the Republican presidential nomination.
But like so many before him, Trump hasn't always been on Team Romney. Quite the opposite: Less than a year ago, Trump couldn't resist sharing his disdain for Romney with every news outlet he could get a hold of.
Just last April, Trump mocked Romney in the New York Post as someone who "walked away with some money from a very good company that he didn't create."
He told the Washington Post that Romney has a history of "eliminating jobs rather than creating them."
And Trump believed, he told the Deseret News, that Romney "doesn't have a chance at the Republican nomination."
So what changed? How did Trump go from publicly mocking Romney to deciding he was the candidate for him?
It seems they discovered a common hobby to bond over: Firing people.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, former Nevada Gov. Bob Miller, and former Sen. Richard Bryan welcomed Mitt Romney to Nevada with an op-ed in the Las Vegas Sun. On every issue important to Nevadans—jobs, housing, immigration, and Yucca Mountain—Romney is on the wrong side.
Romney is running on his business experience and job creation record—a point he has stressed in Nevada, a state in which unemployment is a major issue. But Romney doesn't want Nevadans to know that he made millions from buying companies, closing factories, firing workers, and sending jobs overseas. And during his tenure as governor of Massachusetts, the state ranked 47th out of 50 in job creation. In contrast, President Obama has emphasized his commitment to job creation and laid out a blueprint for it in his State of the Union address.
The last time Romney visited Nevada, a state with one of the highest foreclosure rates in the nation, he told homeowners he would let the foreclosure process “hit the bottom”—a stance he reinforced earlier this week. Meanwhile, President Obama visited Nevada last year and proposed new ways to help struggling homeowners keep their homes. Yesterday President Obama unveiled his new housing plan, which will create new opportunities for responsible homeowners to refinance their mortgages and save $3,000 a year.
Immigration is also a critical issue in Nevada, a state with a high population of Hispanics. Romney has proudly accepted the endorsement of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who authored the extreme anti-immigration laws in Arizona Alabama. And although 91 percent of Hispanics support the DREAM Act—which provides a pathway to citizenship for those who came to America as children through no fault of their own—Romney called it a “handout” and promised to veto it if Congress passed it. In his State of the Union address, President Obama promised to sign the DREAM Act into law if it came across his desk.
Finally, Romney sought and received the endorsement of South Carolina's Tea Party governor, Nikki Haley, who said she supports Romney largely because he wants to revive the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository. The project, which is strongly opposed by Nevadans and would have led to high-level nuclear waste to be dumped within Yucca Mountain, was canceled by President Obama.
The choice for Nevadans is clear, write Reid, Miller and Bryan: "If we follow the President’s bold blueprint and create an economy built to last, we will come back stronger than ever."
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