Updated at 12:01 PM
The first Republican primary elections may not begin for more than two months, but President Obama’s re-election campaign is already engaging its likely opponents — especially Mitt Romney — with tougher and more frequent attacks.
Obama’s team is concerned that the GOP candidates will get a pass during the primary campaign if it doesn’t aggressively intervene and begin to shape the general election battlefield, according to Ben LaBolt, communications director for Obama’s re-election team.
“According to a Pew Study out last week, the President has received the critical media scrutiny you’d expect comes with the job, but the Republican candidates have thus far received largely fawning coverage as the horse race is covered much more closely than the policy positions they’ve laid out which would have very bad implications for middle class families,” LaBolt told TPM. “Until someone steps up to fill that void it’s our responsibility to do so.”
Early this month, the campaign issued a strategy memo laying out plans to paint Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Romney as pro-Wall Street Republicans captured by special interests while playing up Obama’s populism.
“From economics to immigration, Governor Perry, Governor Romney and the Republican field have embraced policies that the American people oppose,” wrote LaBolt. “The campaign to win the Republican nomination has become a campaign to win the hearts and minds of the Tea Party.”
Until recently, Obama’s re-election team had mostly left tough attacks on the GOP field to the Democratic National Committee, state parties, and outside groups like ex-White House staffer Bill Burton’s Priorities USA. But as the campaign has ratcheted up its direct attacks in the last few weeks, Romney especially has come under fire.
David Axelrod raised eyebrows recently when he called out Romney as a flip-flopper in unusually strong terms, saying that the former governor “is as vehement and as strong in his convictions when he takes one position as he is when he takes the diametrically opposite position.”
“We’re not picking the nominee and we’re not assuming he’ll be the nominee,” Axelrod said in a conference call with reporters. “But he deserves to be scrutinized carefully because what he’s saying is stunningly inconsistent.”
Still, the campaign seems to be exhibiting a more urgent need to strip the bark off Romney than Perry, whose national favorability numbers have quickly turned toxic. After the Las Vegas debate last Tuesday, LaBolt and Obama campaign manager Jim Messina held a conference call aimed almost exclusively at Romney where they took shots at his comments about letting the foreclosure crisis run its course, his explanation for contracting with a company that hired undocumented workers, and, of course, his evolving positions on a number of issues. Perry and Herman Cain were mentioned only in passing.
On Friday, Obama’s team responded to Romney’s criticism of the administration’s plan to withdraw from Iraq with a direct counterattack even while other Republicans bashed the White House as well.
Not to say Perry has been completely ignored: The campaign put out a statement slamming his energy proposals after he delivered a speech on the topic recently. But the trend is clear: As Romney rises — or more at least fails to sink — so too does the intensity of the Obama campaign’s attacks.
Romney’s hardly locked down the nomination: His polling is still relatively weak, there’s plenty of time (and money) for Perry to make a last stand, and wild cards like Cain and Bachmann still have the potential to cause trouble. But the Obama campaign isn’t going to wait to see how things pan out in the GOP primaries. The battle is engaged — now.
Update 12:01 PM: Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul sends over the following statement in response:
“More middle class jobs have been lost under President Obama than any president in modern history. President Obama and his political cronies are more interested in saving their own jobs than creating jobs for these middle class Americans and they know that Mitt Romney, a conservative businessman who spent his life in the real world economy, is the biggest threat for their desperate attempts to hold on to power.”
