The precise location of President Obama’s birth is a dwindling obsession among the GOP. But the land where Obama’s political career started remains an inevitable part of any serious campaign mounted against him.
That’s right: we’ve entered the “he’s a Chicago politician” phase of the race to the White House.
It’s not like Obama isn’t wide open to this kind of assault — he lived and worked for many years in Chicago, where many a dead man has cast a ballot and many a palm has been greased. The Windy City has been plaguing Obama since he first ran for president, when his opponents on both sides tried to make a shady real estate developer named Tony Rezko into a thing.
So it was inevitable that we’d get to this point. It may have come a little earlier than expected, but of course at some point Mitt Romney would accuse Obama of “Chicago-style” politics. And, like sun rise follows sun set, Romney lobbed the charge at Obama Wednesday after the appointment of Richard Cordray to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
“This action represents Chicago-style politics at its worst and is precisely what then-Senator Obama claimed would be ‘the wrong thing to do,” Romney said in a statement after Obama’s high-profile recess appointment.
Thursday morning in New Hampshire, Romney kept it up, attacking Obama for his “crony capitalism,” which blends nicely with the “he’s from Chicago, be afraid” messaging.
Romney’s taking this Chicago terror tour to South Carolina where, as Tim Alberta first reported, Romney is running hard on an National Labor Relations Board message. Here’s his latest ad:
Catch that? Romney attacks Obama for siding with “union stooges.” Chicago lives! Romney’s hitting the Palmetto State this afternoon, with a town hall event slated for 3:45pm Eastern. You can be sure he’ll be banging the NLRB drum, which has become particularly central for Republicans ever since the board slammed the aircraft manufacturer Boeing for building a plant in the not-too-unions-friendly South Carolina, in apparent retaliation for union bolshiness in their plant in the more-friendly-to-unions Washington state. For Romney, then, this is a fortuitous moment where a local grievance can be blended with one of his more general campaign themes.
