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Election

GOP Rep. Joe Walsh Says The Country Only Elected President Obama Because He’s Black

By Scott Keyes on Apr 30, 2012 at 4:00 pm

Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) minced no words at a town hall over the weekend, telling constituents that the only reason President Obama was elected in 2008 was because “he’s our first African-American president.”

Speaking at a town hall in Wheeling, Illinois on Sunday, Walsh gave his view on how to win the upcoming presidential election before launching into his take on the previous one. The House Republican said the country only voted for Obama because “he was a historic figure… our first African-American president.” Walsh noted that other factors helped, including McCain’s age, but argued that Obama “never would have gotten there without his historic nature.”

WALSH: He was a historic figure. He’s our first African-American president. The country voted for him because of that. It made us feel good about [our]self. I’ve said it before, it helped that John McCain was about 142 years old. It helped that the economy was tanking. A lot of these things helped. But he never would have gotten there without his historic nature.

Watch it:

To say that a black man named Barack Hussein Obama benefited from latent prejudices is absurd.

Yet Walsh is using this view to undermine the president’s legitimacy and argue that he was elected not on his merits, but because of his race. Earlier in the town hall, Walsh criticized Obama for not being able to “understand this stuff” (speaking about government spending) because “he was an accidental president.”

Still, Walsh isn’t the only one to espouse this worldview. A recent survey found that “white Americans feel they are more discriminated against than blacks.”

Security

Obama Defends Attack On Romney: ‘I Assumed’ He Meant It When He Said He Wouldn’t Get Bin Laden

By Ben Armbruster on Apr 30, 2012 at 3:49 pm

Mitt Romney and his allies have been attacking President Obama for his campaign’s recent video ad, highlighting both his decision to order the raid that killed Osama bin Laden and Romney’s statement in 2007 that he would not have taken similar action given the chance. Romney now says he would have done the same as Obama. “Of course [I would have]. Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order,” Romney said today.

A reporter asked Obama about the criticism and Romney’s newest statement today during a White House press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda. While Obama said it’s “entirely appropriate” to “remember what we as a country accomplished” in getting bin Laden, the President advised that people look at what Romney said in 2007 and ask him why he now says something different:

OBAMA: As far as my personal role and what other folks would do, I just recommend that everybody take a look at people’s previous statements in terms of whether they thought it was appropriate to go into Pakistan and take out bin Laden. I assumed that people meant what they said when they said it, that’s been at least my practice. I said that we’d go after bin Laden if we had a clear shot at him and I did. If there are others who have said one thing and now suggested they’d do something else, then I’d go ahead and let them explain it.

Watch it:

Then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates — a Republican and a holdover from the Bush administration — said last year Obama’s decision to get bin Laden was a “gutsy call,” adding, “This is one of the most courageous calls — decisions — that I think I’ve ever seen a president make.”

Update

The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent reports that “by invoking Carter in this fashion, Romney may have effectively undermined his whole argument.”

Justice

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) Fined For Illegal Campaign Contributions

By Josh Israel on Apr 30, 2012 at 1:30 pm

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)

The first line of Marco Rubio’s biography on his 2010 campaign website claimed that the Florida Republican was “highly regarded for his principled, energetic and idea-driven leadership.” But a newly disclosed settlement with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) over illegal contributions accepted by his campaign committee has reignited long-standing questions about how “principled’ the freshman Senator’s ethics really are.

On March 19, Rubio and the FEC agreed to a negotiated settlement in which his Senate campaign committee agreed to pay an $8,000 fine to settle charges that it accepted over $210,000 in “prohibited, excessive and other impermissible contributions.” This news was not made public until a POLITICO story this weekend. Perhaps most disturbing is that even after an internal campaign audit, the Marco Rubio for Senate committee failed to address more than $83,000 in improper or misreported donations.

Rubio, who has been frequently mentioned as a possible vice presidential pick for Mitt Romney, has been in several previous ethical controversies, including:

  • Use of a Florida GOP credit card for personal purposes, many of which were reportedly only reimbursed by Rubio after media inquiries. Rubio’s 2010 campaign dismissed these allegations, saying they were reimbursed at the time.
  • Double-billing of Florida taxpayers for plane travel also billed to the state Republican Party. Rubio’s 2010 campaign claimed these happened without Rubio’s knowledge and were reimbursed.
  • Failure to disclose a $135,000 home equity loan from a bank controlled by political supporters. Rubio, in 2008, said his failure to disclose the loan was “an oversight” and that there was “nothing unusual about the loan or the application.”

    • Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington included Rubio among its “Crooked Candidates” of 2010. And Romney’s own press secretary Andrea Saul, then a staffer for a rival candidate, blasted Rubio in 2010 as “another typical politician who uses his public office for personal gain and only comes clean once caught.”

    Rubio’s office has not yet responded to a ThinkProgress request for comment, nor, according to POLITICO, to their request.

    NEWS FLASH

    At Private Fundraiser, Mitt Romney Tells Donors That Democrats Hate Golf Courses | Mitt Romney attended a fundraiser at the luxurious estate of Papa John’s founder John Schnatter recently, where he told the audience that Democrats don’t believe anyone should own a golf course or a pool. “What a home this is, what grounds these are, the pool, the golf course,” he said. “You know, if a Democrat were here he’d look around and say no one should live like this. Republicans come here and say EVERYONE should live like this. This is a real tribute to America, to entrepreneurship.” Watch it:

    To attend the fundraiser, contributors gave anywhere from $1,000 per person to get into the general reception to $25,000 to be listed as a co-host for the event.

    Update

    Romney recently attacked Obama for golfing. “I must say I scratch my head at the capacity of the president to take four hours off on such a regular basis to go golfing,” he said.

    Security

    Arianna Huffington Defends Mitt Romney On Bin Laden, Calls Obama Ad ‘Despicable’

    By Judd Legum and Ben Armbruster on Apr 30, 2012 at 11:16 am

    In 2007, Mitt Romney injected himself into the Democratic primary campaign and criticized Barack Obama for vowing to go after “high-value intelligence targets” in Pakistan with or without permission. Romney said “I do not concur in the words of Barack Obama in a plan to enter an ally of ours.” Here was the August 4, 2007 headline from Reuters:

    In April 2007, Romney said, “It’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.” Last May, President Obama ordered the raid that killed bin Laden and last week, the Obama campaign produced a video highlighting the president’s decision, while noting Romney’s 2007 comments.

    The Romney campaign attacked the ad, claiming it was trying to “divide” the country.” And this morning on CBS’s The Early Show, the Romney campaign got an unexpected supporter, Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington:

    HUFFINGTON: I agree completely — I agree with the Romney campaign. I think that using the Osama bin Laden assassination, killing the great news that we had a year ago in order to say basically that Obama did it and Romney might not have done it, which is the message. … I don’t think there should be an ad about that. … [T]o turn it into a campaign ad is one of the most despicable things you can do. It’s the same thing that Hillary Clinton did with the 3 a.m. call. You know, you are not ready to be commander-in-chief. [...]

    HOST: In a campaign aren’t you supposed to tout the accomplishments of what you’ve done?

    HUFFINGTON: But this is not just what this ad did, does. What the ad does is questions, if we’re talking about the same ad. … It quotes a snippet from Romney in ’07 and uses that to imply that Romney would not have been decisive. There’s no way to know whether Romney would have been as decisive. And to actually speculate that he wouldn’t be is to me not the way to run campaigns on either side.

    Watch the clip:

    Huffington doesn’t seem to think it’s fair to speculate what Romney would have done as president based on what Romney said he would (or in this case wouldn’t) do. But the ad is stating two basic facts. One, that Obama ordered the raid that killed the al-Qaeda leader and two, that Romney said in 2007 that he wouldn’t have done the same. So is it really “despicable” to wonder whether a President Romney would have ordered the raid on bin Laden given that he said he wouldn’t do it while campaigning for president?

    Update

    Romney commented on the issues at a campaign event today:


    Update

    Bush passed on a similar mission to capture “senior members of Al Qaeda” in 2005 because “it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan.”

    Economy

    Romney Adviser Now Claims Auto Rescue Was Actually Romney’s Idea

    By Josh Israel on Apr 30, 2012 at 10:57 am

    Romney Etch a Sketch "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt"For months, Mitt Romney has been dogged by a 2008 New York Times op-ed he wrote entitled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” But now, the same adviser who claimed Romney’s extreme views wouldn’t matter in the general election because it will be “almost like an Etch a Sketch” is doing some serious Etch a Sketch-shaking of his own.

    Romney strongly opposed the “bailout” of General Motors, writing: “If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.” He doubled down on that in February, saying that his “managed bankruptcy” proposals would have been vastly superior to the Obama administration’s “crony capitalism plan.” Now that the federal intervention by the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations has proven a huge success, the Romney campaign is trying desperately to change its tune.

    On Saturday, Romney’s senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom said:

    [Romney's] position on the bailout was exactly what President Obama followed. I know it infuriates them to hear that… The only economic success that President Obama has had is because he followed Mitt Romney’s advice. … The fact that the auto companies today are profitable is because they’ve shed costs. The reason they shed those costs and have got their employee labor contracts less expensive is because they went through that managed bankruptcy process. It is exactly what Mitt Romney told them to do.

    Fehrnstrom has made the same claim before. “Mitt Romney had the idea first,” he said last May. “Mitt Romney argued that instead of a bailout, we should let the car companies go through a restructuring under the bankruptcy laws.” This, of course, flatly contradicts Romney’s February editorial, in which he wrote of Obama’s efforts: “I believe that without his intervention things there would be better.”

    As industry experts have noted, however, exactly following Romney’s plan would have led to the collapse of the auto industry, since the private sector wasn’t willing to lend GM and Chrysler the money they needed to get to managed bankruptcy. “There was no one that was willing to come up not only with the cash to keep them afloat but also to serve the warranties of everyone, you and I that drive all these cars,” Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), a Romney endorser, said in February. “There was no one that could have picked up those pieces other than the federal government.”

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