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In New Stump Speech, Romney Suggests Obama Is Anti-God

By Igor Volsky on Sep 10, 2012 at 3:42 pm

Mitt Romney suggested that President Obama has taken God out of his heart during a rally in Mansfield, Ohio on Monday, telling a crowd of manufacturing workers that unlike the current occupant of the White House, he will always be guided by the Almighty. The comments appear to be a new post-convention Republican strategy to paint Obama as anti-God:

ROMNEY: I believe it’s important to have a president and I will be a president, if elected, that honors that pledge and all the pledges that I made. [The Pledge of Allegiance] says that we are a nation under God…. If I become president of the United States, I will not take God out of my heart, I will not take God out of the public square and I will not take it out of the platform of my party.

Watch it:

The former Massachusetts governor began his address by thanking the audience for reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, which he recalled saying himself “as a boy in fourth grade.” Then, in what is a newer section of his stump speech, Romney implied that Obama and the Democratic Party have taken God out of their governance, referring to a last minute effort — made at the request of Obama himself — to reinsert the word ‘God’ into the platform at the DNC convention.

The campaign has tried to exploit the incident, with Romney promising, on Saturday, that “I will not take God off our coins, and I will not take God out of my heart.” Last week, Paul Ryan claimed that Democrats had “purged” God from their platform, ignoring the document’s long-standing section on “Faith.”

The new attack line is also reminiscent of Romney’s charge from January — when the candidate was trying to stave off a primary challenge from Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA). “Then of course there’s the assault on religion,” Romney said, describing the Obama administration’s policy expanding contraception coverage to women.

Justice

How One Hedge Fund Millionaire Is Trying To Buy A Seat In Congress

By Josh Israel posted from ThinkProgress Justice on Sep 10, 2012 at 3:00 pm

U.S. House candidate Randy Altschuler (R-NY)

U.S. House candidate Randy Altschuler (R-NY)

Robert Mercer, the millionaire hedge-fund manager has been a consistent funder of right wing causes. In recent years, the co-CEO of Renaissance Technologies has bankrolled an Islamaphobic effort to stop a Muslim Community Center in New York City, given $1 million each to the pro-Mitt Romney Restore Our Future super PAC and Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, and spent $200,000 on ads against Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR), an advocate for more regulation of hedge funds. Now, public disclosure forms reveal he is the main benefactor for a new super PAC helping to elect New York Republican House candidate Randy Altschuler.

Prosperity First Inc. registered in April as a super PAC and reported on its July quarterly report that it had raised $635,500 in its first three months in operation. Of that, a whopping $500,000 came from Mercer. Until this weekend, it was unclear what Prosperity First would do with the money. Friday, the group reported its first $273,472 independent expenditure — an ad supporting Altschuler. This expenditure — the vast majority of which was funded by Mercer — is in addition to a pair of $2,500 contributions directly from the hedge-fund millionaire to Altschuler’s official campaign. In the post-Citizens United world, wealthy donors like Mercer can legally circumvent the legal limits and attempt to buy elections for their favorite candidates.

Why would Mercer spend so much to elect this candidate? After narrowly losing in 2010, Altschuler is again challenging Rep. Tim Bishop (D-NY). One key difference between the two candidates is their view on Wall Street regulation: Bishop voted for the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009 (commonly known as Dodd-Frank), while Altschuler blasted the law as a “flawed piece of legislation” that would “kill jobs and shrink tax revenues for New York State.” Renaissance Technologies did not much like the bill’s regulations for hedge funds — the company has spent over $1 million since the start of 2010 on federal lobbying including a significant focus on Dodd-Frank’s hedge-fund provisions.

Altschuler promises that if elected, he would “roll out the red carpet” for businesses like Renaissance Technologies, instead of “red tape.” He says he will make the elimination of what he calls “job-killing government regulations” a priority. Altschuler’s let-business-do-whatever-it-wants approach would probably be good for the bottom line for hedge-fund millionaires like Mercer — though they would likely not be so good for consumers anxious to avoid a repeat of the 2008 financial sector meltdown. For a person who earns $125 million in one year, the Supreme Court’s effective elimination of campaign finance limits may have made buying a House seat — or several — a legal and doable proposition.

NEWS FLASH

Fired Elections Officials Sue Ohio Secretary of State For Wrongful Termination | Two Montgomery County board of election members are suing Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted for wrongful termination after they voted to allow early voting on weekends. Husted immediately suspended and then fired them for defying his state-wide directive restricting voting to weekdays only. Dennis Lieberman and Tom Ritchie, who have served on the board for a collective 28 years, filed the federal lawsuit Monday morning. Besides accusing Husted of wrongful termination, the two Democrats are asking for a temporary reinstatement as the Montgomery County elections board comes up against the September 11 deadline to hire new members in order to continue operations. Husted is currently grappling with multiple lawsuits against his office and is appealing a recent decision to restore early voting on the three-day period before Election Day.

Rep. Allen West Finds Hidden ‘Soviet Union, Marxist-Socialist’ Meaning In Obama Campaign’s ‘Forward’ Slogan

By Scott Keyes on Sep 10, 2012 at 9:41 am

“Forward” may be an innocuous slogan to most Americans, subtly contrasting the Democrats’ progressive policies to the Republicans’ desire to reverse most Obama-era laws. Rep. Allen West (R-FL), though, has found a deeper meaning.

In a speech before the Republican Jewish Coalition on Sunday, West argued that Obama’s motto was actually a far more nefarious idea. “They want to bring out an old Soviet Union, Marxist-Socialist theme for their campaign called ‘Forward’,” West told the crowd, to audible gasps.

WEST: We are now $16 trillion in debt. We have 47 million Americans on food stamps. We have close to 9.5 million more Americans in three-and-a-half years on the poverty rolls. That’s not turning the corner. But yet, they want to bring out an old Soviet Union, Marxist-Socialist theme for their campaign called “Forward”. I have to ask you one simple question. Where is the Soviet Union today?

Watch it (beginning at 0:40):

West likely adopted this fantastical idea from right-wing media outlets like Breitbart.com, which called the slogan “communist” and blogger Jim Hoft who compared it to the “marching song of the Hitler youth.”

According to The Shark Tank, a conservative Florida-based political blog, the matter was “West just being West.”

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