Establishment Republican Romney Chooses NOT to use REAL and Necessary Ammo in Fight to Save America

May 17, 2012, 10:16 am
Romney Rejects Using the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Against Obama
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

WSJ:

12:48 p.m. | Updated Mitt Romney condemned efforts to use President Obama’s former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, in ads attacking the president, as reportedly planned by a “super PAC” working toward electing Mr. Romney in November.

“I repudiate the effort by that PAC to promote an ad strategy of the nature they’ve described,” Mr. Romney said during an interview with the conservative Townhall Web site. “I would like to see this campaign focus on the economy, on getting people back to work, on seeing rising incomes and growing prosperity — particularly for those in the middle class of America.”

Mr. Romney used the opportunity to accuse Mr. Obama of running a “campaign is a campaign of character assassination” but said of the PAC that “I repudiate what they’re thinking about.”

Earlier, Mr. Romney’s campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, said that “Gov. Romney is running a campaign based on jobs and the economy, and we encourage everyone else to do the same.”

The Times’s Jeff Zeleny and Jim Rutenberg reported Thursday morning on a plan by a group of Republican strategists to run ads linking Mr. Obama to his former pastor. A copy of the group’s detailed advertising plan, obtained by The Times, suggests using Mr. Wright’s “black liberation” rhetoric against the president, who attended Mr. Wright’s church for years.

In a statement issued Thursday afternoon, a spokesman for Joe Ricketts, the billionaire to whom the super PAC proposal was made, said Mr. Ricketts had no interest in financing the plan.

“Joe Ricketts is a registered independent, a fiscal conservative, and an outspoken critic of the Obama Administration, but he is neither the author nor the funder of the so-called “Ricketts Plan” to defeat Mr. Obama that The New York Times wrote about this morning,” said Brian Baker, the president of the Ending Spending Action Fund.

“It reflects an approach to politics that Mr. Ricketts rejects and it was never a plan to be accepted but only a suggestion for a direction to take,” Mr. Baker said.

The disavowal from Mr. Ricketts did not address whether he had given preliminary approval to the plan, as suggested in the proposal. In an interview on Wednesday evening, Mr. Baker did not reject the contents of the proposed ad.

As Mr. Romney’s campaign confronts the story about the super PAC’s plans, its response may be constrained by the forceful denunciation of that very tactic by the Republican Party’s former presidential nominee.

In 2008, Senator John McCain forbade his advisers from using Mr. Obama’s association with Mr. Wright in campaign commercials. But his direction was not only made in private. Mr. McCain spoke forcefully — and publicly — in defense of his Democratic rival.

Speaking on Fox News four years ago, Mr. McCain said that he did not believe Mr. Obama should be held accountable for the things that Mr. Wright said from the pulpit, despite Mr. Obama’s attendance at the church for years.

“When people support you, it doesn’t mean that you support everything they say,” Mr. McCain said in the interview. Noting the incendiary language that Mr. Wright used, Mr. McCain said: “Obviously, those words and those statements are statements that none of us would associate ourselves with. I don’t believe that Senator Obama would support any of those as well.”

Given repeated opportunities by Sean Hannity, the Fox host, to link Mr. Obama to Mr. Wright, Mr. McCain steadfastly defended his rival, saying “I do know Senator Obama. He does not share those views.”

Later in the campaign, Mr. McCain again said he did not believe that Mr. Obama shared Mr. Wright’s views about America, though he said Mr. Obama had acknowledged the issue was a legitimate one for people to consider.

“I don’t believe that Senator Obama shares his views in any way,” Mr. McCain said. “But he has said it’s a legitimate topic of discussion. If that’s what the American people want to discuss, that’s fine.”

Statements like that from Mr. McCain may be part of the reason Mr. Romney’s campaign quickly rejected the idea of using Mr. Wright as a way of attacking the president. Already, advisers to Mr. Obama have raised the question of whether Mr. Romney will speak out like Mr. McCain did.

“Stunning! Will Mitt stand up, as John McCaln did? Or allow the purveyors of slime to operate on his behalf?” David Axelrod, a senior campaign adviser to Mr. Obama, wrote on Twitter early Thursday morning.

Mr. Romney’s campaign may also fear shifting the conversation of the campaign away from the economy, where advisers believe the president has a weak and indefensible record. Mr. Romney has, for example, shied away from discussing the same-sex marriage issue, preferring to keep his attention focused on the economy.

Mr. Romney declined to answer a question about the report when asked about it, saying he had not read the story.

In a statement Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, Jim Messina, slammed the super PAC’s plans and criticized Mr. Romney for not publicly condemning the effort in person.

“This morning’s story revealed the appalling lengths to which Republican operatives and SuperPacs apparently are willing to go to tear down the President and elect Mitt Romney,” Mr. Messina wrote.

He added: “It also reflects how far the party has drifted in four short years since John McCain rejected these very tactics. Once again, Governor Romney has fallen short of the standard that John McCain set, reacting tepidly in a moment that required moral leadership in standing up to the very extreme wing of his own party.”

Mr. McCain, in a statement provided to The Times by his spokesman, said he stands by his opposition to using Mr. Wright against the president.

“Senator McCain is very proud of the campaign he ran in 2008,” said Brian Rogers, the spokesman. “He stands by the decisions he made during that race and would make them again today.”