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Top Obama political strategist David Axelrod took aim at surging GOP hopeful Rick Santorum Wednesday, painting him as a fringe candidate unlikely to appeal to voters after closer inspection. Speaking on CBS This Morning on Wednesday, Axelrod said the former Pennsylvania senator's economic policies were unlikely to win over voters. "I think when people really examine his economic policies, I don't think the average working person in this economy is going to look at his economic policies and say 'yeah, that's the ticket for me. That offers great hope for me.'" Axelrod said.

President Obama's campaign strategist David Axelrod chimed in Monday on the scandal surrounding the time Mitt Romney drove to Canada with his dog in a crate tied to the roof of his car in the 1980s. "Crategate," as the stupid pet trick was inevitably dubbed, has been an issue championed by New York Times columnist Gail Collins, who somewhat gleefully drops a reference to the story in as many columns as she can. On Monday, Axelrod tweeted a photo of Bo Obama, the first family's dog, in the back of a limo with the words, "How loving owners transport their...

Axelrod: Solyndra loan not as bad as Romney work for Bain CapitalBy Meghashyam Mali - 01/29/12 04:46 PM ET Obama campaign senior adviser David Axelrod hit at Mitt Romney over his tax returns and work at Bain Capital on Sunday and dismissed comparisons between the government’s investment in failed solar firm Solyndra and bankruptcies at Bain-backed companies. "Leverage buyouts of the sort that Governor Romney profited off of are quite different," said Axelrod on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. “Where you buy a company, load it down with debt, strip it down, let it go bankrupt and then make...

Charleston, South Carolina (CNN) - In what appears to be a last ditch attempt to halt Newt Gingrich's late momentum in South Carolina, a fake CNN Breaking News alert was emailed to state Republican activists early Thursday morning claiming that the former House Speaker pressured his ex-wife to have an abortion. CNN did not send out the email alert. It's not clear how many people received the fake email, though at least two members of the South Carolina GOP Executive Committee, who did not want to be named, were among those who found the missive in their inboxes this morning....

As proof of his spin prowess, campaign crafter extraordinaire David Axelrod yesterday defended BHO’s former controversial pastor Jeremiah Wright in a lecture in Thousand Oaks, Calif. Presenting as a part of the Distinguished Speaker Series of Southern California, Axelrod said the initial news reports of Barack Obama’s long-time connection with Wright featured suspect snippets from the pastor that amounted to “ninety seconds of vitriol plucked from thirty years of sermons by some enterprising opposition researcher.� Big Government’s Joel Pollak explains why that runs contrary to all we know about Jeremiah Wright: The claim that Wright’s sermons were selectively edited by...

David Axelrod, chief political strategist for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign and former White House political adviser, defended Jeremiah Wright on Tuesday evening in a speech in Thousand Oaks, CA. Axelrod described the initial news reports in 2008 on Obama’s long-time family pastor and mentor as “ninety seconds of vitriol plucked from thirty years of sermons by some enterprising opposition researcher.” The claim that Wright’s sermons were selectively edited by Obama’s political opponents contradicts what is known about Wright’s preaching and the radical, racialist creed of the Trinity United Church of Christ, to which Obama belonged for two decades and...

In the midst of all the hoopla over NBC’s big Republican debate, George Stephanopoulos quietly returned to his old position as anchor of ABC’s This Week, and already he’s made some news with today’s appearance by former White House advisor David Axelrod. A new book out about President Obama details tensions between First Lady Michelle Obama and White House staffers, which led to one advisor cursing her out during a meeting. Axelrod confirmed today that this incident did take place. RELATED: Michelle Obama Tells ABC News She Wants Four More Years The New York Times published an excerpt of the...

Democratic campaign officials on Wednesday happily tried to pour sand into the GOP’s nomination machinery by deriding Gov. Mitt Romney’s electability and his commitment to conservative policies, by commiserating with Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and with former Sen. Rick Santorum, and by complimenting Gov. Rick Perry. “People don’t know where Gov. Romney stands today and where he will stand tomorrow, and that’s troubling people in the Republican Party,” said David Axelrod, who has worked as chief political strategist for President Barack Obama since 2008. Romney is heading into the New Hampshire primary without solidifying his lead, so “he’s...

To this day, Barack Hussein Obama remains a man of mystery. Copious amounts of documentation from his early life and academic career have never been released. It took years of pressure, plus Donald Trump as the ringmaster of a media circus, just to see his birth certificate. When the L.A. Times obtained a potentially embarrassing videotape of Obama laughing it up at a party for Arafat minion Rashid Khalidi, the paper pursed its lips and fastidiously hid the tape from public view. Their newspaper account of the part didn’t even mention that domestic terrorist Friends of Obama Bill Ayers and...

Billionaire Donald Trump, who's eyeing a run for the White House, gave a sizeable campaign contribution to President Barack Obama's chief of staff as he ran to become Chicago's mayor, a recent report highlighted. The Illinois Review, a coservative blog, reports that Trump gave Rahm Emanuel $50,000 in December 2010. Those numbers came out in January, 2011, but are being pointed out now because of Trump's possible presidential bid.

Sharon Bialek, the north suburban woman who publicly accused Herman Cain of sexual harassment, leading to the end of his presidential campaign, appeared in court Friday morning for a hearing on her landlord’s attempt to kick her out of her townhome. Appearing in Cook County Circuit Court in Skokie, Bialek told Judge Jeffrey L. Warnick she needed a few more weeks to find an attorney to represent her in the case, in which her landlord is suing her for about $7,500 in back rent on the Glenview townhome. She also said she was not properly served with the eviction notice...

"If I have the choice between extending the tax cut for a year and energizing our economy and having an issue to run on, I'd rather energize the economy," Axelrod said in an exclusive interview with Fox News. "I think that it's better for the country, it's better for the president. Frankly it's better for the Congress even if they don't see it." In the next breath, however, Axelrod flatly charged the latest move by House Republicans to block a Senate compromise extending the tax cut for two months is an effort by the GOP to choke off any economic...

« Previous Post Boehner: We Have the VotesNext Post » Average + Weak ENLARGE PHOTO + 184 Share 3diggs digg MOREAdd to my:del.icio.usTechnoratiredditGoogle BookmarksMixxStumbleUponBlog this on:TypePadLiveJournalBloggerWordPressMySpaceAt briefing for reporters, Chicagoan says of the Georgian: "The higher a monkey climbs on the pole the more you can see his butt." Read more: http://thepage.time.com/2011/12/13/axelrod-sets-sights-on-gingrich/#ixzz1gRQ5DQM4

President Barack Obama's campaign doesn't seem too troubled by Newt Gingrich's ascendancy to the top of the Republican primary polls. Time's Mark Halperin reports that at a briefing for reporters today in Washington, Obama adviser David Axelrod said of Gingrich: "The higher a monkey climbs on the pole the more you can see his butt.

  This is bigger than just Wisconsin! As we feared, Obama is launching his 2012 campaign by mounting a powerful attack against Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin.  What is he after?  The winner of the Gov. Walker Recall will have momentum and will likely also deliver Wisconsin's 12 electoral votes in the presidential election to their party.   Whoever wins the presidential election, will likely need to win in Wisconsin. We have been warning you that this is not a local organic battle between conservatives and liberals, but a union backed effort with much of their support coming from out of...

Today in New York, Obama strategist David Axelrod took questions from reporters at a Bloomberg forum. NR was there. Right up front, Axelrod noted the “juxtaposition of the president’s speech yesterday with the one Mitt Romney made today.” He argued that the president’s detailed speech in Kansas, derided by many conservatives, “was a very thorough explication of his views on what the great challenges facing this country [and] his view on the economic challenges facing the country.” He then attacked Romney’s speech, which presented the concept of an “entitlement nation,” as “deeply offensive to many middle class Americans.” He argued...

The New York Times reports an interesting dispatch from President Obama's re-election campaign: Newt Gingrich is a genuine threat that they plan to take seriously. “Look, for the longest time, Gingrich was not really a factor in this race, he was left for dead at the checkout counter at Tiffany’s,” said David Axelrod, a chief adviser to the president’s re-election bid. “Now he is resurgent and he could be the nominee.” According to the Times, the campaign plans to portray Gingrich as "a symbol of the past" and the “godfather of gridlock.”

WASHINGTON — The White House and its allies are starting to turn their sights to Newt Gingrich, invoking his tumultuous history as House speaker to brand him as the “godfather of gridlock,” a testament to his new viability and the sudden realization that he could be President Obama’s Republican opponent. Democrats have made it clear they have no plans of letting up on Mitt Romney. But they are hoping to help stretch the Republican nominating contest into a longer and bloodier battle — meaning they are eager to define Mr. Gingrich for voters in unflattering terms without necessarily wounding him...

In an interview with Wolf Blitzer, Herman Cain said a new accuser would be coming forward to accuse him of having a 13-year affair with him. No links yet as the story is currently breaking and details are still being released. Apparentally a Georgia TV station has the exclusive.

West Chester, Ohio (CNN) -- A defiant Herman Cain tried to turn the tables on his growing legion of critics and accusers Wedneday, blasting them for allegedly engaging in gutter politics and giving no indication of any immediate intent to abandon his embattled presidential campaign. "They have been trying to do a character assassination on me," Cain told an enthusiastic crowd in Ohio. "They are attacking my character, my reputation and my name in order to try and bring me down." "I don't believe that America is going to let that happen," he declared.

Some are describing Ginger White, the Georgia woman who claims she had a 13 year consensual intimate relationship with Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, to have similar problems problems that Cain sexual harassment accuser Sharon Bialek had, including sexual harassment lawsuits and bankruptcy issues. According to Fox 5 Atlanta: (bolding is mine) “Before our interview, we checked into Ginger White's background. We found she filed a sexual harassment claim against an employer in 2001.

Investigations into the background information of women lobbing charges at Herman Cain reveal a potential smear campaign that may result in a damaging backlash against democratic operatives...

Herman Cain​ has spent his life living and working all over the country -- Indiana, Georgia, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Washington, D.C. -- but never in Chicago. So it's curious that all the sexual harassment allegations against Cain emanate from Chicago: home of the Daley machine and Obama consigliere David Axelrod​.

"Maybe there is something in the pizza sauce," I thought, "or gorging on all that food offered by National Restaurant Association members affected him," as I tried to figure out why no employees of Godfathers Pizza complained of sexual harassment by Herman Cain. Indeed, despite several decades of Cain's rise in the business world, only his relatively short tenure at the NRA produced these multiple nasty allegations. Well maybe it wasn't Godfathers' special pizza sauce; Ann Coulter pinpoints another godfather, a Chicago godfather and a dear friend of President Barack Obama (D)--David Axelrod who just might be the behind the...

DAVID AXELROD'S PATTERN OF SEXUAL MISBEHAVIOR November 9, 2011Herman Cain has spent his life living and working all over the country -- Indiana, Georgia, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Washington, D.C. -- but never in Chicago. So it's curious that all the sexual harassment allegations against Cain emanate from Chicago: home of the Daley machine and Obama consigliere David Axelrod. Suspicions had already fallen on Sheila O'Grady, who is close with David Axelrod and went straight from being former Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley's chief of staff to president of the Illinois Restaurant Association (IRA), as being the person who dug...

LOS ANGELES - Dealing a blow to the U.S. Senate candidacy of Republican Jack Ryan, a California judge ruled that several sealed divorce records likely to embarrass the candidate and his ex-wife should be opened to the public. Ruling on a request brought by attorneys for the Tribune and WLS-TV, Superior Court Judge Robert Schnider acknowledged that the resulting publicity from the disclosure would be harmful to the couple's son, a key argument Ryan had raised in seeking to keep the documents from public view. But Schnider said he had weighed the public interest of disclosure against the private interests...

Sharon Bialek is learning firsthand why the other three women who have accused Herman Cain of sexual harassment may have resisted going fully public with their claims. The Chicago-area woman, whose name and face was broadcast all over American television Monday as she described being groped 14 years ago by the Republican presidential hopeful, has a past. And after making herself the first – and as of yet, the only – accuser whose name has been made public, that past is being dug up. “Who is Sharon Bialek?” is the subject line of the latest email from Cain’s presidential campaign,...

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Axelrod On CNN: Republicans May Be Trying To Tear Down The Economy On Purposeby Josh Feldman | 4:25 pm, October 30th, 2011 On CNN’s State of the Union today, former Obama advisor David Axelrod expressed his frustration on Congressional inaction on many important issues related to the economy and, more specifically, the inability of Republicans to come together with the president on issues they normally agree with. Candy Crowley highlighted a quote from White House Chief of Staff William Daley, saying in part that the Republicans and Democrats have been going at it and making it hard for President Obama...

David Axlerod took a swing at Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain Monday, saying that he thought Cain’s 9-9-9 proposal would hurt the poor and the middle class. The senior Obama adviser called Cain an “intruiging personality” on “Morning Joe,” but took a shot at the Republican candidate’s tax proposal, saying, “I think his plan deserves scrunity … I don’t think it’s good for most Americans.” “I think you’ve got to add the 9-9-9 up, get to 27 percent, and that’s probably what poor and middle-class people will end up paying once the thing is implemented,” Axlerod said. Despite the attention...

A senior political adviser to President Barack Obama is charging that the Republicans seeking the presidency don't understand the American public's pent-up anger over corporate excesses. David Axelrod tells ABC's "This Week" that the American people "want a financial system that works on the level. They want to get a fair shake." He appeared Sunday, a day after scores of demonstrators protesting corporate business practices were arrested in New York's Times Square in a confrontation with police....

Axelrod joins Solyndra chorus: ‘I know nothing about the project’By C.J. Ciaramella | The Daily Caller – 9 hrs ago Former Obama adviser David Axelrod joined the growing list of administration officials with a case of amnesia about bankrupt solar company Solyndra. Speaking to Chicago radio station WLS, Axelrod — now working on Obama’s re-election campaign — said he knew nothing about, or anyone associated with, Solyndra. The solar company received a $535 million loan from the Department of Energy (DOE) only to go bankrupt in August. It has since been raided by the FBI and come under the microscope...

Energy Dept. weatherization programs rife with waste, fraud, inspector general audits showThe Daily Caller – Wed, Sep 21, 2011 **SNIP** “I guess I don’t understand, when the state of Illinois literally cannot pay its bills and is going bankrupt, is this really the best use of money?” Duffy added. “I don’t care if its state or federal. Why are we spending millions of dollars with absolutely no credibility of how the spend that money?” The story of Illinois’ weatherization program, however, doesn’t stop there. The state-run program is being promoted by four separate public relations firms. Two of those firms...

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Republicans to the White House: Hey, not all of the president's "new" proposals are dreadful, so we'd like to play ball on some of them.  Cool?  The White House to Republicans: Pound salt, you uncompromising, unpatriotic SOB's.  Welcome to compromise, Obama campaign style:   Obama's top political adviser David Axelrod said Tuesday that the administration was unwilling to break up the president’s $447 billion jobs plan if Republicans were only receptive to passing certain elements.  "We're not in a negotiation to break up the package. It's not an a la carte menu. It's a strategy to get this country moving,�...

David Axelrod, President Barack Obama's top political adviser, took to the airwaves this morning and claimed that none of last night's participants in the GOP presidential debate offered ideas on how to create jobs. Granted, none of them waved a stack of papers containing an unaffordable stimulus plan in front of the cameras, but all of them brought reality to the discussion by affirming that government does not create jobs, it can only destroy them. That's a fact that the president and his cronies desperately hope the majority of the voting public doesn't understand. The truth is that virtually every...

Obama's top political adviser David Axelrod said Tuesday that the administration was unwilling to break up the president’s $447 billion jobs plan if Republicans were only receptive to passing certain elements. "We're not in a negotiation to break up the package. It's not an a la carte menu. It's a strategy to get this country moving,” Axelrod said Tuesday on ABC's "Good Morning America." "The president has a package; the package works together. We need to do many things to get this economy moving," Axelrod said. Republicans have been reluctant to embrace the bill, in particular its plan to rely...

White House says Obama would sign pieces of jobs package By Sam Youngman - 09/13/11 12:15 PM ET President Obama wants Congress to pass his jobs bill as is and quickly, but he would not veto individual bills if Congress broke the American Jobs Act into pieces. Senior administration officials said that if House Republicans were to separate the employee payroll tax cuts, for example, Obama would sign that bill and then demand that Congress move forward with the rest of the package. The comments reflecting thinking inside the White House seems to break from Obama's Chicago campaign headquarters. Senior...

Rick Perry once tried to get out of a speeding ticket. Rick Perry once owned stock in a chain of video stores competing against Blockbuster, some of which also rented adult movies. Rick Perry once was a Democrat. The attacks have come fast and furious against him. But most of the attacks take on a peculiar and very telling strain. A reporter on television or in print will utter a sentence like this, “Privately many Republican consultants suggest Rick Perry may be too Texas or shoot from the hip too much and might turn off necessary independent voters and women.”...

Liberals:Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.), the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee: "All of the Republican candidates have made clear their allegiance to the Tea Party, supporting extreme policies that would hurt the middle class, seniors, and students. The only winner tonight was the Tea Party." One thing which you should learn about the left; whatever they accuse conservatives of doing, that is their modus operandi. Wasserman Schultz: "Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul represent the extreme right wing, which is the core of the Republican Party today." Again, almost every attack that they make is a description of themselves....

That’s what the Obama campaign’s top political strategist told me this morning when I asked him about the latest 2012 candidate, Rick Perry. The Texas Governor made it clear his campaign will focus on his state’s record of job growth – Texas created more jobs than any other state since the recession. “When you examine the entire record what’s happened to education in that state, what’s happened to health care in that state, it’s a record of decimation not of progress,” David Axelrod told me. “I don’t think the picture of Texas is what people want for the country when...

Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) on NBC's "Meet the Press" and Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod on CBS' "Face the Nation" lead a new propaganda push against the Tea Party movement. First they were "astro-turf", then racist, then stupid, then violent, then dangerous, then terrorists, and now they're responsible for the S & P downgrade even though the Tea Party was pushing for the exact entitlement reforms that would have avoided the downgrade. It's obvious that the White House is fearful that the president will be blamed for the unprecedented downgrade of America's bond rating.

(CBS News) Former White House adviser David Axelrod on Sunday pinned responsibility for the recent U.S. economic downgrade on the Tea Party movement, arguing that the group's political "brinksmanship" during debt ceiling negotiations "brought us to the brink of a default" -- and that, subsequently, "this is essentially a Tea Party downgrade." In an appearance on CBS' "Face the Nation," Axelrod, currently a campaign strategist for President Obama, said the U.S. economic downgrade was "largely a political analysis" and that "there's a broad consensus that [the U.S.] is still the safest place to invest your money." Nevertheless, he argued, the...

Imagine if on the night Paul Revere made his famous ride, the colonists cursed him softly, rolled over and went back to sleep. Then imagine that the red coats were able to stop the Revolution even before it began and all those would be revolutionaries blamed Mr. Revere. That alternate reality came to mind today when I tuned into CBS's Face the Nation. David Axelrod, President Barack Obama's chief re-election strategist, appeared on the program and referred to the US credit rating downgrade as "essentially a tea party downgrade."

During his interview with Obama 2012 campaign strategist David Axelrod, "Face the Nation" hoe Bob Schieffer played a clip of President Obama talking with NBC's Matt Lauer a few weeks after he took office. AXELROD:...We're in a different place than where we were than the day he did that interview -- SCHIEFFER: Well, we are. Things are worse than they were.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A top White House adviser is blaming the downgrade of the U.S. credit rating on tea party Republicans, whom he says were unwilling to compromise on how to reduce the federal debt. The adviser to President Barack Obama, David Axelrod, tells CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday .. ... .. also criticized GOP presidential candidates for not speaking up in favor of compromise.

WARNING: If this article does not cause you to BARF at the beginning of it, by the time you finish reading it, you will have cause to BARF. “I find it as cool to be an Obama supporter. Having sat with him for two years is the White House and watched him — watching him work through some very difficult things with a lot of intelligence and grace, equilibrium. I, I have great admiration for him,” Obama’s chief campaign strategist told CNN. “The people who were participating in the campaign in 2008 weren’t involved n some sort of cult of...

"I find it as cool to be an Obama supporter. Having sat with him for two years is the White House and watched him -- watching him work through some very difficult things with a lot of intelligence and grace, equilibrium. I, I have great admiration for him," Obama's chief campaign strategist told CNN. "The people who were participating in the campaign in 2008 weren't involved n some sort of cult of personality. It wasn't just about Barack Obama, it was the country and they cared deeply about this country," Axelrod said in his answer a question about how to...

Washington has not voted for a Republican presidential nominee since Ronald Reagan in 1984, but the Obama campaign still plans to run hard here next year, the president’s chief strategist said in an interview Wednesday.“There is a great deal of energy here, and we want to tap into that,” said David Axelrod, who left the White House at the start of the year to supervise the Obama reelection effort.“We can’t take states in the Northwest for granted . . .We are not going to ignore this state: We are going to run an active campaign in this state,” Axelrod added...

Guess who came to brunch? The hockey mom herself, Sarah Palin, attended Tammy Haddad's annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner brunch on Saturday. The former vice presidential candidate was immediately enveloped by a large crowd on a patio after making her entrance with Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren. Palin spent some time posing for pictures with both Dems and R's alike. About an hour later, she took off with Van Susteren.