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The White House is getting advice from some former campaign advisers on how to win congressional support for a strike on Syria, Fox News has learned, with top White House aides soliciting their input during a long strategy session Tuesday afternoon. The aides met with former top Obama campaign hands like strategist Anita Dunn, former deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter and long-time adviser David Axelrod. (snip) Other attendees included two people who have been critical in helping plot media strategy for the president over the years -- former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and former senior White House adviser...

The Obama administration and its defenders have done their best to downplay the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups, and to distance the president from the scandal. But in doing so they have made numerous claims that have that turned out to be grossly misleading — at best. 1. It was a few rogue agents in Cincinnati This claim has crumbled in recent weeks. Lois Lerner, the IRS’s director of Exempt Organizations, who has refused to testify before Congress, was the first to blame “our line people in Cincinnati” for initiating the targeting. Former IRS commissioner Steven Miller said two “rogue”...

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa appeared to be getting under the skin of Democrats as they hit back hard — bringing up the congressman's past from more than four decades ago. Issa's allegations about what the White House knew about the IRS targeting conservatives rattled Democrats into sending out a barrage of counter claims. Former senior Obama aide David Plouffe ripped Issa in a Twitter message, referring to allegations from as far back as 1972 when Issa was still a teenager. "Strong words from Mr Grand Theft Auto and suspected arsonist/insurance swindler. And loose ethically today," Plouffe tweeted. Plouffe's...

Former George W. Bush senior advisor Karl Rove and former Barack Obama senior advisor David Plouffe got into quite a heated debate on ABC’s This Week Sunday. When Plouffe claimed the ongoing Internal Revenue Service scandal wasn’t political, Rove pushed back twice saying “Baloney.” Rove to Former Obama Advisor Plouffe Claiming IRS Scandal Wasn’t Political: ‘Baloney’ DAVID PLOUFFE, FORMER SENIOR ADVISOR TO BARACK OBAMA: But there's been no suggestion. The independent, the prosecutor looked at this - excuse me, the inspector general - said there was no politics involved in this. No one has indicated at all that the White...

David Plouffe had an intriguing comment yesterday on the scandal involving selective tax-law enforcement against Tea Party groups. The manager of the 2008 Obama campaign who served as a top White House aide until this January, tweeted: "What IRS did dumb and wrong. Impt to note GOP groups flourished last 2 elections, overwhelming Ds. And they will use this to raise more $." National Journal's Ron Fournier responded with a trio of "serious questions: Why is that important to note? Is it justification for the action you called wrong? If not, why note?" Fournier describes the responses he got: Several...

President Obama will formally inaugurate Organizing for Action, his newly-formed independent advocacy group, with a headline speech Wednesday night before the group's Founders' Summit in Washington. Obama's appearance, confirmed to ABC News by an OFA official, will be his first in-person with the group's core team of advisers, donors and grassroots organizers since its formation following the 2012 election. It comes as Obama seeks to re-energize his expansive grassroots campaign infrastructure around top second-term priorities - from new gun-control measures to comprehensive immigration reform and a plan to replace sequester - and cement the foundation for his presidential legacy. The...

Wednesday night, in the aftermath of the blow-up regarding the White House’s email to Bob Woodward suggesting he would "regret" his reporting of sequestration, White House Senior Adviser David Plouffe took to twitter to bash Woodward as a past-his-prime hack: - See more at:

I know of no other way to put this. The Obama administration is taking their attacks to a new low and their attempts to control the media to a new level. Bob Woodward is no stranger to anyone who follows politics and is familiar with the media. He is the man who broke the Watergate story and his has been around the block at least once or twice. Not only that, but he is well-respected, usually by his fans and his critics. His reputation is above reproach, but that may be about to change. If we were looking for one...

Barack Obama’s top political aide used an Inauguration Day interview to sketch out a provocative political strategy intended to split the Republican Party in time to impact the 2014 midterm elections. “The barrier to progress here in many respects, whether it is deficits, measures to help economy, immigration, gun safety legislation … is [that] there are factions here in Congress, Republicans in Congress, who are out of the mainstream,” White House advisor David Plouffe said on CNN’s “State of the Union with Candy Crowley.” “We need more Republicans in Congress to think like Republicans in the country who are seeking...

White House adviser David Plouffe said Sunday that he believes President Barack Obama has sufficient votes in Congress to pass gun-control legislation. … Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union,” which was televised from the National Mall in Washington D.C., Plouffe said he believes the White House has 60 votes in the Senate and 218 in the House from Democrats and Republicans. … He also predicted that immigration reform will make it through Congress. …

According to Plouffe, it "starts with parents" taking responsibility for their children. Plouffe also attempted to note that the study commissioned by the president on violent media "is really important" because "scientific background" helps explain the causation between video games and gun violence.

Long Island was the electoral map has narrowed and Obama’s team, while conceding nothing publicly, is circling the wagons around Ohio, Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada. Plouffe said that Obama remains strong in all four states, but he would not discuss the specifics of internal polling or voter-contact analytics, saying only that Obama has “significant leads” in all four places. It is uncharacteristic of Team Obama to concede any terrain, but Plouffe offered no such assurances about Obama’s position in North Carolina, Virginia, or Florida. Romney advisers have seen big gains in all three states and now consider wins likely,...

Obama Team Punts Three Times on ‘Better Off Now’ Questions By Jonathan Miller | National Journal – 4 hrs ago Speaking on ABC's This Week on Sunday, Senior Obama adviser David Plouffe had few answers for the age-old question, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” On three occasions, he declined to answer the question with a definitive yes or no. “It took us a long time to get into that hole, it’s going to take us a long time to get out of it,” Plouffe said after the first time host George Stephanopoulos asked the...

A South African company in the spotlight for paying $100,000 in speaking fees to White House adviser David Plouffe is also in business with a Liberian official under U.N. sanctions for his ties to convicted war criminal and former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor. That's among the latest details to emerge on the connections involving MTN Group, a subsidiary of which paid President Obama's former campaign manager for engagements in late 2010, shortly before he joined the White House. The ties to Liberia's bloody Taylor era center on Benoni Urey, who was commissioner of maritime affairs in Liberia during Taylor's reign....

WASHINGTON, Aug 6 (Reuters) - One of U.S. President Barack Obama's closest aides was paid $100,000 by a company doing business with Iran just before joining the White House staff, the Washington Post reported on Monday, raising awkward election-year questions for the Democrat trying to get tough with Tehran. White House senior adviser David Plouffe received the speaking fee from Africa's biggest wireless phone operator, MTN Group, for two speeches he made in Nigeria in December 2010, the company and administration officials confirmed. Plouffe listed it with many others on his official financial disclosures after he joined the White House...

Republicans pounced on a report Monday that said top White House adviser David Plouffe took a $100,000 speaking fee from an Iran-tied firm whose technology may have been used to track dissidents, claiming Plouffe's involvement could represent a "loophole" in sanctions against the regime. The White House rejects the notion that anything improper took place. According to The Washington Post, Plouffe was paid for two speeches he made in Nigeria in December 2010 about a month before joining the White House -- and apparently before the company hosting him started coming under heavy scrutiny from the Obama administration. The White...

David Plouffe, a senior White House adviser who was President Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, accepted a $100,000 speaking fee in 2010 from an affiliate of a company doing business with Iran’s government. A subsidiary of MTN Group, a South Africa-based telecommunications company, paid Plouffe for two speeches he made in Nigeria in December 2010, about a month before he joined the White House staff. Since Plouffe’s speeches, MTN Group has come under intensified scrutiny from U.S. authorities because of its activities in Iran and Syria, which are under international sanctions intended to limit the countries’ access to sensitive technology. At...

That’s what the president’s top political strategist, David Plouffe, told me on GMA when I asked him about the Obama Campaign’s fundraising pitch entitled “We could lose if this continues” that was blasted out following the news that Romney outraised the president by $35 million in June. “We assumed all along that Governor Romney and the RNC would out-raise us. The real new dynamic in this race is obviously the Super PAC,” he said. After losing the fundraising battle for two consecutive months, Plouffe said this morning that “money matters in politics” but “you have to have enough money to...

A top advisor to President Barack Obama urged Congressional Democrats on Friday to "go on offense" against Republicans on the issue of taxes and argued that the Supreme Court ruling upholding the incumbent's signature health care law should be the "clear and final" word on the issue. In a memo made public by the White House, David Plouffe accused Republicans of "trying to misrepresent" Obama's record on taxes. "We welcome this debate on middle class taxes, and we urge you to seize this opportunity to go on offense to illustrate how the President and Democrats in Congress are standing up...