The Obama Campaign Calls Romney a Hypocrite For Outrage Over Biden Remark

Last updated on August 16th, 2012 at 10:35 am

Tired of playing games, the Obama campaign has called out Mitt Romney for his hypocritical outrage over Joe Biden’s in chains remark.

The Obama campaign had a strong response for Mitt Romney’s latest attempt to avoid talking about the issues.

Here is the statement from Obama For America:

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For months, Speaker Boehner, Congressman Ryan, and other Republicans have called for the ‘unshackling’ of the private sector from regulations that protect Americans from risky financial deals and other reckless behavior that crashed our economy. Since then, the Vice President has often used a similar metaphor to describe the need to ‘unshackle’ the middle class. Today’s comments were a derivative of those remarks, describing the devastating impact letting Wall Street write its own rules again would have on middle class families. We find the Romney campaign’s outrage over the Vice President’s comments today hypocritical, particularly in light of their own candidate’s stump speech questioning the President’s patriotism. Now, let’s return to that ‘substantive’ debate Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan promised 72 hours ago, but quickly abandoned.

The Romney campaign has been doing their best to gin up outrage over Biden’s, “in chains” remark today. In fact they are trying to get any controversy going that doesn’t involve discussing how Mitt Romney feels about Paul Ryan’s record, Ryan’s budget, Ryan’s stance on Medicare, or Paul Ryan in general.

It’s pretty easy to see what’s going on here. This is another attempt to try to change the narrative of the day, and put the Obama campaign on the defensive.

The Romney campaign is reeling right now. To the surprise of no one but the Romney folks, the selection of Paul Ryan has been controversial. The Romney campaign can’t talk about their position on the issues, and the only consistent thing that Mitt Romney has campaigned on is that he thinks Barack Obama is really, really bad.

Mitt Romney’s campaign about nothing keeps promising a substantive debate about the issues, while spending all of their time avoiding giving specific details about their positions on any issue. The biggest Romney hypocrisy is having the nerve to repeat their lie about welfare to work over and over again on the campaign trail, while accusing the Obama campaign of lying.

The Obama campaign seems to be done playing games with Mitt Romney. They are in charge of the narrative, and they aren’t going to let Romney changed the subject. Much of Romney’s summer from Hell has been caused by the Republican’s inability to steer the national conversation. Obama has been able to define Romney and change the subject of discussion at will. Romney has spent the summer on the defensive, and today’s outrage was an attempt to go on offense.

It didn’t work.

The Obama campaign has steered the conversation towards exactly what they want to talk about. Mitt Romney’s plan to deregulate Wall Street. The impotent and incompetent Romney campaign is too weak to win a test of wills with Obama.

2012 is turning into Barack Obama’s campaign, with Mitt Romney along for the ride.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association