Obama Pounces and Challenges Romney’s Lies and Political Shape Shifting

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While campaigning in Florida today, President Obama used his strongest language yet to take on Mitt Romney’s strategy of lies and political amnesia.

Here is the video:

Transcript:

Now, Governor Romney has been pitching this plan for almost a year now. He stood up on the stage in one of his primary debates proudly promised that his new tax cuts on top of the Bush tax cuts would include the top 1%. Now, you wouldn’t know this from listening to the new latest version of Mitt Romney. He’s trying to go through an extreme makeover. After running for more than a year in which he called himself severely conservative, Mitt Romney’s trying to convince you that he was severely kidding. Look – what he was selling was not working because people understood his ideas wouldn’t help the middle-class so these days Mitt Romney’s for whatever you’re for. Suddenly he loves the middle-class. Can’t stop talking enough about them. He loves Medicare. Loves teachers. He even loves the most important parts of Obamacare. What happened?

Now, what does he have to say this new version of Mitt Romney about all the things he’s actually promised to do as president? Tax breaks for outsourcers? Never heard such a thing. Saying we should cut back on teachers? Doesn’t ring a bell. Don’t boo. Vote. Kicking 200,000 young Floridians off their insurance plans. Who me? And when he’s asked about the cost of his tax plan, he just pretends it doesn’t exist. What $5 trillion tax cut? I don’t know anything about a $5 trillion tax cut. Pay no attention to the $5 trillion tax cut on my website. Look, Governor Romney thinks we have not been paying attention for the last year and a half. He is going to say whatever it takes to try to close the deal and he’s counting on the fact that you don’t remember that what he’s selling is exactly what got us into this mess in the first place. So Florida, you got to let him know we remember. We know full well that if he gets a chance, Governor Romney will rubber stamp the top down agenda of this Republican Congress the second he takes office and we cannot afford that future.

In the days since the first presidential debate, the Obama campaign seems to have found their message. Their strategy for dealing with Romney the moving target appears to be to attack his credibility. It doesn’t matter what Romney says at the debates or on the campaign trail, because that is just shape shifting Mitt adopting another position to get elected.

For those who are wondering if President Obama is going to be ready for the second debate, you are getting your answer in his recent stump speeches. The president isn’t going to talk around Mitt Romney in their second meeting. His recent behavior on the campaign trail suggests that he is going to take him on directly.

Mitt Romney has a strategic problem. He played all of his cards in an attempt to catch Obama in the first debate. It didn’t work. Obama is still leading, and now the question is, what can Romney possibly do in the second debate that he didn’t already do in the first?

It took the Obama campaign time to adjust to what they saw from Romney at the first debate, but if this is the way that the Republican nominee is going to run the remaining weeks of his campaign, look for Obama to use his trust and likability advantages to knock Romney down at every turn.

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