With the national political conventions right around the corner, both presidential campaigns have become notably more aggressive. The president, his super PAC and key surrogates have kept up a regular drumbeat of attacks on Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital, his identification with wealthy Americans, and his refusal to release tax returns. The Romney campaign’s latest gambit has been an ad claiming that Obama has “gutted” the 1996 welfare reform law and is now in favor of sending unconditional cash assistance to recipients.
Both campaigns have also continued the habit of loudly crying “foul” against opposition tactics. The Romney campaign and the conservative commentariat have become almost unhinged over the taunting of their candidate by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has repeatedly claimed a (unnamed) reliable source privately told him Romney’s hiding a decade of paying little or no federal taxes. It’s become axiomatic on the Right that Reid is simply making it all up, while some Democrats busily speculate about the possible identity of Reid’s source (with the Huntsman family of Utah, which has many close connections with Romney and with Bain Capital, and is also friendly with Reid, being the most common guess). Romney’s “welfare ad,” which tries to turn an agency announcement that the administration would entertain waiver requests from states into some sort of unilateral abolition of work requirements, gained a quick denunciation from former President Clinton, whose image is in the ad, and from welfare policy specialists in both parties.
It has been widely assumed that the “softening up” of Romney via a focus on his character and business record would soon give way to an all-out Democratic assault on the Ryan Budget and other controversial GOP policies, but the personal lines of attack, having exhibited some signs of success in undermining the candidate’s personal favorability ratings, are lingering on. Obama’s new catch-phrase “Romney Hood” represents one way his campaign is seeking to cross the bridge from biography to policy. Continue reading “Election Watch: Campaign Attacks Heat Up with Conventions Around the Corner”
PPI’s Will Marshall, with years of experience in welfare reform during the Clinton years, criticized the false attacks by the Romney campaign on the Obama administration’s so called “dismantling” of work requirements to receive welfare. In his article in the Daily Beast, Marshall explains how Romney’s cynical politics are “simply false.”
PPI’s popular summer policy brief, 
There were two state primaries on July 31, in Georgia and Texas (actually a runoff for candidates failing to secure a majority in May). The latter got the lion’s share of national attention, with the predictable if not universally predicted victory of former state solicitor general Ted Cruz over Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst for the GOP Senate nomination.
PPI’s Will Marshall detailed Mitt Romney’s recent adventure in the world of foreign policy over at The American Interest. Romney was able to stumble his way through a trip to Britain, Israel, and Poland all while offering very little in the form of substantive policies focusing more on criticisms of President Obama’s foreign policy.
The last week has continued the earlier pattern of daily fireworks in the presidential contest (excepting a brief pause in hostilities immediately after the Aurora massacre), but little if any significant movement in the polls. As anyone near a battleground state television can attest, the Obama campaign (and the Priorities USA super PAC) has continued harsh personal attacks on Mitt Romney as an out-of-touch rich man with no emotional connection with the middle class or interest in its aspirations, who is furthermore determined to cut taxes for people like him. The Romney campaign (which is now beginning to get advertising reinforcement from the very deep pockets of conservative super PACs) has responded harshly with a battery of ads and campaign speeches focusing on a clip from an Obama speech in Roanoke wherein he supposedly disrespected the personal contributions to the economy of entrepreneurs (in fact he was paraphrasing a well-known litany by Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren about the reliance of private businesses on public services and investments). It’s not entirely clear whether this intense barrage is intended simply to reinforce the general and long-standing Republican critique of Obama as someone who does not understand how the economy works and believes government is the source of all good things, or is more narrowly targeted at undermining Obama’s relatively strong standing with upscale, college-educated voters.
Despite the languorous weather and the decamping of many Americans to Vacationland, the election season is staying lively, and will probably remain so at least until the Olympics begin on July 27.
If U.S. conservatives have made any useful contribution to anti-poverty policy, it’s driving home this crucial point: family structure matters. The whole vicious cycle of intergenerational poverty usually begins with teen pregnancy and unwed births.
Will Marshall compiled four positive economic stories for Real Clear Politics that President Obama should be making better use of in his campaign for re-election. From farming to exports there are positive signs in the economy according to Marshall.