Romney campaign counter-attacks and denounces Obama cancer ad

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/10/romney-campaign-obama-cancer-ad

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Mitt Romney's campaign team mounted a counter-attack Friday over a controversial pro-Obama ad linking the Republican presidential challenger with a woman's death from cancer.

The cancer ad is the most negative piece of campaigning yet, and has dominated the political agenda for three days. It overshadowed other issues at the daily White House press conference on Friday.

The Romney camp put out an ad of its own, accusing Barack Obama of seeking to exploit the tragedy of the woman's death for political gain.

Eric Fehrnstrom, a Romney campaign adviser, denounced the cancer ad, released on Tuesday. "When you start running ads accusing your opponent of killing people, then you have lost credibility and I think that's where the Obama campaign finds itself," Fehrnstrom said. "I don't think a world champion limbo dancer could get any lower than the Obama campaign right now."

In the ad, paid for by one of the main Super Pacs backing Obama, Priorities USA Action, a former steelworker Joe Soptic recounts how when Bain Capital, which Romney headed, shut down his steel plant in 2001, he lost his family health benefits. His wife died of cancer five years later.

Although Priorities USA Action insists it is not accusing Romney of being to blame for the woman's death, that is the implication: that the cancer might have been caught at an early stage if the plant had not closed and the Soptic family still had insurance coverage.

The Romney campaign counters that the ad is inaccurate on several counts, not least that the woman had health coverage of her own.

The White House is refusing either to endorse the ad or denounce it. Obama spokesman, Jay Carney, insisted that his campaign had no control over the actions of Priorities USA Action. "We have no control over third-party ads," he said. Asked about whether the cancer link was appropriate in a political campaign, he said: "It's not for me to do."

Although Priorities USA Action insists it is planning to go ahead with airing the ad in swing states at a cost of $20m, it will have to decide whether the row is causing more damage to the Obama campaign than Romney's. It could make it harder for Obama to claim the moral high ground if, as expected, pro-Romney Super Pacs launch similar negative ads.

One positive for the Obama campaign is that negative campaigning, while frequently deplored, usually works, and that Romney will be smeared by the ad anyway. The row is distracting voters from Romney's attempts to focus the election on economic issues.

Carney claimed that there is no co-ordination between the Obama campaign and Priorities USA Action. But the founder of the Super Pac, Bill Burton, is a former White House spokesman, while David Plouffe, a senior White House adviser, was raising funds for the group earlier this year.

An Obama campaign spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, while briefing reporters alongside Carney on an Obama campaign flight this week, initially denied the campaign knew anything about Soptic. It later turned out that he had appeared in an earlier campaign ad.

The Romney ad issued on Friday says: "What does it say about a president's character when his campaign tries to use the tragedy of a woman's death for political gain? What does it say about a president's character when he had his campaign raise money for the ad then stood by as his top aides were caught lying about it?

"Doesn't America deserve better than a president who will say or do anything to stay in power?"