republican strategists put together a plan to attack president obama by linking the president once again to reverend jeremiah wright. this was in may. the new york times wrote it saying, quote, do exactly what john mccain would not let us do in 2008. the plans suggested hiring an extremely literate african-american to sell the message and label the president a metrosexual black abe lincoln. yeah. listen, i m not sure exactly that s a halloween costume. i don t know what they mean by the last comment. but george will who i normally respect, this president has enjoyed the numbers that he is now and despite the rags initialized attacks. the reason this deck was disapproved by romney is because they don t need it. they ve had the welfare ads and this strategy has been in place in other ways and it was exposed
own trajectory. didn t the libya sort of let s call it a gaffe, maybe agree on that, isn t that a response to like they re saying all this bad stuff, i didn t talk about afghanistan, wasn t strong enough at the convention, now i have to do something? i don t know that was so much a response to the media as it was, an opportunity they wanted to seize on. i don t think they did it right. but it was an opportunity they wanted to seize on. they were probably waiting for that opportunity to come for weeks and it happened to come then and they jumped on it. and i would say that s right. it s less of a jumping on the particular media narrative and more of looking for any opportunity of the president making any sort of misstep that they can jump on. they have changed directions, they went with the welfare ads for a while and then jumped on you didn t build that full force, the any minor gaffe or misstatement that comes up they are more than willing to jump on. we know what to look fo
american. no one s asked for my birth certificate. this talk and false welfare ads is what president obama faces in the next 41 days. alex wagner host of now on msnbc and eugene robinson is a pulitzer prize winning columnist for the washington post. thanks for joining us tonight. you know, i just wonder, why is there so little note of what s clearly a pattern in this campaign? on one side this constant reaching the president is not an american. never stops. birtherism, and on the other side, this attempt to suppress the minority vote. it s clearly an attempt to win an election in as ugly as possible way and no one seems to talk about it. well, it s shameful. i think that there to some degree there has been a fairly robust discussion about the voter fraud stuff. the democrats and, you know, progressives have managed to
welfare reform by dropping work requirements. under obama s plan you wouldn t are to work or train for a job. they just send you your welfare check. and welfare to work goes back to being plain old welfare. mitt romney will restore the work requirement because it works. so all white people. it s fine. that normally wouldn t be the worst thing in the world, but when that ad actually ran and hit the air waves romney defended it to usa today s susan page and in the interview romney said, quote, romney defends the welfare ads as accurate, accusing obama of offering state waivers as a political calculation designed to, quote, shore up his base, which is code for african-american democrats. so, there you have an ad with all whites in it. romney comes out himself and says, this is so he can feed his base by saying, we ll get rid of those work requirements for people on welfare. can you obama giving a big speech to the guys in the inner city, guess what, ladies and gentlemen, i m getting r
this is when he says it s feeding his base, obama. here he is in 1996 president clinton and a bipartisan congress helped end welfare as we know it, by requiring work for welfare. on july 12th president obama quietly announced a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements. under obama s plan you wouldn t are to work or train for a job. they just send you your welfare check. and welfare to work goes back to being plain old welfare. mitt romney will restory the work requirement because it works. so all white people. it s fine. that normally wouldn t be the worst thing in the world, but when that ad actually ran and hit the air waves romney defended it to usa today s susan page and in the interview romney said, quote, romney defends the welfare ads as accurate, accusing obama of offering state waivers as a political calculation designed to, quote, shore up his base, which is code for african-american democrats. so, there you have an ad with all whites in it.