Dole Institute Pulls Back Campaign Curtain During Post Election Meeting December 9, 2012

Top Republican operatives were frustrated during the campaign. They could not find an issue that dented the popularity of President Obama, despite a wobbly economy.
That is one of the points made during an election break down session at the Dole Institute last week in Lawrence, Kansas, Politico reported.
“When we would test message point after message point after message point, there was almost nothing that would stick to this guy because they just liked him personally,” said Romney Deputy Campaign Manager Katie Packer Gage, according to Politico.
President Obama’s campaign team, on the other hand, feared the on-going court battles over early voting. They worried the more voters heard about it, the more they’d reject the idea.
“Our polling, focus groups, everything showed that the more we talked about it, the less people voted — that there is a chilling effect,” said Brent Colburn, Obama’s national communications director.said. “So we actually went out of our way aggressively to not talk about these court cases,”said Colburn,

OTHER THINGS YOU MAY NOT HAVE KNOWN:

-Romney Team believes the drawn out GOP primary hurt them. During the seminars they said they think the presence of Super-PACs kept candidates like Rick Santorum and newt Gingrich in the primary longer, at Romney’s expense.

– Obama’s campaign sent Massachusetts Democrats on Romney’s trail to trash his claims he worked well with Democrats when he was Mass. Governor.

-Romney’s campaign believes early voting hurt their chances.
“I’m not sure, frankly, that people voting in the middle of September is a good thing,” Gage said. “You’ve got people voting before any of the debates.”

-Obama’s Campaign didn’t like ‘The Blue Goose’
After the first debate, Chicago wanted to get the President into more town hall style events, without using the presidential podium.
“We were fighting to not use the ‘blue goose,’” Colburn said, a reference to the name for the podium. “We lost that fight. You usually lose fights with the Secret Service,” Colburn said.

More:http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=2FA650B0-585C-4202-8651-97322C11B38A

Top Romney Staffer Sats No Change in Campaign Position Towards Akin October 2, 2012

On MSNBC Tuesday, Kevin Madden of the Mitt Romney campaign downplayed the chances of Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin returning to the good graces of the campaign.
Romney called for Akin to drop put of the race in the week after Akin’s “legitimate rape” remark.
The McCaskill campaign is peddling the story.
Madden was being interviewed by NBC News Correspondent Andrea Mitchell.
He is a transcript they are offering up:
“Do you agree or does Mitt Romney now believe that Todd Akin should still step aside and get out of the race and that what he said was so offensive and wrong that he should not be the republican candidate?” Mitchell asked.

Madden replied, “Yeah, Gov. Romney made very clear … when Congressman Akin made those remarks that he disagreed with them entirely and he could not stand by them and that hasn’t changed.”

Mitchell then asked, “And so he’s not going to go along with other Republicans in the Senate campaign committee and people like Roy Blunt who’s a major figure in your own campaign, Sen. Blunt, and former Sen. Kit Bond who have endorsed Todd Akin?”

Madden replied, “Yeah, I can’t speak for Gov. Bond and Sen. Blunt, but Gov. Romney has made his position very clear on that and it has not changed.”

The movement from national Senatorial Republicans on Akin has been striking, if muted, and the Romney camp holding firm is different than the endorsement from Blunt that came as the deadline passed of his home-state congressional colleague.

Obama Campaign Acknowledges KC Man’s Role in GST/Bain Commercial August 10, 2012

Former GST Steelworker Joe Soptic

Politco:
Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki acknowledged Thursday that the campaign was no longer pleading ignorance about the story of a Independence, man who has appeared in both a super PAC ad and a campaign ad.
“No one is denying he was in one of our campaign ads. He was on a conference call telling his story,” Psaki told reporters on Air Force One.
Kansas City GST steelworker Joe Soptic starred in an Obama campaign ad and participated in a conference call with the campaign in May, as POLITICO reported Wednesday. He resurfaced this week in a Priorities USA Action super PAC ad, charging that his wife died of cancer after Mitt Romney’s former private equity firm laid him off.
Distancing themselves from the controversial ad, Obama campaign staffers initially denied knowledge of Soptic’s story — despite the fact that he was in an Obama campaign ad.
Adviser Robert Gibbs said he didn’t know “specifics,” while deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter said on CNN: “I don’t know the facts about when Mr. Soptic’s wife got sick or the facts about his health insurance.”
And yesterday on Air Force One, Psaki said, “we don’t have any knowledge of the story of the family.”
UPDATE: Amanda Henneberg, a spokesperson for the Romney campaign, said this in a statement: “President Obama’s campaign has been caught lying about its knowledge concerning a vicious smear run by his Super PAC. And now, they have doubled down with another dishonorable and dishonest attack. In 2008, candidate Obama said ‘you make a big election about small things’ when you don’t have a record to run on. Since President Obama can’t run on record unemployment, falling incomes, and massive debt, he has decided to run a dirty campaign that is an affront to everything he claims to stand for.”