It will likely be impossible to find bigger smiles on any faces in the nation's capital today than those worn by senior campaign aides working to get President Obama four more years to complete his suffocation of the freest and most productive economy ever seen on God's green earth.
Several giddy but unnamed Obama strategists are quoted this morning in Josh Marshall's excellent Talking Points Memo (TPM) crowing about how Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry have handed them what they believe will be the gift that keeps on giving throughout the fall campaign if Mitt Romney becomes their Republican opponent.
“I would have preferred to wait, yes, to keep the bottle of whup-ass fresher. At the same time — and this is important to note — having the Republicans eat their own actually makes the Bain story more potent than we ever could because it instantly validates it as a line of attack and falls on independent ears as a matter of legitimate debate, not as a partisan line of attack,” one of the strategists told TPM.
Gingrich and Perry have handed the Obama campaign a tool that will be especially helpful to Democrats in key battleground swing states, according to another unnamed strategist quoted by TPM:
“This isn’t a primary attack in the first place — it’s why we haven’t put any resources behind Romney as a corporate buyout specialist at this stage — it’s a general election issue for independent and swing voters in places like Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Indiana.
"We were shocked that his rivals went there but nonetheless pleased because now the charges about his status as a corporate raider enjoy the lustre of bipartisan ship.”
But wait, there's more .... nah, you'll have to go here to read the rest. By the way, I describe TPM as "excellent" because it is consistently among the most timely and credible sources for vital political news and analysis on the left side of the Blogosphere.
The New York Times has a somewhat more expansive related piece this morning, including this quote from Brad Woodhouse, the Democratic National Committee's communications director:
“We’ll be able to show what his rivals said about him and what workers have said about him. The fact that his own Republican rivals — from a party that talks about itself as being for the free market — are offended about his practices in the private sector makes our case a lot easier.”
You can read the rest of the Times piece here. Don't miss David Axelrod's reasoning for rejecting the "immunization theory" that Gingrich and Perry are actually doing Romney a favor by raising the Bain issue now, thereby giving him an opportunity now to nullify the attack before Democrats can use it against him.
