Obama Campaign in Damage Control Mode After Booker's Remarks - East Idaho News
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Obama Campaign in Damage Control Mode After Booker’s Remarks

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Getty 120511 DavidAxelrod?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1337630051595Riccardo S. Savi/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — The Obama campaign is in full damage-control mode one day after Newark Mayor Cory Booker publicly derided Democrats’ assault on presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney over his record at Bain Capital.

Chief Obama strategist David Axelrod on Monday publicly rebuked Booker, a popular and high-profile surrogate for the campaign, saying he was “just wrong.”

“I love Cory Booker. He’s a great mayor. If I were, if my house was on fire, I’d hope he were my next door neighbor,” Axelrod said on MSNBC, referring to Booker’s rescue of a neighbor last month.

“I agree with what he said later. I think this was a legitimate area for discussion,” Axelrod said of Booker’s subsequent comments clarifying the issue.

As for the criticism that the Team Obama’s Bain attack is part of “nauseating” political discourse with which Booker has become “very uncomfortable,” Axelrod said, “on this particular instance he was just wrong.”

Booker is not the only Democrat to question the aggressive, negative portrayal of Romney’s work in private equity.  Former Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford Jr. said Monsay he agreed with “the substance” of Booker’s comments and “would not have backed out.”

Former Obama administration economic adviser Steven Rattner made similar comments last week, calling a new Obama campaign TV ad attacking Romney’s role in the bankruptcy of a Bain-owned steel company “unfair.”

Republicans have been gleeful with the apparent divide among Democrats over the portrayal of Romney’s Bain days.  The Romney campaign produced a web video – “Big Bain Backfire” – highlighting the comments, while the Republican National Committee purchased ads on Twitter to play up the Booker flap.

“President Obama’s attacks on free enterprise have triggered a backlash among many, even among those in his own party,” Romney spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg said. “With no record to run on, it is no surprise that the Obama campaign has resorted to misleading attacks that have been disavowed by its own supporters.”

Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said Romney’s record is fair game and insisted that Democrats, including Booker, are united behind the need for greater scrutiny of it.

“We’re not questioning the purpose of the private equity business as a whole or Romney’s capacity to run a business as he saw fit,” LaBolt told reporters on a conference call. “We’re questioning what the values and lessons are from that experience, whether the economic philosophy that he demonstrated while he was a corporate buyout specialist is one that Americans would like to see in the Oval Office.”

Booker himself has worked to clarify his remarks, taking to Twitter and YouTube to insist he supports examination of Romney’s Bain record but simply opposes a negative, divisive tone.

“Mitt Romney has made his business record a centerpiece of his campaign. He’s talked about himself as a job creator and therefore it is reasonable, and I encourage it, for the Obama campaign to examine that record and to discuss it,” Booker said Sunday night in a Web video.

“I have no problem with that.”

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