Romney to ‘Repudiate’ Any GOP Shots at Obama’s Character - East Idaho News
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Romney to ‘Repudiate’ Any GOP Shots at Obama’s Character

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Getty 050112 MittRomney?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1337267175735Jeff Swensen/Getty Images(JACKSONVILLE, Fla.) — Mitt Romney’s campaign manager said the campaign would “repudiate any efforts on our side” to run “a campaign of character assassination” after a New York Times story revealed on Thursday the possibility of a group of conservatives bankrolling ads that would link President Obama to the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.

“Unlike the Obama campaign, Gov. Romney is running a campaign based on jobs and the economy, and we encourage everyone else to do the same,” Matt Rhoades said in an e-mail statement Thursday.  “President Obama’s team said they would ‘kill Romney’ and, just last week, David Axelrod referred to individuals opposing the president as ‘contract killers.’  It’s clear President Obama’s team is running a campaign of character assassination.  We repudiate any efforts on our side to do so.”

The Times reported Thursday that a $10 million plan developed by “a group of high-profile Republican strategists” and Joe Ricketts, the founder of TD Ameritrade, will seek to link “Mr. Obama to incendiary comments by his former spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., whose race-related sermons made him a highly charged figure in the 2008 campaign.”

“The group suggested hiring as a spokesman an ‘extremely literate conservative African-American’ who can argue that Mr. Obama misled the nation by presenting himself as what the proposal calls a ‘metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln,’” the Times said.

Romney was asked about the story on a charter flight between Miami and Jacksonville, Fla., Thursday morning, declining to comment and instead saying that he had yet to read the papers on Thursday, according to Bloomberg News.

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