The mayor for Newark, New Jersey, Cory Booker has criticized the campaign team for President Barack Obama. Booker called the attack ads by the Obama campaign against Mitt Romney and Bain Capital as ‘nauseating.’ Those complaints were made public only one day before the Obama campaign was set to release the second wave of videos.
The Obama campaign tried to spin Booker’s comments into a defense as to why the campaign is attacking Romney while Republicans went after the comments made by Booker. While he was on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press,’ Booker said that the campaign ads against Romney and Bain Capital are “nauseating to me on both sides. It’s nauseating to the American public. Enough is enough. Stop attacking private equity. Stop attacking Jeremiah Wright.”
Booker was not done with his comments after his appearance on ‘Meet the Press.’ After the taping of the show he decided to use YouTube to post another video about the ads, adding context to what he said on ‘Meet the Press.’ Booker went on to say that he was talking about his “profound frustration with the kind of campaigning that I think is becoming too much of the norm.”
The video Booker made was four minutes long but the Obama campaign used Twitter to post a 35-second edited version. This part focused solely on the defense by Booker of the attacks on Romney. “Mitt Romney has made his business record a centerpiece of his campaign.”
Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus tweeted the following: “Obama clamping down on @corybooker shows that democrats are no longer allowed to defend free market.” Later in the day, the Republican National Committee posted a petition on the internet titled ‘I stand with Cory.’ It read: “That’s right Mr. President, we aren’t going to let you destroy free enterprise. Stand up for America. Stand up for job creators.”
On Monday, the campaign for Romney responded to the new video released by the Obama campaign by mentioning the remarks of Booker.
“President Obama continues his assault on the free enterprise system with attacks that one of his supporters, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, called ‘nauseating’ and a former adviser, Steven Rattner, called ‘unfair,'” Andrea Saul, a spokesperson for the Romney campaign, said. “Americans expected a different kind of politics from Barack Obama but, sadly, this is just more of the same failed politics that dominates Washington.”
A spokesperson for the Obama campaign, Ben LaBolt, said the following on Monday:
“There are many ways to run a business and many ways to measure that business’s success,” he said, charging that Romney put profits ahead of long term growth. Those “same values would have severe consequences for middle class families if he were elected,” LaBolt continued. “It’s time to stop pretending Romney’s time as a corporate buyout specialist…somehow means he knows how to create jobs.”
