Advisers Who Will Alienate the GOP

The Washington Post reports that the White House is turning to outside advisers for counsel on how to sell Syria policy:

The group included men and women steeped in politics as well as communications and national security: former senior advisers David Axelrod and David Plouffe; Robert Gibbs, who served as White House press secretary; former White House communications director Anita Dunn; Stephanie Cutter , who served as deputy campaign manager for Obama’s 2012 campaign; Tommy Vietor, former National Security Council spokesman; and Jon Favreau, who was the president’s speechwriter. Vietor and Favreau now have a joint communications firm.

A White House official who asked not to be identified, because the meeting was private, wrote in an e-mail that the session was not unusual. “We hold regular sessions with folks like this all the time,” the official wrote.

This report will fuel Republican suspicions about the president's motives.  Says Rush Limbaugh:

The Washington Post has an article this morning about how Obama has turned to his "brain trust" for selling his attack on Syria, and the brain trust includes David Axelrod, David Plouffe, Robert Gibbs, Anita Dunn, Stephanie Cutter, Tommy Vietor and some former speechwriter -- and these people are nothing but cutthroat campaign people.  So the way that we're going to sell military intervention in Syria is to beat up the Republicans and force them to vote "yes" with Obama on this. 

Axelrod and Cutter Look Back at the Romney Campaign

Lynn Sweet reports on a David Axelrod forum at the University of Chicago:

At a U. of C. IOP forum last Monday, Axelrod said Romney, by going hard right in the GOP primary, "made a series of Faustian bargains" that helped him clinch the nomination -- but made it harder to win the November election.

Axelrod revealed several developments that surprised him during the campaign:

† The pro-Romney SuperPACs did not hit Obama early by airing attack ads. They "spent an unbelievable amount of money in this race" but "didn't go on the air until May against us. Our greatest fear, frankly, was that they would go up and use their money to attack us in the first three months of the year when we really weren't fortified to respond. I mean, our air defenses were not ready, we just did not have the resources to do that. They gave us a pass."
† The Romney campaign "did not flesh him out in a more substantial way when they had the opportunity to do so," leaving an opening for Obama's team to define his Bain Capital "business practices" as good for Romney and his investors -- but not for most voters.
† Axelrod did not expect Romney to tap Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) as his running mate. "For the longest time I thought he might pick Tim Pawlenty," he said of the former Minnesota governor. Or Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, to help in that battleground state. The selection of Ryan "played very much to the base of the party at a time he needed to broaden his appeal."

The Huffington Post reports on remarks by spokesperson Stephanie Cutter.  Like Karl Rove, she was surprised by the lack of pushback on the Bain issue.

"I never understood why they never pushed back on our attacks on his business experience," Cutter said at the seventh annual RootsCamp conference for progressive organizers in Washington, D.C. "He ran largely on an argument that, 'I understand the real economy, I know how to fix this and the president doesn't -- he's never been in the real economy,' with his only credential his Bain experience."

The Obama campaign hammered Romney on Bain during the campaign, essentially painting the former Massachusetts governor as a corporate takeover artist who founded a firm that specialized in outsourced U.S. jobs.

While some prominent Democrats initially criticized the Obama campaign for "attacking private equity," the campaign didn't back down.

"We weren't making an argument ... that Bain was bad," Cutter said on Friday. "We were making an argument that this experience does not qualify you to be president of the United States or to understand the real economy. We obviously worked hard to tear that down, and they never built it back up. I never understood why."

Did the Perry Campaign Launch the Cain Story?

Did the Cain harassment story originate with the Perry camp? Cain thinks so. Richard Miniter writes at Forbes:

Was the recent attack on Herman Cain’s presidential campaign a professional hit job? Absolutely, says Herman Cain. And he says he knows just where to look for the guy who did it: At 815 Slaters Lane in Alexandria, Virginia, a low-slung former warehouse in the shadow of a coal plant.

There, beside rusting rail lines, is the home of OnMessage Inc., a Republican-leaning consulting firm recently hired to bolster Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s presidential campaign.

One of the firm’s partners, Curt Anderson, worked on Cain’s losing 2004 U.S. Senate campaign. Cain thinks he’s the hired political gun who leaked details to Politico, a Washington trade publication, of alleged “sexually suggestive behavior” Cain is said to have exhibited towards two women while he ran the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s. That story set off a media frenzy which has quickly put Cain’s campaign on the defense.

In the summer of 2003, Cain recalls briefing Anderson—his general campaign consultant at the time—that sexual harassment claims were brought against him while he was chairman of the National Restaurant Association from 1996 to 1999.

Cain's top guy reinforces the point. RealClearPolitics quotes a Fox interview:

Bret Baier, FOX News: "You're charging the Perry campaign with stirring this up?"

Mark Block, Cain Chief of Staff: "Absolutely and quite frankly, this is one of the actions in America that is the reason people don't get involved in politics, right. The actions of the Perry campaign are despicable. Rick Perry and his campaign owe Herman Cain and his family an apology. Both the Rick Perry campaign and Politico did the wrong thing by reporting something that wasn't true, to anonymous sources in, like I said, they owe Herman Cain and his family an apology

Cain's accusation calls to mind stories about Obama adviser David Axelrod. In 2007, Ben Wallace-Wells profiled Axelrod for The New York Times:

As the 2004 Senate primary neared, it was clear that it was a contest between two people: the millionaire liberal, [Blair] Hull, who was leading in the polls, and Obama, who had built an impressive grass-roots campaign. About a month before the vote, The Chicago Tribune revealed, near the bottom of a long profile of Hull, that during a divorce proceeding, Hull's second wife filed for an order of protection. In the following few days, the matter erupted into a full-fledged scandal that ended up destroying the Hull campaign and handing Obama an easy primary victory. The Tribune reporter who wrote the original piece later acknowledged in print that the Obama camp had ''worked aggressively behind the scenes'' to push the story. But there are those in Chicago who believe that Axelrod had an even more significant role -- that he leaked the initial story. They note that before signing on with Obama, Axelrod interviewed with Hull. They also point out that Obama's TV ad campaign started at almost the same time. Axelrod swears up and down that ''we had nothing to do with it'' and that the campaign's television ad schedule was long planned. ''An aura grows up around you, and people assume everything emanates from you,'' he told me.

Some-Drama Obama

During the 2008 campaign, the Obama team was famous for its communication skill and its lack of internal divisions. Those days are gone. Lynn Sweet of The Chicago Sun-Times reports on the president's reaction to "White House infighting" stories:

Last Monday, I learned, Obama made clear to senior staff -- in an Oval Office meeting after he returned from a trip to Savannah, Ga. -- that he didn't like these stories. He reminded them that it is "one for all and all for one'' in his administration. They were there to get things done for the nation, and they were not in the White House to engage in what Obama considered petty Washington intrigue.

A New York Times profile of David Axelrod depicts a counselor who protests too much:

“For me, the question is, why haven’t we broken through more than we have?” Mr. Axelrod said. “Why haven’t we broken through?”

That question has dogged Mr. Axelrod in recent months and has preoccupied Mr. Obama’s inner circle, fueling speculation that the vaunted “No Drama Obama” team might be fracturing. Not surprisingly, the White House has no patience with the notion.

“You guys want to fit people into boxes and categories that are just not accurate,” Mr. Emanuel said.

Mr. Axelrod would not discuss what counsel he offered to Mr. Obama, though he denies any “fissure with my buddy Rahm” and any charge that he is too infatuated with the president to recognize the political risks of his ambitious agenda.