Politics

Axelrod lauds Obama’s positive ads, slams Romney’s ‘contract killers’

Neil Munro White House Correspondent
Font Size:

President Barack Obama’s top campaign adviser simultaneously described some of the president’s critics as “contract killers” and Obama’s campaign as a positive pitch.

Presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney is being aided by “the Karl and Koch brothers’ contract killers in super PAC land,” David Axelrod, Obama’s senior political consultant, said May 7.

“We’re going to be tough about that even as we make our positive case to the American people,” Axelrod said in a brief telephone press conference.

Axelrod’s reference was to Karl Rove, a GOP strategist, and to David Koch and Charles Koch.

Contract killers are people who murder other people in exchange for money.

The Koch brothers are political activists and owners of a large energy-services firm. Rove is a former adviser to President George W. Bush, and now helps run the American Crossroads group, which recently released an ad deriding Obama’s efforts to seem socially “cool.”

But “you can see in the advertising [that] we’re doing, the approach the president is taking, [which is] we believe this election is about the future and how you build a better future for the middle class,” Axelrod added.

The campaign’s newest positive ad begins, “2008: an economic meltdown… 4.4 million jobs lost… America’s economy spiraling downward… all before this president took the oath.”

The ad, titled “Go,” gets more positive toward the end. “Our troops are home from Iraq… Instead of losing jobs, we’re creating them… we’re not there yet. It is still too hard for too many, but we’re coming back,” says the ad.

The Obama campaign will spend $25 million running the ad in a series of swing states, Axelrod said.

In contrast, Romney has “invested tens and tens and tens of millions of dollars, simply ripping other people down instead of trying to lift this country up,” Axelrod said.

“We’ll wait and see if he can make a positive case to the American people, and not just argue that ‘the country has gone through a tough time and therefore elect me president,'” Axelrod said.

Follow Neil on Twitter