The conservative American Crossroads super PAC came out with a new Web video Wednesday morning that mocks President Barack Obama’s attempts to spin out of his own now-infamous “you didn’t build that” speech.
The video calls the speech Obama’s “fumble of the week,” and sends the president’s remarks to a sports-like instant replay.
Obama’s re-election campaign is in full damage-control mode now, responding to attacks over the Roanoke, Va., speech with videotaped statements from Obama and deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter.
In the speech earlier this month, the president argued that business owners owe some of their success to the government, due in large part to the nation’s infrastructure.
“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help,” Obama said. “There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.”
Much of the debate has revolved around the pronoun “that” in the phrase,”If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that,” with Republicans arguing that Obama was referring to business, while the president’s campaign insists he meant “roads and bridges.”
Watch President Obama’s new campaign ad:
To the Romney campaign, it’s a distinction without a difference. “The context is worse than the quote,” Romney told CNBC’s Larry Kudlow in an interview Monday.
And that’s the argument the Republican National Committee made Wednesday morning as well in a video of their own.
Watch the RNC video criticizing Obama’s remarks:
The Crossroads ad doesn’t spend time contemplating that larger context, instead focusing simply on “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that,” including playing the phrase back in an amusing — and presumably damning — slow-motion sequence.