Obama campaign defends his comment to voters to get 'revenge', saying it was in response to Republican 'lies' about people losing their jobs
Aides to Barack Obama are defending his remark that ‘voting is the best revenge’ by saying it was made in the context of Mitt Romney’s ads about Jeep jobs - even though the transcript shows the president had not mentioned the ads.
Speaking at Springfield High School in Ohio on Friday, Obama hailed former President Bill Clinton, saying that ‘his economic plan asked the wealthiest Americans to pay a little bit more so we could continue to invest in our people, continue to invest in ideas and innovation, invest in our infrastructure’.
When he added: ‘And at the time the Republican Congress and a Senate candidate by the name of Mitt Romney’ the audience of some 2,800 began to boo.
Obama responded with the standard ad lib he uses when crowds boo Romney on Republicans: ‘No, no, no. Don’t boo – vote. Vote!’ Then he added: ‘Voting is the best revenge.’
In just five words, Obama handed Romney a potentially significant opportunity in the waning days of the campaign.
The utterance has underlined why every Obama campaign speech is tightly scripted and delivered using a teleprompter.
The ‘voting is the best revenge’ slip was virtually the only time during the speech that Obama ventured away from the script he saw before him on the teleprompter.
Put on the spot about the remark, which has been seized on by Romney and turned into an attack ad by his campaign, Jen Psaki, Obama’s travelling campaign spokeswoman, said – according to a White House pool report - that Obama had been speaking in the context of Romney’s ‘scare tactics’ in Ohio.
The Republican nominee was ‘frightening workers in Ohio into thinking, falsely, that they’re not going to have a job’, she said.
Message: President Obama addresses supporters at Mentor High School todaySupport: President Obama, center, is embraced by a supporter after the campaign event at Mentor High School today
‘And the message he [Obama] was sending is if you don’t like the policies, if you don’t like the plan that Gov. Romney is putting forward, if you think that’s a bad deal for the middle class, then you can go to the voting booth and cast your ballot. It’s nothing more complicated than that.’
But a transcript posted on the White House shows that Obama was not speaking in the context of Romney’s controversial ads about Chrysler, bailed out by the U.S. government, adding production of Jeeps in China.
Obama has not mentioned the Jeep issue when he talked about ‘revenge’. Rather, he had spoken about Hurricane Sandy, the U.S. economy, national security and Clinton’s record.
Controversy: The commercial took a swipe at the campaign team behind Mitt Romney, seen here with his wife Ann at The Square at Union Center in West Chester, Ohio, yesterdayWelcome: Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and his wife Ann, are applauded at West Chester, Ohio, yesterday
It wasn’t until several minutes later in the speech that he brought up Jeep, saying: ‘Right here in Ohio, folks who work at the Jeep plant have been having to call up their employers because they’re worried; they’re asking if their jobs are being shipped to China.
‘And the reason they're worried is because they saw ads run by Governor Romney saying Jeep plants were going to be shipping jobs to China. Of course, it turns out it’s not true. The car companies themselves have told Governor Romney to knock it off. Knock it off. That’s what they said.’
This time, the crowd reacted with applause rather than boos.
