Obama disses 'retread' Republicans

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Pablo Martinez Monsivais / The Associated Press U.S. President Barack Obama has breakfast with autoworkers during an unscheduled visit to a Toledo, Ohio, diner Monday. (CP)

WASHINGTON -- U.S. President Barack Obama heads to North Carolina this week to rally Democratic troops and defend his four years in the Oval Office against what his campaign has branded a litany of lies from Republicans hell-bent on denying him a second term.

At their national convention in Charlotte, feisty Democrats are bracing to fight back against the misinformation they insist is being knowingly disseminated by Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan on everything from the president's new welfare directives to his plans for Medicare and his infamous "you didn't build that" remarks.

"On the ballot is nothing less than the character of our country," Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, told a breakfast meeting of California delegates.

"Obstruction is their political philosophy. They don't believe in a public role."

In a campaign appearance in Ohio, Obama provided yet another clue to his party's line of attack, not just at the convention but in the 12 weeks leading up to the November vote: Romney's ideas are a throwback to an era long past.

"Despite all the challenges that we face in this new century, we saw three straight days of an agenda out of the last century," Obama said of last week's Republican convention as he addressed autoworkers in Toledo on Labour Day.

"It was a rerun. You might as well have watched it on black-and-white TV, with some rabbit ears on there."

He added: "There was a lot of 'hard truths' and 'bold choices,' they said, but nobody ever bothered to tell you what they really were. And when Gov. Romney had his chance to let you in on the secret sauce of job creation, he did not offer you a single new idea. It was just a retread of the same old policies that have been sticking it to the middle class for years."

Democrats gathering in Charlotte were fired up on Monday, the day before the official start to the convention, even as a new poll suggested Romney is leading the president 47 per cent to 43 per cent in North Carolina. The state's voters cast their ballots for Obama by the narrowest of margins in 2008.

Patrick Gaspard, executive director of the Democratic National Committee, dismissed the survey in remarks to delegates and the media.

Instead, he urged delegates to get to work knocking on doors while reminding them of one of the biggest achievements of Obama's presidency.

"While some yahoos like Donald Trump were running around trying to find the president's birth certificate, he was too busy smoking out Osama bin Laden and a whole host of people who were threatening the country," Gaspard said.

Clint Eastwood's bizarre speech to the Republican convention last week was also a target.

Lee Saunders, the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, had his own mocking, empty-chair conversation with an invisible Eastwood before kicking the chair off the stage in disdain.

"So Dirty Harry, make my day," he said as Ohio delegates erupted in cheers. "We're gonna kick some ass in November."

First lady Michelle Obama, whose popularity far out-performs her husband's, will take centre stage tonight while former president Bill Clinton is in the prime-time spotlight on Wednesday.

Vice-president Joe Biden, meantime, will be the warm-up act for his boss on Thursday night before Obama formally accepts the party's nomination.

Clinton's at-bat for Obama comes after a gradual thawing of once icy relations between the two that began with a friendly round of golf last September, according to a New Yorker piece that's been the talk of political circles for days in D.C., Tampa and Charlotte.

The speech from the 42nd U.S. president will reportedly emphasize how Obama's fiscal policy proposals are similar to the ones that resulted in the country's longest stretch of economic growth in the 1990s -- the years when Clinton was in the Oval Office.

Throughout much of his political career, Obama hasn't always bought into the belief Clinton had been a bold, transformative Democratic president. Obama's bruising primary battle against Hillary Clinton only further added to the animosity between the junior senator from Illinois and his rival's larger-than-life husband. Obama was reportedly miffed that Clinton once referred to his candidacy as a "fairy tale."

Clinton was also snidely dismissive of Obama's primary victory in South Carolina in '08, comparing it to Rev. Jesse Jackson's wins in the same state in 1984 and 1988. Those remarks were maligned as an attempt to inject race into the primary battle.

The New Yorker piece says Clinton once told the late Ted Kennedy of Obama: "A few years ago, this guy would have been carrying our bags."

Obama didn't seek advice from Clinton during his first year in power. But as 2012 drew nearer, Lizza reported, Obama saw political advantage in reaching out to Clinton.

-- The Canadian Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 4, 2012 $sourceSection0