Obama Campaign: We Don't Know The Specifics Of The Vicious Smear We Approved

If you say you don't know the specifics, people can't ask you to defend the specifics.

At least not without calling you a liar to your face. Which people are reluctant to do. Especially when those people are liberal reporters questioning a high campaign official of their liberal dreamboat.

Asked about the Priorities spot on MSNBC Wednesday morning, Robert Gibbs said he doesn’t “know the specifics” while Stephanie Cutter said on CNN: “I don’t know the facts about when Mr. Soptic’s wife got sick or the facts about his health insurance.”

And Jen Psaki told reporters on Air Force One that “we don't' have any knowledge of the story of the family,” according to Yahoo! News.

But Cutter hosted an Obama campaign conference call in May in which Soptic told reporters the very story featured in the Priorities spot.

Both the campaign and the Priorities USA Action said there was no coordination about Soptic’s appearances. In the campaign’s ad, Soptic speaks only about the plant. In the Priorities spot, he tells the personal story he relayed during the Obama campaign conference call.

“We have no idea when Priorities shot their spot,” an Obama campaign official said. “We’re not allowed to coordinate with them – but we can tell you it wasn’t when we shot ours.”

Interesting, that, that the Obama campaign features the same guy as the Priorities USA SuperPAC. And these two are not permitted by law to coordinate. And yet, same guy.

And yet, see below: Soptic tells the Romney Murdered My Wife story in a conference call arranged by OFA, hosted by Stephanie Cutter (an Obama campaign employee). This appears, as Politico notes, in their own campaign archives.

Sure seems there was some coordination here -- Obama's campaign sets up the more egregious attack, then Priorities USA runs it, pretending Obama had nothing to do with it.

As @slublog points out, Soptic is obviously reading from a statement in the clip. Did he actually write it without Stephanie Cutter giving it a proofread and approval? Doubtful.

posted by Ace at 03:56 PM

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