Romney’s campaign bus — adorned with the words “Conservative. Businessman. Leader” today repeatedly honked at and took several laps around a group of Obama supporters before a campaign speech to be given by President Obama in Cleveland today, according to a tweet by CBS White House correspondent Mark Knoller.

Romney even moved his speech up to precede Obama’s speech. Obama is set to address the event at 1:45 p.m. ET, while Romney moved his planned 1:50 p.m. speech up to 1:30 p.m., getting a head start on the president.

This isn’t the first time the Romney team has antagonized Obama campaign events. In Massachusetts last month, Romney supporters greeted Obama senior adviser David Axelrod at a campaign event by shouting and blowing bubbles at those in attendance.

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Today is the day of the dueling mega-speeches on the presidential campaign trail. And reporters waiting around the venue of President Obama’s event were greeted by a Romney campaign bus circling the venue and volubly honking its horn, something you’d expect a rival wrestling team to do to disrupt the other team’s pep talk. On its face it seems somewhere between juvenile and just weird. But this is actually a core part of the Romney camp’s election strategy.

... A few weeks ago the Romney camp sent staffers to disrupt a press conference that Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod held in Boston to trash Romney. And that came just after the Romney camp darkly hinted that the Obama team had been conspiring to disrupt or block the event it held in front of the shuttered doors of Solyndra.

It all sounds kind of weird and erratic. But it’s not. Or at least it’s not accidental.

The Romney camp has made a straightforward calculation that it can make up with appeals to the conservative id the ground it can’t ever make up convincing anyone that Romney is really a right-wing ideologue.
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...this is simply another illustration of the “bitch slap” politics which rumbles beneath so much of presidential politics... But the animus against President Obama isn’t just tied to his positions. There’s a deeply rooted sense on the right that Obama has been protected, coddled — that no one has really taken it to him in a down and dirty way. This is what’s behind the talk that he never got ‘vetted’ back in 2008. And if you remember back in the primary debates, there was a recurring theme of which contender was the guy who could really bring the full primal scream mojo to Obama at the debates. Not so much even which guy could beat Obama but which would have the cajones ... to hit him with the full socialist-African-terrorist-lovin’-debt-meister smackdown that would somehow just leave a shattered Obama grasping blindly for his teleprompter.

The Romney folks know that pretty much nobody — not the Republican base or really anyone else — is going to be convinced that the candidate is a down-the-line conservative. But he can appeal to them by playing the bad ass card, getting in Obama’s grill, disrespecting him. Not in highly public ways and not the candidate himself — that could be damaging. But in slightly out of the way ways, the sort of stuff that really committed political types do see.

In other words, expect to see a lot more of this. And in purely practical terms, if it can be segregated from the stuff the broad middle of the electorate sees, it’s smart politics.

Becca Bruszewski--The Truth Lies In Between

I totally believe Becca Bruszewski’s contention, told to Curt Rallo of the South Bend Tribune on Tuesday, that she did not say or do the things she is accused of in relation to verbally dissing UConn after Notre Dame’s win over the Huskies at the Final Four last season.

I also totally believe UConn’s contention something was said that did not sit well with the team or the coaching staff, and because of it, there are some hard feelings among the Huskies.

In all matters such as this, the truth lies somewhere in between Sacramento and Storrs.

I think the most important piece of information in this entire matter was not what was said, or even who said it, but that Geno Auriemma felt it offensive enough to ask Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw about it at the Big East meetings in May, according to Rallo’s story.

Why would Geno unnecessarily confront McGraw, who he considers a friend and gifted coach, about something such as this if he felt it didn’t happen or didn’t actually hear it himself?

Geno can be spontaneous, and sometimes he says things he wishes he hadn’t, but I do not believe he would purposely antagonize her and her program. He probably just wanted an explanation. And if he got one, it may not have been what he was looking for because just last week on his CPTV television show he made reference to something that happened between the teams.

When a coach says something like that, on television, the media naturally follows the path.

Also, a sports information director in the Big East, with no axe to grind and no association with either school, admitted Monday hearing of the incident long before the blogs or Doris Burke’s mention of it on ESPN became public.

Also, a UConn player, when asked if the Bruszewski story was true, and who was in the locker room at the time and would have heard it, who I have a good relationship with, said she couldn’t remember. This is code for “none of your business.” Keeping in the family, folks.

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Notre Dame womens basketball--Bruszewski denies report

What has been a classic and classy rivalry in college women's basketball has taken an ugly turn in the past week.

A blog by the Hartford Courant’s Connecticut women’s beat writer, John Altavilla, has helped heat things up.

Citing an unnamed UConn source, Altavilla reported that former Notre Dame player Becca Bruszewski opened the door to the Huskies’ locker room after the Irish beat UConn in the Final Four last April and yelled inside, “It must suck to be you.”

Altavilla’s blog was published prior to Monday’s showdown between No. 3 Notre Dame and No. 4 Connecticut, a game the Irish won, 72-59.

Earlier in the week, Connecticut head coach Geno Auriemma took a shot at Notre Dame for its 120-44 victory against Pittsburgh earlier in the season, claiming the Irish were shooting 3’s late in the game, trying to run up the score.

According to Altavilla’s blog, Auriemma made a “cryptic reference’’ to the incident on his TV show earlier in the week.

Bruszewski, a senior last season who is now playing professional basketball in Finland, told The Tribune in a telephone interview on Tuesday that she did not open the Huskies’ locker room door and shout that at the UConn players.

“I’m getting called out for this,’’ she said in phone conversation Tuesday. “The fact that hurts the most, they’re saying that I barged into another team’s locker room. The fact that when I ran by, nobody but the UConn coaching staff was outside the door, with a security officer. I don’t know how they fabricated this. I don’t know where it came from. I’m going to deny it until it’s over with, because it’s not true.”

According to Bruszewski, she made comments to a teammate about the pain of losing with the Connecticut coaching staff within earshot, but that it was not intended as a slight to the Huskies.

“We celebrated with our team on the court and hugged a lot of people,” Bruszewski said of the aftermath of Notre Dame’s stunning victory over the favored Huskies in the Final Four in Indianapolis. “As we ran back through the tunnel, I was not by myself. I was with my team. I never stopped, I never talked to anyone from Connecticut, I never touched any doors. I never slowed down and walked. I never saw any UConn players, because they were all in their locker room.

“But outside the door was the entire coaching staff and their security, because at the Final Four, and even home games, everyone has security at their locker rooms. I did not make eye contact with them, I did not say anything to them. As I walked by, my words were, ‘Oh, man, that sucks. It could have been us.’ It was a realization that this great team, their season was over. Two days later, I realized that same sort of defeat.”

Bruszewski is fuming at the attack on her character.

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Irish coach Muffet McGraw said Auriemma told her about the incident at the Big East meetings in May. His version coincided with the version in Altavilla’s blog, that Bruszewski opened the locker room door and yelled at the UConn players.

“When Geno told me about this in May, we hadn’t heard anything about it,” McGraw said. “I was appalled when I heard this. When we got back to campus, we met with our players and said, ‘Here’s what Geno said.’ They had no idea. They were appalled and thought that it couldn’t be. We talked to Becca and she denied it. She said that she never went in their locker room.”

Notre Dame women’s basketball sports information director Chris Masters said security was tight for the Final Four, and that NCAA representatives were stationed outside and inside of every locker room.

“There were NCAA observers right there,” Masters said. “If this happened, we would have gotten disciplined. There would have been a letter of reprimand. That never happened.”

McGraw wondered about the timing of the leak to the media by the unnamed UConn source, when her team was playing at Connecticut for Notre Dame’s first outright Big East crown.

“This may have been embellished,” McGraw said. “To come up now, a year later, (Auriemma) may have been trying to motivate his team. Something could have been said at some point, but Becca swears that she did not go in their locker room.

“I don’t want to turn it into a back-and-forth thing. It’s not worth it. Geno and I actually get along very well. I do feel like this year has been hard on him, I guess.”
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www.southbendtribune.com/sports/collegesports/notredame/sbt-notre-dame-mens-basketball-irish-storm-back-in-philly-20120218,0,13989,full.story


PHILADELPHIA - Pick a word to describe what transpired inside the Wells Fargo Center late Saturday and it likely still falls way short.

Improbable?

Impossible?

Amazing?

Unbelievable?

No words might be able to adequately describe what the Notre Dame
men’s basketball team did in an overtime victory against Villanova.
Down by as many as 20 points in the first half, in which it could do
little right, No. 23 Notre Dame did enough to force overtime, stay
patient with the plan and find a way to win 74-70.

“It is one of the most fun things I’ve ever been around,” said Irish
coach Mike Brey. “This group really believes, but I got on their
(backsides) at halftime and we really found a way.”

Pat Connaughton connected on seven 3-pointers for 21 points and Jack
Cooley added his fourth consecutive double-double with 18 points and
13 rebounds. It was his 10th of his career — all this season. Eric
Atkins added 17 points and five assists.

“Never a doubt,” Atkins said. “Never a doubt.”

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