Obama testing 2-tier strategy for re-election

[dbt]

Source: New York Times (Helene Cooper) via MSNBC

Just three hours after President Obama announced that he was defying Congressional Republicans to fill a high-level regulatory position while lawmakers were out of town, Mitt Romney sent out the obligatory news release ripping the president. “Chicago-style politics at its worst,” Mr. Romney fumed, accusing the president of “circumventing Congress.”

The statement was just what the White House wanted. It put the Republican presidential front-runner squarely on the side of the Republicans in Congress, a group with toxic poll numbers that the president’s campaign hopes will hurt his rivals for the White House. <snip>

Upon the president’s return from Hawaii, the Obama campaign this week unleashed a carefully scripted and deliberately aggressive strategy that showed a White House in combative re-election mode as the president and his advisers sought to ensure that the Republicans did not get all the political limelight. Mr. Obama inserted himself into the media blitz of what was supposed to be an all-Republican show, the Iowa caucuses, when his campaign took out a huge advertisement on the home page of The Des Moines Register on caucus day and he spoke by video conference to Democrats gathered in the state. <snip>

On Wednesday, after waiting until the dust in Iowa had settled, clearing out space in newspapers and on television, Mr. Obama delivered another jab, announcing four recess appointments, including that of Richard Cordray as head of a new consumer protection agency, despite Republican opposition. On Thursday, the president went to the Pentagon and outlined a new military strategy that embraces hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to what is a Republican sacred cow, and made it clear that American ground forces would no longer be large enough to conduct prolonged, large-scale counterinsurgency campaigns like those in Iraq and Afghanistan. On Friday, he will take a victory lap with Mr. Cordray in a visit with the staff of the new Consumer Finance Protection Bureau.


Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45895739/ns/politics-the_ne...

[Cronus Protagonist]

1. If that's real and not just puffery... I like the "New Obama"

Can he sustain it?

[Divine Discontent]

2. i hope so.....

its who we elected.

[Betty]

3. I'm sorry it took him this long

but I like what he's doing now.

[PatrynXX]

6. still has to work for my vote but he's stepping in the right direction

in 3 yrs.. but indeed Jon Stewart explained it best.

[KoKo]

4. That's some good news.

We have to hope he's going to get more activist.

[No Elephants]

5. Yes, his 2007-08 election strategies were good, too.

Speechifying and getting himself elected seem to be his strengths.