The Caucus: Obama Goes After Republicans in New Michigan Ad

Tracking and analyzing campaign advertising.

DETROIT — President Obama is highlighting his support for the federal assistance plan that helped rescue Detroit automakers in a new television commercial that accuses Republican presidential candidates of abandoning the industry in its darkest hour.

The 30-second commercial, called “Made in America,” also mentions Mitt Romney’s now well-known opinion article that carried the headline “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.”

Over images of factory employees hard at work and smiling families, an announcer says, “when a million jobs were on the line, every Republican candidate turned their back, even said, ‘Let Detroit go Bankrupt.’”

Then the commercial pivots to the president. “Not him,” says the announcer as a sound bite of the president plays. “Don’t bet against the American auto industry,” Mr. Obama is shown saying.

The ad is certain to draw even more of a focus on the sensitive and complex politics of the auto industry bailout, which all the Republican candidates have said they opposed. Mr. Obama and Democrats have sought to draw attention to that opposition now that Detroit car makers are adding jobs and the economy in Michigan is showing signs of progress.

In a Detroit Free Press poll released today, there were signs that Mr. Romney’s opposition to the bailout were complicating his prospects here in his home state. Asked what they disliked most about Mr. Romney, 12 percent of likely Republican primary voters cited his opposition to the rescue plan.

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Australia PM battle looms after foreign minister quits

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd resigned on Wednesday, saying he could no longer work with Prime Minister Julia Gillard, igniting a new and bitter leadership crisis for the struggling minority government.

Gillard's government has sunk in popularity as Gillard and Rudd, whom she ousted in 2010, have waged a personal feud that has split their Labor Party and alienated voters.

Labor insiders said that while Rudd was more popular with voters, Gillard had stronger support within the party and would easily win a leadership vote, which could come as early as next week.

They differ little on policy, but the battle -- described by Rudd as a "soap opera" -- threatens to trigger an early election and a defeat for Labor's economic reform agenda, including major mining and climate change legislation.

Senior ministers had in the past week urged Gillard to sack Rudd due to the leadership speculation and increasing animosity between the two camps.

"The simple truth is I cannot continue to serve as foreign minister if I do not have Prime Minister Gillard's support," Rudd told a news conference in Washington. "The only honorable course of action is for me to resign."

Rudd's supporters believe only he can stem hemorrhaging voter support to opposition leader Tony Abbott and his conservative coalition, which holds a strong lead in opinion polls. But a move back to Rudd risks losing the backing of independents who give the minority Labor government a one-seat majority.

"I am disappointed that the concerns Mr Rudd has publicly expressed this evening were never personally raised with me, nor did he contact me to discuss his resignation prior to his decision," Gillard said in a brief statement.

Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer Wayne Swan was more critical, issuing a scathing attack on Rudd, accusing him of disloyalty and of undermining the government.

"The party has given Kevin Rudd all the opportunities in the world and he wasted them with his dysfunctional decision making and his deeply demeaning attitude towards other people, including our caucus colleagues," Swan said.

Analysts said a change of leader would cause upheaval in the caucus, including likely changes in key positions such as treasurer and defense minister, but have little impact on policy or the outcome of the election.

"If Rudd were to wrest the leadership, I think we'd be headed certainly to a 2012 election," Australian National University Political analyst Norman Abjorensen told Reuters.

"A Rudd government would look very different from a Gillard government, and would presumably be fairly short lived."

Rudd, who will return at least temporarily to the backbenches after quitting cabinet, told the news conference he would return to Australia this week before deciding his future.

"There is one overriding question for my caucus colleagues and that is who is best placed to defeat Tony Abbott at the next election," said Rudd, a Mandarin-speaking former diplomat.

"FACELESS MEN"

Opposition to a 40 percent tax on mining profits introduced by Rudd contributed to his demise as prime minister.

Gillard overthrew him in a party room coup and immediately cut the tax rate to 30 percent while excluding all but the country's most profitable iron ore and coal miners.

Abbott has said that if he wins the next election, he will dump both the planned mining tax and plans to introduce a carbon price to combat climate change, both due to come into force on July 1.

The instability was damaging the country and the government was unworthy of staying in power, he said on Wednesday.

"Kevin Rudd has confirmed two things - that the faceless men are running the Labor Party and that the instability at the top of this government is damaging our country," Abbott said in a statement.

Rudd's backers saying he remains more popular with voters and would help revive party support ahead of the next election, due in late 2013.

But he is not as well liked within the Labor Party and he alienated may colleagues with his imperious style when he was prime minister.

"The overwhelming support within the parliamentary party is for the prime minister, is for the government. It is overwhelming, it always has been," Environment Minister Tony Burke told Australian television.

Weeks of leadership instability has undermined Labor's chances of holding power in the state of Queensland at a March 24 poll -- the resource-rich state is also crucial for the national government's re-election.

"I think the dislike of the current government is quite deep. It goes beyond the leaders, which is part of their problem," said John Stirton from pollster AC Nielsen.

"They would get a short-term boost from Rudd, but I don't think it is going to solve their problems."

(Additional reporting by Lincoln Feast, James Regan, Maggie Lu-Yueyang and Michael Perry; Editing by Nick Macfie)

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Congressional Memo: Russ Feingold, in New Book, Recalls Dark Time After 9/11

“This was indeed an intimidating time,” Mr. Feingold writes in his new book, “While America Sleeps” (Crown Publishers), his recounting of the historic Congressional period after the Sept. 11 shock through the rise of the Tea Party conservatism that led to the loss of his own Senate seat in November 2010.

Best known as the chief Democratic architect of the campaign finance law, Mr. Feingold assembles a narrative of how the terrorist attacks, the deadly anthrax assaults and, later, the sniper killings of 2002 in the Washington region created a climate of fear that ultimately led not only to the antiterrorism law, but also to the war in Iraq and ugly political attacks. The pleasant Capitol Hill neighborhood that he inhabited became an armed camp reminiscent of another anxious period in American history when civil liberties were at risk.

“The combination of constant security fears with the weightiness of the responsibilities made this what had to be one of the most tense and frightening times on Capitol Hill since the Civil War,” he writes.

It was the searing combination of events that he blames for knocking Congress off kilter, from the days of political unity immediately after Sept. 11 to sharp divisions and distrust, an atmosphere that he says allowed the administration of President George W. Bush to successfully push its agenda despite severe doubts among lawmakers.

“When those things started coming, we got into this odd position of thinking about the problems in a completely wrong way,” Mr. Feingold said in an interview.

Since his defeat, Mr. Feingold, 58, has been teaching, organizing a new progressive group and writing his book, which tells the familiar story of the buildup to the war with Iraq despite the absence of a connection between that nation and the Sept. 11 attacks. But he goes behind the closed doors of the Democratic caucus as lawmakers debated using force against Iraq, and he even provides a peek into the secret briefings members had as the emotional case for war was being made in public.

The intelligence professionals, he says, were much less provocative and certain about the capabilities of Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, and even seemed embarrassed during the briefings when pressed about the possibility of nuclear weapons that could produce the mushroom cloud of the dire administration warnings.

Still, with the 2002 election imminent, many Democrats decided they could not take the political risk of a vote against the war. Mr. Feingold describes the party meetings on the war resolution held in a crowded room just off the Senate floor as “among the saddest spectacles I witnessed in 18 years in the Senate.”

“People who would later (and not much later) be candidates for president and compete for the anti-Iraq War mantle voiced substantive objections to the war then,” Mr. Feingold recounts. “But when it came time for the vote, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and John Kerry all rose from their seats and said ‘aye’ to George Bush’s ‘war of choice.’ ”

In the Senate, Mr. Feingold had a reputation as a loner willing to break from his party, whether it was on the confirmation of John Ashcroft as attorney general (he supported him) or on a motion to dismiss the impeachment case against President Bill Clinton (he was the only Democrat to oppose it). Mr. Feingold liked sitting in the back row of the Senate, was close to his staff and was one of the few, in a legislative body populated by very wealthy people, who sometimes found himself living paycheck to paycheck.

He pictures himself in the vein of Wisconsin figures like Robert M. La Follette and William Proxmire.

“I call them as I see them,” said Mr. Feingold, whose book recounts the joke that for a time, his first name could have been McCain because of the high-profile campaign finance law he championed. “I generally vote Democratic, but I simply believe that my job was to be independent and to be ready to work with the other party. That is what the people in my state liked.”

His book details a showdown he had with Tom Daschle, then the majority leader, over Mr. Feingold’s vow to filibuster the Patriot Act unless he was allowed to offer amendments. It recalls the difficult conditions on the Hill when senators were forced from their offices by the anthrax attack.

There are amusing moments, too, among them when Senator Carl Levin, the grandfatherly Michigan Democrat, approached Mr. Feingold and Paul Wellstone on the Senate floor during the 1999 impeachment trial of Mr. Clinton. “I am a little embarrassed to ask you guys this,” Mr. Levin said sheepishly. “But what’s a thong?”

Mr. Feingold, who took a seat on the Foreign Relations Committee despite warnings it was in decline, offers his own warning: that in the time since Sept. 11, America has become too inwardly focused and could again find itself surprised from overseas.

“Somehow,” he said, “we have to convince the American people that awareness of the rest of the world is important for our safety.”

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Romney Goes After Santorum on Budget

“Senator Santorum goes to Washington and calls himself a budget hawk, and after he’s been there a while, he says he’s no longer a budget hawk,” Mr. Romney said, his voice rising for emphasis as he looked out at the row of cameras before him. “Well, I am a budget hawk.”

As Mr. Santorum was greeted by a large and enthusiastic crowd four hours away in Ohio’s coal country, he made no mention of his rival at all, a clear sign that the tables have turned — for now, at least — in the Republican nominating contest, leaving Mr. Romney scrambling to regain his command over the race.

While Mr. Romney may not know for weeks or even months whether he will win the nomination, his performance over the next seven days will most likely provide a telling signal about whether he can persuade the party at last to embrace his candidacy.

After a stretch in which Mr. Santorum’s focus on appealing to conservatives through social issues has dominated the campaign, Mr. Romney has two high-profile opportunities this week to steer the conversation back to the economy and defeating President Obama: a debate on Wednesday in Arizona followed by a speech on Friday in Michigan that his campaign is billing as a major policy address. Both states will hold their primaries next Tuesday.

There are few outward signs that panic has set in at the Romney campaign — the delegate-by-delegate chess game has only begun — but concern is palpable among Mr. Romney, his allies and Republican Party elders, many of whom are increasingly fretting aloud about the prospect that he may not be as electable as he seemed only weeks ago.

“It’s way too premature to be talking about something like that,” said Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, a top supporter of Mr. Romney, when asked about the growing worries from some of his colleagues about the need to prepare for a backup Republican candidate. “He knew that this was going to be a long haul. He’s been through it before.”

But Mr. Romney has not been through this moment before, so far from persuading conservative activists that he has the strongest potential as a nominee to appeal to independent voters and defeat Mr. Obama.

“I wish this was over,“ Alex Triantafilou, the Republican Party chairman in Cincinnati, said in an interview Monday, adding that he was not taking sides but eager to avoid a protracted fight. “I’d rather air our attacks at the president.”

The Romney campaign has shed much of the bravado that was often on display last year when it focused on Mr. Obama and all but ignored its Republican rivals. (During a Chicago visit in May, aides to Mr. Romney sent leftover pizza to the Obama re-election office, just to make the campaign aware that they were on the president’s home turf.)

Mr. Romney had hoped to resume his confident posture against Mr. Obama with a Chicago speech on March 20, the day of the Illinois primary. But those plans are on hold, given that talk of the general election is all but forbidden now, and that Mr. Romney could still be battling Mr. Santorum.

For the next seven days, the campaign is intensely focused on Michigan, which has emerged as a pivotal state for Mr. Romney, whose candidacy would be devastated by a loss in his boyhood home. The campaign and a supportive “super PAC,” Restore Our Future, have been relentlessly attacking Mr. Santorum in television advertisements that paint him as a Washington insider and serial user of earmarks.

But Mr. Romney’s aides have also heightened their focus on Super Tuesday on March 6 and beyond. Acutely aware that Ohio could prove just as important as Michigan, the campaign has dispatched its Florida state director, Molly Donlin, here to Ohio to oversee the operation.

“A win in Michigan will definitely help in Ohio, but there will still need to be an Ohio campaign,” said Curt Steiner, a Republican strategist in Ohio who is supportive of Mr. Romney. But, he said, a loss in Michigan will necessitate a major effort: “It will signal to Romney supporters in Ohio that Ohio better be a firewall — or else.”

The campaign had something of a setback last week when a top Ohio official who had endorsed Mr. Romney in October, Attorney General Mike DeWine — a former two-term United States senator — switched his allegiance to Mr. Santorum. While Mr. Romney’s campaign shrugged that off in public, questioning how much support Mr. DeWine would bring with him, a top Ohio Republican said that behind the scenes, top donors and supporters were trying to keep others from following suit to quell an “uprising.“

Trip Gabriel contributed reporting from Steubenville, Ohio.

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The Caucus: Romney Campaigner in Arizona Resigns After Accusation

8:12 p.m. | Updated A revised version of this blog post is available here.

Paul Babeu, an up-and-coming member of the Republican Party, stepped down from his role as a co-chairman of Mitt Romney’s Arizona campaign on Saturday, in the wake of allegations that he threatened to deport a Mexican ex-boyfriend when the man refused to keep quiet about their relationship.

Mr. Babeu was the sheriff of Pinal County and made national headlines for his tough stance on illegal immigration. He endorsed Mr. Romney in October and is running for Congress in Arizona’s Fourth District.

The news of Mr. Babeu’s decision to step down from the Romney campaign was first reported by The Arizona Republic.

On Thursday, The Phoenix New Times reported the allegations of a 34-year-old Mexican man whom they identified only as “Jose.” He claimed that when he refused to sign an agreement that he would never mention his affair with Mr. Babeu, which lasted years, the sheriff and his lawyer tried to intimidate him with threats of deportation. Mr. Babeu has denied the charges.

“Sheriff Babeu has stepped down from his volunteer position with the campaign so he can focus on the allegations against him,” said Andrea Saul, a campaign spokeswoman, in an e-mail statement. “We support his decision.”

When Mr. Babeu threw his support behind Mr. Romney in October, however, he had nothing but kind words for the sheriff.

“It is an honor to have the support of Sheriff Babeu,” Mr. Romney said at the time, in an e-mail announcement released by his campaign. “His efforts working to protect our border are critical to lowering crime, reducing illegal immigration and stopping both drug and human trafficking. Sheriff Babeu has been a leader in the call for the federal government to secure the border. As president, I will work with leaders like Sheriff Babeu to protect our Southern border, provide the required assistance from the federal government and put an end to the magnets that cause illegal immigration.”

The Pinal County Sheriff’s Department is standing behind Mr. Babeu.

“The entire sheriff’s department supports the sheriff,” said Elias Johnson, a spokesman for the department. “He has a right to his private life. None of the allegations happened when he was supporting the citizens of Pinal County. He has a right to a private life just as every other citizen has a right to a private life. His public record speaks for itself.”

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Obama touts H-1B visas after dismissing woman’s objections

On Tuesday, the White House’s website highlighted President Barack Obama’s campaign trail support for the H-1B visa program. Just hours before, he had dismissed a woman’s worries about her husband and other American engineers losing jobs to foreign engineers allowed into the United States under H-1B.

“I don’t know your husband’s specialty, but I can tell you there’s a huge demand around the country for engineers,” Obama told Jennifer Weddel of Fort Worth, Texas on Monday night. The question came during a Google-hosted online interview of the president by several Americans.

Weddel told Obama that her husband, a semiconductor engineer, was laid off three years ago and has not found a full-time job.

“Why does the government continue to issue and extend H-1B visas when there are tons of Americans just like my husband with no jobs?” Weddel asked.

He “should be able to find a job right away,” Obama responded, though the phenomenon of middle-aged high-tech engineers being replaced by younger, immigrant high-tech engineers is well documented.

Obama told Weddel that “the H-1B [visas] should be reserved only for those companies who say they cannot find somebody in that particular field,” but this is not true.

“It really does show how clueless immigration enthusiasts really are,” said Mark Krikorian, the director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “The line that companies only bring in H-1B people when they can’t find someone else to do the job is simply false.”

Promotion of the H-1B program is part of Obama’s re-election strategy.

On Tuesday morning, the White House’s blog highlighted Obama’s decision to invite a Brazilian-born immigrant software engineer, Mike Krieger, to sit with the first lady during his Jan. 24 State of the Union Speech. (RELATED: First lady’s SOTU guest list indicates 2012 campaign priorities)

Krieger is in the country on a student visa because he’s enrolled at Stanford University. But he has also gained a temporary H-1B visa that allows him to stay in the county and compete against American engineers for high-tech jobs.

Krieger was included, alongside an engineer born in Taiwan, as part of the administration’s outreach to Silicon Valley and the high-tech sector, which includes many other foreign-born engineers.

That support for the H-1B program also helps to win support from communities of immigrants — especially Indians, Asians and Brazilians — who are prominent in the high-tech sector and have been courted by the Obama administration for years.

The White House website highlighted Krieger’s praise of Obama’s pro-immigrant policies.

“The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency is taking a page from Silicon Valley and is recruiting a set of entrepreneurs … to clarify the options available to immigrant entrepreneurs who want to start companies and … President Obama called on Congress to help grant permanent status to immigrants who want to ‘staff our labs, start new businesses, and defend this country,’” Krieger wrote.

In responding to Weddel’s H-1B question, Obama also cited recommendations by industry.

“What industry tells me is that they don’t have enough highly skilled engineers … there’s a huge demand for engineers around the country right now,” said Obama, whose Council on Jobs and Competitiveness includes several CEOs that employ H-1B engineers.

Obama is using the council to build support in the business sector, and also to show voters that he has some support from business during a time of record unemployment.

Each year, the government allows companies to hire 65,000 H-1B high-tech workers, including many engineers. Another 20,000 visas are given to foreigners with advanced degrees, and tens of thousands more are available under numerous other categories.

Google, General Electric, Microsoft, Intel and many other high-tech companies use the H-1B visa to attract technical experts, thus opening American workers to foreign competition.

Many of the foreign-born engineers are hired as subcontractors to work in low-wage high-tech jobs for several years.

A 2008 review by Krikorian’s center of the H-1B program concluded that many American high-tech workers are replaced by cheaper H-1B immigrants, and that “wages for H-1B workers averaged $12,000 below the median wage for U.S. workers in the same occupation and location.”

Others win permanent residency and form companies, including Krieger. According to the White House website, his 12-employee company, Instagram, “is the fastest growing social mobile startup in the U.S. today, and exemplifies President Obama’s belief that ‘entrepreneurs embody the promise of America: The idea that if you have a good idea and are willing to work hard and see it through, you can succeed in this country.’”

When confronted by Weddel’s husband’s struggle, Obama offered to look closer into it.

“If you send me your husband’s resume I’d be interested in finding out exactly what’s happening right there because the word we’re getting is that somebody in that kind of high-tech field — that kind of engineer — should be able to find something right away,” Obama said.

Obama’s promotion of H-1B is politically significant because Weddel is a middle-class voter whose economic well-being is being undermined by high-tech immigration, and because she and her many peers could swing against Obama in the 2012 election, Krikorian said.

“Somebody is going to be in trouble for letting that woman’s question get through,” Krikorian said.

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