For those longing for the heady days of the 2008 US Presidential campaign, when people believed in “hope” and “change,” the 2012 US presidential race is turning back time, though not necessarily in a good way.
Perhaps believing that his own ads against US President Barack Obama lacked authority, Republican Mitt Romney pulled out the big guns: Hillary Clinton.
Digging up some vintage footage from the intense Hillary-Barack rivalry in the 2008 Democratic nomination fight, Romney used the popular US secretary of state’s then-words to blast her now-boss. The video, which includes the stinging line “Shame on you Barack Obama,” was a hit, garnering hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube.
Viral Video of the Week:
But Democrats may find comfort in Romney’s decision to use Clinton, because it plays into a recent campaign theme of their own: that Romney doesn’t have answers of his own. For weeks, the Obama camp has taken him to task for criticizing policies without offering any better alternatives. He knew he disagreed with Obama’s decision to
enact part of the DREAM act on illegal immigration, but he would not commit to a
policy of his own. He disagreed with the
Supreme Court ruling on healthcare, arguing that the individual mandate wasn’t a tax, but then
decided it was. That’s why democrats thought it would be a good idea in recent weeks to use Twitter to trend the term #QuestionsThatStumpMitt.
But, of course, it’s easy enough to turn Twitter wars around, as one Tweeter so avidly declared, and soon #QuestionsThatStumpObama was trending as well.
Tweet of the Week:
Politics, after all, is the art of the possible, and alliances and political positions can shift faster than quicksand. Just ask Obama: Before he put Hillary Clinton on his cabinet, he blasted her for her stance on Healthcare. The problem Obama had with Clinton’s health policy, Buzzfeed
recalls is that it required everyone to buy health insurance. Is that even constitutional? To quote the mailer, it “just doesn’t make sense.”
But, then, does politics ever?
#USelections2012 offers weekly insight into the US presidential election through a social media lens, tracking candidates as they try to reach 270 electoral votes in 140 characters or less.
The writer is a Breaking News editor and blogger at The Jerusalem Post
. Read his blog ‘The Bottom Line’
here.