Axelrod: GOP Convention Didn't Make the Sale
Obama campaign senior strategist David Axelrod on Friday criticized the Republican convention for doing little “to advance the cause of Mitt Romney,” while saying that next week’s Democratic convention will be less about reintroducing the president and more about “the problems facing the country.”
Speaking on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Axelrod said the GOP convention had not done enough to make the case for the party’s presidential nominee or the policies that Romney would advance if elected.
“I think that what people were tuning in, hoping to hear, were practical solutions to the challenges that we face,” Axelrod said. “And you know, what they got were some snarky lines about the president, and some gauzy reminiscences of the past and some buzzwords for the base. But what they didn't get were real practical solutions, and what they didn't get were his actual proposals.”
“It felt like open-mike night for 2016 candidates and not a convention that seemed to be promoting Mitt Romney in 2012,” he said later.
In defense of President Obama, Axelrod countered the central message of Romney’s speech on Thursday night—that Election Night in 2008 was the high point of the Obama presidency, and that Americans are not better off now than they were then.
He pointed to autoworkers who benefited from the bailout, Americans who have benefitted from Obama’s health reform law, troops who have returned from Iraq. “Those were good nights,” Axelrod said.
