Obama aides: Romney couldn’t face down Limbaugh, how will he face down Iran?

If Mitt Romney wasn't brave enough to break with Rush Limbaugh, why should voters think he has the courage to go toe-to-toe with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? That was the question posed by David Axelrod, senior strategist for President Barack Obama's re-election campaign, on a conference call Wednesday with reporters.

"If you don't have the strength to stand up to the most strident voices in your party, how are you going to stand up to Ahmadinejad? How are you going to stand up to the challenges of the presidency?" said Axelrod.

Axelrod hit that point several times on the call—each time focusing on Romney's response to the controversy triggered when the iconic conservative talk radio host branded Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a "slut" for advocating for health insurance coverage of birth control. Conservatives have angrily charged that the White House is guilty of hypocrisy for not taking a harder line on Obama-backing TV comic Bill Maher's obscenity-laced assault on Sarah Palin.

But Axelrod was undeterred and pressed his case that not picking a fight with a politically influential conservative in the heat of a party primary had predictive power over how Romney would deal with a foreign leader universally reviled in the United States.

"The Limbaugh case was a good example. The fact that they, and particularly Romney, were so timid in response speaks to the dynamic of the Republican primary—they were afraid to challenge the de facto boss" of the party, said the strategist.

Axelrod said Romney's advisers should not "think they can wipe the slate clean" or get "a do-over" between the primary and the general election.

"We take his words seriously and his positions seriously, and we're going to hold him to them. This is not a game. You're running for president of the United States," he said.

Other tidbits from the call:

- Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said the campaign next week will release a 17-minute documentary helmed by "An Inconvenient Truth" director and producer Davis Guggenheim. The short film will "put into perspective the enormous challenges" America faced when Obama took office and highlight the "great strides" taken since then. The trailer for the film should be released in the coming days, a campaign aide said later.

- Messina ducked a question about whether support for gay marriage would ultimately be part of the Democratic platform—describing Democrats as "the big-tent party" with "a great record" on issues like repealing "don't ask, don't tell," but insisting that the unchallenged incumbent president's hands are tied by party procedure.

"There's not even a delegates platform committee yet," he said. "There will be a process for that, and we'll go through that process."

- And Axelrod allowed that, in one critical way at least, the drawn-out Republican nominating process hurts the president's re-election drive.

"Candidly, I do think that it is easier to raise money when you have one opponent" he said.

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