Photograph by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

A Tea Party protester in San Francisco, California.

Karl Rove says he isn’t at war with the Tea Party.

Then he blasts the Tea Party groups complaining about his new venture into Republican primary races.

Rove was speaking with fellow Fox News employee Sean Hannity last night to explain the Conservative Victory Project, a super-political action committee that will spend money in Republican primary races, territory that other well-funded groups including the party itself have declined to traverse.

Yet, “this is not Tea Party versus the establishment,” Rove said.

His two other groups, the super-PAC American Crossroads and nonprofit Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, are “second to none in our support of Tea Party candidates,” Rove said.

He unsheathed his weapon, a white board, and continued explaining that the Crossroads entities had spent at about $50 million on Tea Party candidates in the 2010 and 2012 elections. The names on his white board included Florida’s Sen. Marco Rubio, Kentucky’s Sen. Rand Paul, Pennsylvania’s Sen. Pat Toomey, and 2010 Senate hopefuls Sharron Angle of Nevada and Ken Buck of Colorado.

There were no 2012 names on the white board.Rove said later in the program that his Crossroads groups had raised $320 million last year.

So why are the anti-tax Tea Party groups dissing his new venture? Rove said, in effect, it’s because their work is inferior to his own Crossroads operation.

He called those complaining about him “fundraising entities” where “most of the money gets sucked up into overhead and goes to the pockets of the person who owns the website or owns the political action committee.” By contrast, Rove said, he is a “volunteer” for Crossroads and even pays for his own expenses.

The list of organizations unhappy about the Conservative Victory Project includes: FreedomWorks, For America, the Tea Party Express, Tea Party Patriots, Teapparty.org and the Senate Conservatives Fund.

Developer Donald Trump and conservative talk radio hosts Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin also have said Rove shouldn’t meddle in primaries. Near the end of the Hannity interview, Rove said, “I don’t want a fight.”

Original post is Rove: ‘I Don’t Want a (Tea Party) Fight’ — with Fighting Words by Political Capital.

Photograph by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his running mate Rep Paul Ryan wave to supporters at the Augusta Expoland in Fishersville, Virginia, the day after the first Presidential debate.

Updated at 5:38 pm EDT

President Barack Obama may have missed an opportunity to hold Republican Mitt Romney to his fundraising comment about 47 percent of Americans being out of reach to him during their televised debate this week, but Romney is working on his own at an explanation.

Initially, Romney called it “inelegant” — his recently published comment from a May 17 fundraising dinner in Florida at which he said the 47 percent who pay no income taxes are “victims” of government dependency, sure to support Obama and unreachable by his campaign. Last night, on FOX News’ “Hannity,” Romney said it was simply “wrong.”

“Now and then, you’re going to say something that doesn’t come out right,” Romney said. “In this case, I said something that was just completely wrong.”

Asked about Obama’s campaign-trail response to the debate — in which the president has been challenging the words of “the guy playing Mitt Romney” – the Republican nominee told Sean Hannity and FOX’s viewers: “Obviously, the president wasn’t happy with the response to our debate last night.”

If there was no talk of the 47 percent in the debate, there has been plenty of it in campaign ads that Obama and the super-PAC backing his campaign are airing.

“What the president’s been campaigning, and saying about me is very different than what I actually am, what I actually believe,” Romney said. “What the president’s been saying and the reality are pretty far apart.”

He accused Democrats of pursuing a “kill Romney” strategy all year, including “character assassination” which has “gone way too far” and “diminishes the White House.”

The Obama campaign has produced a Web video asking which statement Romney meant when:

Original post is Romney: 47% `Completely Wrong’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Brendan Smialowski/Bloomberg

Reverend Jeremiah Wright, senior pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, speaks at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on April 28, 2008.

In the afternoon before the first of three presidential debates, the Drudge Report, a Web site with a large following, announced that a problematic videotape was coming.

Stay tuned.

Near the start of the evening newscasts, Drudge reported that FOX News would be delivering the news.

At 6 pm, there was no news.

But there was, on Drudge, this, accompanied by a flashing blue and red police patrol-car light: “THE ACCENT… THE ANGER… THE ACCUSATIONS… THE SERMON… THE SHOUT OUT TO REV. WRIGHT, WHO IS IN AUDIENCE…”

And a blind but recognizable quote: “My pastor, the guy who puts up with me, counsels me, listens to my wife complain about me. He’s a friend and a great leader. Not just in Chicago, but all across the country.”’

And word that FOX News would have the rest of the story at 9 pm.

In the meantime, The Daily Caller, a politically conservative Web site, bannered this: “The DC Exclusive: Never-before-seen Obama video debuts 9 p.m. ET.”

And again Drudge: “DAILY CALLER: ‘For nearly 40 minutes, using an accent he never adopts in public, Obama describes a racist, zero-sum society, in which the white majority profits by exploiting black America’… Developing tonight…”

What arrived, on FOX, at 9 pm, was a videotaped recording of President Barack Obama — then Senator Obama, from Illinois — at a public campaign appearance in 2007 that was open to the media and widely reported at the time.

At the start of Sean Hannity’s show, at the conclusion of Bill O’Reilly’s program — the top-rated show on the cable news network. All of which contributed to a night of anticipatory ratings on FOX, starting with the 6 pm news show anchored by Bret Baier. Hannity announced at 9 : “A bombshell is about to be dropped.”

The tape of a June 2007 campaign appearance before black clergy members at Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia, was obtained by the Daily Caller, Hannity said on his show. “The most outrageous comments” were ignored by the mainstream media at the time, Hannity explained. (Never mind that the Daily Caller’s founder had reported on the candidate’s appearance at the time., as had FOX and NBC News that evening.)

“I’ve got to give a special shout-out to my pastor, the guy who puts up with me, counsels me, listens to my wife complain about me — he’s a friend and a great leader,” Obama is shown saying about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the Chicago pastor whose incendiary comments Obama later rejected during his 2008 campaign for president.

It also shows Obama questioning why federal reconstruction aid was slow in flowing to the victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, after the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York had gotten swift attention. “It tells me, the people in New Orleans, they don’t care about much.”

This, Hannity explained, “was a glimpse into the mind of the real Barack Obama.”

Then came Tucker Carlson, the conservative commentator and founding director of The Daily Caller, joining Hannity on his program, calling Obama’s comments “remarkable.”

“The accent, let me be totally clear… this accent is absurd, this is not the way Obama talks,” Carlson said of Obama’s inflection in the taped address. “This is a put-on, this is phony… He is telling a predominantly black audience… the federal government does not like you because they are black.”

“This is not a dog whistle,” Carlson told Hannity. “This is a dog siren.”

At the end of the day, there was no news here.

There was a videotape of an old speech by Obama once recognizing a pastor whom he disconnected himself from in his 2008 campaign after some of Wright’s most controversial remarks about America in the pulpit.

And some conservative commentators commenting on Obama’s accent at the time.

And a night of cable TV news ratings to be had in the day’s headlines.

About old news.

Which, the Obama campaign was ready to note, had widely been covered at the time:

On June 5, 2007, Carlson himself had reported for MSNBC: “Barack Obama was talking about a quiet riot today. And no, it was not a reference to a 1980s heavy metal band, unfortunately. The senator waded into the controversial waters of race during a speech Hampton University in Virginia. He said the Bush administration has done little to quell a brewing storm among some black Americans. He compared the current tension to what fueled the L.A. riots in the wake of the Rodney King verdict.”

FOX News’ Brit Hume also had covered the Hampton speech: “Senator Obama today said the Bush administration has done nothing to defuse what he calls a quiet riot among black Americans, a riot he suggests is ready to erupt. Obama said African American resentments and frustrations are building, especially, he said, because so many blacks from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are still displaced 21 months after Hurricane Katrina. Obama warned against conditions similar to those in Los Angeles 15 years ago. ”

And lastly, the “mainstream media:” NBC News’ Brian Williams, in June 2007: “We begin with some unusually direct talk today from Democratic candidate Barack Obama on the issue of race, something he rarely focuses on in his speeches. But today, speaking to a primarily black audience at Hampton University in Virginia, Obama said the Bush administration has done little to address what he called a quiet riot of discontent and despair among blacks in this country, one that erupted in LA 15 years ago and has been building again since the administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina. ”

Original post is Anatomy of a Political `News’ Hit by Political Capital.

Photograph by Dr. Scott M. Lieberman/AP Photo

Fox News Channel television, radio talk host, author, and conservative political commentator, Sean Hannity in Tyler, Texas, in this 2009 file photo.

Paul Ryan and Sean Hannity are old friends.

They had a talk today on The Sean Hannity Show — “The stop-Obama express” — syndicated on hundreds of ABC News Radio affiliates nationwide. Hannity was talking about the ` hunt”  to “destroy” Ryan.

“Here’s the deal, the president cannot run on his record — it’s a terrible record,” Ryan told Hannity at the top of the 4 pm EDT hour of the show today. “So all he’s trying to do is trash us… We’re just not going to let him get away with it. ”

The media coverage of the election “has never been this bad,” Hannity said. “The media never asks this president any tough questions.”

“He’s just playing cynical politics,” Ryan said of Obama.  “The president’s experience, his laundry list, is a string of broken promises… So he’s running this cynical campaign of trying to divide the country.”

“I can’t speak to his motivations… but this is what he does,” Ryan said. “He can only win if he can construct a straw-man argument — `this is how evil my opponent is’ — by trying to define his opponents as something they are not.”

“People will see that they have a very clear choice in front of them.”

Ryan says he is looking forward to debating Vice President Joe Biden — an experienced debater and the sitting vice president. People will see how clear the choice is that debate, he says.

Original post is Ryan to Hannity: Obama `Trashing’ Rivals with `Cynical’ Campaign by Political Capital.

Photograph by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Mitt Romney with advisor Beth Myers, running his running-mate search, aboard his campaign plane.

“I have paid taxes every year, and a lot of taxes,” Republican Mitt Romney said today.

His unequivocal statement is a response to suggestions from Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate majority leader, that Romney has averted paying taxes for many years.

“I was told by an extremely credible source that Romney has not paid taxes for ten years,” Reid said in a statement issued last night, following up on comments he’d made on the Senate floor. “People who make as much money as Mitt Romney have many tricks at their disposal to avoid paying taxes. We already know that Romney has exploited many of these loopholes, stashing his money in secret, overseas accounts in places like Switzerland and the Cayman Islands.”

Campaigning in Reid’s home state today, Romney had this to say to the majority leader: “Harry Reid really has to put up or shut up. Harry, who are your sources?”

Romney had said much the same thing in an interview on Sean Hannity’s Fox  Radio show:  “It’s time for Harry to put up or shut up,” Romney told Hannity yesterday. “It’s untrue, dishonest and inaccurate — it’s wrong. I’m looking forward to have Harry reveal his sources, and we’ll probably find out it’s the White House.”

Of course, there’s no settling the argument for sure, as Romney has refused to release more than two years of tax returns — the 2010 returns already released showing an effective tax rate of 13.9 percent paid on $21 million in investment income — and the 2011 returns promised after his accountants are finished with the deadline-extended filing.

MoveOn.org, a group that supports President Barack Obama, greeted Romney’s campaigning out West this week after a week-long trip to Europe with an airplane towing a banner outside the event:  “Welcome Back Mitt! Now Release Those Returns!”

And Obama’s re-election campaign is running a TV ad about Romney in several swing states:

“’You work hard,” the narrator of Obama’s ad says in high sympathy, “Stretch every penny. But chances are, you pay a higher tax rate than him.”

Bloomberg’s John McCormick and Julie Hirschfeld Davis contributed.

Original post is Romney: `Paid Taxes Every Year’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Brian Cahn/Zuma Press/Corbis

Ann Romney nimbly avoids her horse Rafalca during a photo op at the National Grand Prix Dressage Championship at the United States Equestrian Federation Festival of Champions.

There are TV ads, and there are videos.

The TV ads are broadcast, or relayed by cable networks, to millions of Americans in battleground states, all aimed at influencing public opinion about the presidential election contest.

The videos are rolled out on the Internet for select consumption and dissemination– and for attention such as this, the stuff of Tweets and Re-Tweets.

It remains to be seen whether the Democratic National Committee will be ready for prime-time with the sort of parody featured in its newest Web-video about Republican Mitt Romney — this one featuring clips from the fine art of dressage which Romney’s wife Ann practices. It’s billed as the first in a series.

It plays on the presumptive presidential nominee’s Olympic contender, “Rafalca,” as it portrays Romney “dancing around the issues” of his tax returns. Yet is also plays on the horse in a sport which his wife embraced as therapy for her multiple sclerosis.

(Romney’s own horse, a Missouri Fox Trotter, is “like a quarter horse, but just a much better gait,” Romney once told Sean Hannity of Fox News.)

It’s another way of pressing an issue that Republicans and Democrats alike have pressed Romney on. It’s also a political play on the 1 percent, sort of a Comedy Central take on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous (Stephen Colbert actually beat the Democrats to Rafalca.)

The video replays the primaries. Will he release his tax records, Romney was asked during one of the primary election debates sponsored by Fox News? “If that’s been the tradition,” he said then, “I ‘m not opposed to doing that, time will tell, I anticipate that most likely I will be asked to do that around the April time period, I’ll keep that open.”

Would he release 12 years of returns, as his father, George Romney, did when he ran for president in 1968?

“Maybe,” he replied with a nervous laugh at another debate sponsored by CNN.

He has released just one return, for 2010, and promises another, for 2011 — a fact which the Obama campaign and Democrats are spending plenty of money on in actual TV ads. Texas Governor Rick Perry is among the latest of Romney’s own party to join the chorus.

And why does he have a Swiss bank account, this video asks.

“The money that I have is managed by a blind trust. I don’t manage the money that I have,” Romney is shown saying, in a production ending with the question: “Do we really want a president who dances around the issues?”

Original post is Romney’s Rafalca: ‘Dancing Around the Issues,’ Pushing Boundaries? by Political Capital.