Stephanie Cutter Lied About When She Heard the Story of How Soptic's Wife Died

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http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/08/09/stephanie_cutter_lied_about_when_she_heard_the_story_of_how_soptic_s_wife_died


Stephanie Cutter Lied About When She Heard the Story of How Soptic's Wife Died
August 09, 2012


BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Stephanie Cutter, too. These people are lying through their teeth when they say that they didn't know the details of Soptic's story.  Yesterday morning on CNN Starting Point show, they had Stephanie Cutter, Obama's campaign manager... By the way, there's another aspect to this. And I don't think it would amount to anything but it's real.  That is the question of coordination.  By law, the campaign can have nothing to do with the super PAC.  But the campaign has run ads with this guy.  There have been two ads featuring Soptic.



One Soptic ad was run by the Obama campaign. The other one, the "Romney Killed My Wife" ad, was run by the super PAC.  There's supposed to be no coordination.  But people who have analyzed the video notice Soptic's wearing the same shirt in both ads.  His hair is the same length, same glasses.  His official, union guy hard hat is in both ads.  It looks like they're both done in the same place.  So people say, "Maybe these two ads that aired months apart were shot the same day."

So is it possible that the campaign is coordinating with the PAC in violation of federal election law?  Of course it's possible!  In fact, I would submit it's even likely.  But who is going to do anything about it?  I predict nobody is going to do anything about it.  We can mention it.  We can volley the allegation.  They don't care! Their attitude is, "Make us stop.  We don't care.  We'll go ahead.  We'll violate federal election law.  Look, man, we've got to spare this country from Mitt Romney! Mitt Romney is the ultimate evil."

When you're trying to save the country from the ultimate evil, anything goes.  There's no limits on what you can do when you're trying to spare this country experiencing evil.  And that's their attitude.  So here's Stephanie Cutter.  She's with the campaign.  She knows Soptic. She worked on the first Soptic ad. They're having a discussion about the PAC ad linking Romney to the death of the guy's wife.

And the host at CNN says (summarized), "This woman died in 2006.  This ad basically accuses Romney of killing her.  Is that the kind of rhetoric you want to hear in a campaign, especially from the side of the president of the United States? You're the guys who were talking about raising the level of discourse, civility, new politics, post-partisanship. Is this really the kind of rot gut that you want in a campaign coming from your side?"

CUTTER: I don't know the facts of when Joe Soptic's wife got sick or when she died.

RUSH:  Oh, really?  "I don't know the facts of when Soptic's wife got sick or when she died."  Well, on a conference call in May she was listening as Soptic told the same story.  This is the steelworker Joe Soptic and Obama campaign manager Stephanie Cutter on the line.  Here's a portion of that call...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tfOoZl0tHvQ

SOPTIC:  A little while later she was diagnosed with lung cancer.  I had to put her in a county hospital because she didn't have health care.  And when the cancer took her away, all I got was an enormous bill.  When you look at what Mitt Romney did at places like GST Steel, you can tell he's only worried about one group of people and that's the people like him, people at the top.  You can't expect much more from someone who says he likes to fire people with no concern about what their family really means.  Now I'll turn the call back over to Stephanie.

CUTTER:  Thank you, Joe.  We appreciate you sharing your experiences.

RUSH:  Stephanie Cutter -- that's May 14th of this year -- on a call with Joe Soptic as he relates the same story as is in the ad yesterday.  Sound bite ten, again, Mike. Yesterday Stephanie Cutter said this.

CUTTER: I don't know the facts of when Joe Soptic's wife got sick or when she died.

RUSH:  That's a blatant lie.

But they don't care.

What are we going to do to them?  "What are you going to do to us?"

She says, "I didn't know his story."  Ms. Cutter, you were on the call.  "I don't know his story.  I don't know the facts of when his wife got sick or when she died."  Well, we just heard you on the call where he tells the story back in May and even turns the call over to you! "I don't know the facts of when his wife got sick," and so then people get exacerbated. (gagging) They're speechless. What do we do?  We had this problem with Clinton.  What do you do with somebody who blatantly lies?

What do you do?  What did you do in high school when somebody blatantly lied?  What do you do when your boss blatantly lies?  I got fired once for calling a guy on it.  I worked for a congenital, pathological liar.  And I didn't have any other problem with the guy.  I just couldn't deal with it.  I couldn't deal with the braggadocios, lying stories.  So one day he starts in with these stories. They're all made to make him look big and important and all that.



I said, "Don't give me this. You don't know these people you're talking about.  I finally ran into one.  These guys never heard of you."  And he was stumped, dumbfounded.  He didn't quite know what to say.  I left, I got home, and 30 minutes later the owner of the radio station called and fired me.  People don't know how to deal with liars.  I called one of these pathological-type liars on it and I got fired.  But most honorable people don't know how to deal with this.  And when I say "don't know how to deal with it," I mean they don't know how to make these people pay for this.

They don't know how to make sure there's a penalty.

In this case, the campaign ought not get away with what they're doing.  They're lying. And there might be illegal coordination between the campaign and the super PAC.  But that's going to require a charge being made and evidence being produced and going to the Federal Election Commission, and we'll get a result next April.  The decision will come out next April.  So that's when people like me look to the Romney camp.

"Okay, you guys are going to have to do something about this.  You can't rely on a bunch of faceless, nameless Tea Party people to get revved up.  You can't.  You have to deal with this, and that means going after these people. Not on the fact that they lie. Not complaining that they lie.  You don't do it that way.  You go out and you tell the truth about their destruction of the economy.  You go out there and you tell the truth about the fact they're incompetent and they don't know what they're doing and they pose a great threat to the future of the country."

We've got the truth on our side, and that's Obama's economic record.  We've got the truth.  All we have to do is be unafraid to say it.  Cutter? This is the same woman who called Romney a felon.  She's the same woman who put the idea out there that Romney is a felon because he was still at Bain when he said he had left Bain.  He was still there.  She knows.  She knows he's a tax-cheating felon.  They're still running that ad, the Super PAC is, on their website.

Peter Johnson is a lawyer, a legal analyst on the Fox News Channel.  This morning on Fox & Friends they asked him about this.  Alisyn Camerota, the guest host, says, "Stephanie Cutter says she doesn't know the details about this guy's wife death and may not know about the details that it was five years later, but clearly she knows Joe Soptic.  Is she running afoul of the law here, Peter?"

JOHNSON:  Oh, it might be. Under the Federal Election Commission there could be civil penalties and more.  The issue is: What's the coordination between the formal campaign and an independent expenditure --

CAMEROTA: Super PAC!

JOHNSON: -- of a so-called super PAC that were created after the Citizen United decision of the United States Supreme Court.  In my view that quote, that tape recording shows a real awareness that they were coordinating.

RUSH:  Yeah, of course they are.  But who is going to do anything about it?  And to pile on, here's Soptic himself.  January of this year.  He's on a public TV program called Democracy Now!  The host is Amy Goodman. She's interviewing him. This guy has been a Democrat trick pony for I don't know how many months.  He's a Democrat Party activist.  He's not this beleaguered citizen.  He reminds me of somebody else's name I can't think of right now.  I can't remember it. What was her name?  Anyway, he's an activist.  He's on a public TV program in January talking about this, and in this interview, he's talking about when Bain Capital bought his steel company, GST.

Amy Goodman said to him, "So what happened, Mr. Soptic?"

SOPTIC:  They became very, uh, union non-friendly.  I mean, they started looking for ways to eliminate jobs.  In my case, in my department, they actually offered to buy our jobs out from underneath us.

RUSH:  He was offered a buyout! Bain offered to buy him out.  They didn't just fire your little butt.  They offered a buyout, and you would have had the money to buy health insurance.  Here's Sununu talking about this later on Fox.

SUNUNU: Obviously, if that is true, then you have, again, this honesty by omission by the Obama campaign, and unfortunately by this gentleman whose tragedy we empathize with. But, boy, if that turns out to be true, then what he has been griping about toward Mitt Romney is certainly a misrepresentation.

RUSH:  Oh, yeah. "Misrepresentation."

END TRANSCRIPT

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http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/08/09/burton-ad-does-not-suggest-romney-is-responsible-for-womans-death/

Burton: Ad Does Not Suggest Romney Is Responsible For Woman’s Death
August 9, 2012 9:33 AM

PUEBLO, Colo. (CBSDC/AP) — President Barack Obama is pushing an economic fairness argument to voters in Colorado while Republican Mitt Romney’s campaign protests a tough attack ad aired by a super PAC supporting the president.

Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul labeled the ad linking Romney to a woman’s death from cancer “despicable,” but the Obama campaign refused to call on Priorities USA Action to pull the TV spot. Bill Burton, a former White House aide and co-founder of the group, defended the ad, telling CNN that it does not suggest that Romney is responsible for the woman’s death.

“We’re not saying Mitt Romney is culpable for that,” Burton told CNN. “What we’re saying is that Joe Soptic was fired from his job, and as a result of that, he wasn’t able to get – he wasn’t able to hold onto health care benefits that were promised to him. And as a result, when his wife got sick, he didn’t have health care.”

In the ad, Soptic suggests that Romney and the private equity firm he founded might bear some responsibility for his wife’s death from cancer because the firm closed the plant and he lost his health insurance, despite the fact that Ranae Soptic died five years after the steel plant closed.

Romney charged Thursday that the ads being run on Obama’s behalf have crossed the boundaries of appropriate campaign rhetoric.

In an interview broadcast on Bill Bennett’s “Morning in America” radio show, the former Massachusetts governor said the Obama campaign commercials “just keep on running,” even though various fact-checking organizations have challenged their accuracy.

Without making any direct reference to the ad about the woman who died from cancer, Romney told Bennett, “I don’t know what happened to a campaign of hope and change. I thought he was a new kind of politician.”

Romney charged that the Obama campaign has “focused almost exclusively on personal attacks” when it should be talking about how to resuscitate the struggling economy and create jobs.

At the same time, Romney’s team began airing an ad Thursday saying Obama has declared “war on religion.” It cited new health rules mandating insurance coverage for birth control without copays, which the ad says forces religious institutions to “go against their faith.” Obama says exemptions for churches and compromise language on charities fully protects religious freedom.

Obama later Thursday was to rally supporters in Pueblo and Colorado Springs after making a pitch to female voters in Denver and reaching out to Republican-leaning Grand Junction. He carried Colorado in 2008, but he and Romney are engaged in a tight contest for the state’s nine electoral votes.

Romney was raising money in New York as his campaign prepares for a bus trip through battleground states and a decision on a running mate.

In Colorado, Obama is trying to undermine Romney’s arguments that Obama has failed to revitalize the economy nearly four years after the economic downturn. The president told voters in Grand Junction that Romney is struggling to explain how proposed tax cuts could continue without adding to the deficit or forcing Americans with moderate incomes to pay more.

“There was a whole different kind of gymnastics being performed by Mr. Romney than what’s been happening in the Olympics,” Obama said. He accused his opponent of “twisting” and “turning” and “doing backflips” over a report by a think tank that found his tax plan could force middle-class workers to lose tax breaks and pay more.

A new Quinnipiac University poll shows Obama and Romney tied among voters in Colorado households earning between $30,000 and $50,000 per year — an important target. Obama leads among voters with lower incomes while Romney is favored by those making more.

Romney campaigned Wednesday in Iowa, where he drew a standing ovation for promising to repeal “Obamacare,” the label Republicans have used to deride Obama’s health care law.

“That doesn’t mean that health care is perfect,” Romney said. “We’ve got to do some reforms in health care. And I have some experiences doing that, as you know.”

Obama, campaigning in Denver before an audience largely made up of women, said he liked the “Obamacare” tag.

“I actually like the name because I do care,” he said. “That’s why we fought so hard to make it happen.”

Romney’s spokeswoman drew expressions of dismay from some conservatives when she cited Romney’s own health care law from his days as governor of Massachusetts in criticizing the steelworker ad.

“If people had been in Massachusetts under Gov. Romney’s health care plan, they would have had health care,” Saul said in an interview on Fox News. Romney himself rarely mentions the law, which contains a requirement to purchase health coverage similar to the one in the federal law that conservatives despise and Romney has vowed to repeal.