February 07, 2008
Obama On Romney: An "Ineffective Candidate"
OMAHA, NE -- Barack Obama called Mitt Romney's candidacy "ineffective" on the day that the former MA governor exited the presidential race.
Romney, who dropped out of the race for president today in Washington, said in his exit speech that the GOP must unify and not allow Democrats to allow the country to "surrender to terror."
"Well my reaction to Mitt Romney's comment that's the kind of poorly thought out comment that led him to drop out," Obama said during a press avail on his campaign plane. "It's a classic attempt to appeal to people's fears that will not work in this campaign. I think that's part of the reason he was such an ineffective candidate."
And the day after rival Hillary Clinton loaned her campaign $5 million, Obama also stressed that he had disclosed his income tax returns.
"I'll just say that I've released my tax returns," he said. "That's been a policy I've maintained consistently. I think the American people deserve to know, you know, where you get your income from," he said, adding that his campaign had "set the bar on transparency and disclosure."
Obama said that unlike Clinton he didn't have enough personal funds to loan his campaign that much money. On what it meant that Clinton had to borrow funds from her husband, former President Bill Clinton, he said little, saying it's a legal issue but he didn't want to get into the "intricacies" of it.
He added that Clinton's money woes reflected her inability to generate the same kind of "grassroots enthusiasm" that the Obama campaign.
"You know it's not for lack of trying and she's got a former president actively fundraising for her as well as people like Terry McAuliffe, but you know what we've done is we've created this base where people are sending $25 checks and $50 check on an ongoing basis and that is an enormous advantage to our campaign," he said.
He added that the success of his online fundraising had allowed him to limit the number of fundraisers he was holding and focus more on door to door campaigning, citing that $27M of the $32M his campaign had raised in January came from online donors.
Reflecting a change in fundraising strategy he added, "At this point in January we had 4 or 5 fundraisers I think. And most of the money that we're raising now is coming online from people who are strong supporters of us."
(NBC/NJ's ASWINI ANBURAJAN)
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Posted at 05:47 PM
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