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 The battle is on for control of the White House

In the days of the old Pravda, one could determine who was winning secret Politburo power struggles by just looking at the official Soviet newspaper. Those winning simply got better press.

Perhaps it may be no different here in the United States.

This week two of the heaviest guns in American media, The Washington Post and The New York Times, unloaded their missiles at Obama adviser David Axelrod while heralding White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel as a centrist and pragmatist.

This Sunday’s New York Times, for example, features Axelrod and describes him as the ideological courtier advising the president into darkness as Emanuel remains the level-headed counselor.

Here’s an excerpt from “Message Maven Finds Fingers Pointing at Him”:

“Recent news reports have cast the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, as the administration’s chief pragmatist, and Mr. Axelrod, by implication, as something of a swooning loyalist. ‘I’ve heard him be called a “Moonie,”’ dismissed Mr. Axelrod’s close friend, former Commerce Secretary William Daley. Or as the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, joked, ‘the guy who walks in front of the president with rose petals.

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By Sean Lengell, Washington Times

A top White House aide said Sunday that the thousands of conservative “tea party” demonstrators who marched in Washington on Saturday were “wrong” because they represent only a fringe section of society.

“I don’t think it’s indicative of the nation’s mood,” David Axelrod, the president’s top adviser, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “My message to them is, they’re wrong.”

A major catalyst of the rally — as well as the many protests staged at congressional town hall meetings nationwide last month — was President Obama’s push for health care reform, which conservatives have blasted as an egregious example of government expansion and intrusion.

“I don’t believe that some of the angriest, most strident voices we saw during the summer were representative of the thousands of town hall meetings that went on around the country that came off peacefully, that were constructive,” he said.

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By Michelle Levi, CBS News

Senior White House adviser David Axelrod said President Obama is "not willing to accept" that a so-called public option "is not going to be in the final package" of health-care legislation on "Face the Nation" Sunday.

"He continues to believe it’s a good idea," Axelrod told CBS News Chief Washington correspondent and "Face the Nation" anchor Bob Schieffer about a government-funded alternative to private health insurance. "He continues to advocate it, and I’m not willing to accept that it’s not going to be in the final package."

Axelrod said the president "believes that it will add an element of competition where there is none in some places in this country where there’s a monopolistic situation with insurance companies."

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by  R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., Human Events

Obama White House releases dozens of Kennedy photos with Prez.

According to the Gallup Poll, the Prophet Obama’s job approval is now at its lowest since his coronation. It began at 70 percent. Now it is at 51 percent. Equally glum, his disapproval rating has climbed from 11 percent to 42 percent. So what about his golf game up there at Martha’s Vineyard? From all I have been able to ascertain, it is mediocre. In other words, Mr. Obama, you are no Dan Quayle. Former Vice President Quayle was a really superb golfer. Moreover, he ran a competent staff. Naturally, it was smaller than Mr. Obama’s, but it was run competently.

My belief, based on reports in the news and from my private network of seasoned agents and provocateurs, is that this White House is a carousel of incompetence. How else do we explain the ravening push on all fronts — health care, the environment, fiscal reform, intelligence reform and a foreign policy of humility and apology? Unsurprisingly, on every front, the president is in trouble. Remember chief of staff Rahm Emanuel’s callous enjoiner "you never want a serious crisis to go to waste"? This White House is a serious crisis.

According to sources with whom I confer, the Obama White House is the most tightly controlled White House in years, with the president, Emanuel and David Axelrod micromanaging practically everything. They constitute what is called "the Politburo," and the news story waiting to be written is that their control is as stultifying as was Jimmy Carter’s control of his White House. Stupendous failure is in the cards.

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Michael Bush, Ad Age

Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, one of the few things about Barack Obama’s presidential campaign that was hard to criticize was its use of e-mail and database marketing. But in the past few weeks, Mr. Obama’s team has gone from a digital-marketing case study to being regarded as a lowly spammer.

White House senior adviser David Axelrod sent an e-mail touting the administration’s embattled health-care-reform plan to thousands of people who apparently hadn’t asked to be contacted. Was it an innocent mistake on the part of the administration? A Machiavellian stunt pulled off by opponents of health-care reform? Or an act of desperation mixed with some hubris on the part of the administration in an attempt to push its plan on as many citizens as possible?

Zain Raj, CEO of Havas’ Euro RSCG Discovery, said he doesn’t believe it was an innocent mistake; the Obama team simply acted like many major brands do.

"The [administration] has become so arrogant about the amount of trust and credibility they have with their constituents, they think they can take advantage," he said. "They forget who they are serving, and that’s what has happened with the brand Obama. When the campaign was building the brand, it was part of a movement, but now it’s become part of the establishment

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By SHARON THEIMER, Associated Press

It is profitable to work for Obama

President Barack Obama’s push for a national health care overhaul is providing a financial windfall in the election offseason to Democratic consulting firms that are closely connected to the president and two top advisers.

Coalitions of interest groups running at least $24 million in pro-overhaul ads hired GMMB, which worked for Obama’s 2008 campaign and whose partners include a top Obama campaign strategist. They also hired AKPD Message and Media, which was founded by David Axelrod, a top adviser to Obama’s campaign and now to the White House. AKPD did work for Obama’s campaign, and Axelrod’s son Michael and Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe work there.

The firms were hired by Americans for Stable Quality Care and its predecessor, Healthy Economy Now. Each was formed by a coalition of interests with big stakes in health care policy, including the drug maker lobby PhRMA, the American Medical Association, the Service Employees International Union and Families USA, which calls itself "The Voice for Health Care Consumers."

Their ads press for changes in health care policy. Healthy Economy Now made one of the same arguments that Obama does: that health care costs are delaying the country’s economic recovery and that changes are needed if the economy is to rebound.

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Bobby Eberle, GOPUSA

Earlier, I wrote about Barack Obama’s White House web site that encourages citizens to report on other citizens. It was an unprecedented move by the Obama’s advisors to obtain information on people who disagree with their positions. What would be done with this information? Where would it be stored? What information would be collected? All these questions went unanswered.

Now, many Americans across the country are getting official White House e-mail messages which support Obama’s health care plan. The problem is… these people did not sign up to receive such messages. When asked about this issue, the White House response was a series of ums and errs.

The problem of unsolicited e-mails from the White House was raised by Fox News’ Major Garrett, after he noted that Fox had received hundreds of complaints from citizens saying they are now getting White House e-mail messages from Obama advisor David Axelrod.

As usual, Gibbs will not answer the question and only perpetuates the notion that the Obama White House is up to no good.

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By CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN, Politico

David Axelrod and Jim Messina direct new Obama offensive

Top White House aides gave Senate Democrats a recess battle plan on Thursday, arming the lawmakers with tips for avoiding disastrous town hall meetings while showing them polling on popular aspects of the reform effort.

Senior White House adviser David Axelrod and deputy chief of staff Jim Messina told senators to focus on the insured and how they would benefit from “consumer protections" in the overhaul, such as ending the practice of denying insurance based on preexisting conditions and ensuring the continuity of coverage between jobs.

They showed video clips of the confrontational town halls that have dominated the media coverage, and told senators to do more prep work than usual for their public meetings by making sure their own supporters turn out, senators and aides said.

And they screened TV ads and reviewed the various campaigns by critics of the Democratic plan.

“If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard,” Messina said, according to an official who attended the meeting.

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By Tom Roeser, tomroeser.com

Every detail of Obama speech was crafted by David Axelrod

Barack Obama is learning the hard way with the closing-Gitmo issue how campaign demagoguery conflicts with governing. His speech before a masterly David Axelrod-contrived backdrop of the Constitution and Declaration as symbols mesmerized at least one source–the zombie-like Associated Press. 

Minutes after the president delivered his oration (which contained no solution to the impasse) the wire service’s Steven Hurst wrote an analysis piece that could be used for the 2012 campaign brochure, terming the former U of Chicago untenured law lecturer who allowed his law license to expire “a constitutional scholar.” Axelrod probably connected with a forest of upraised hands conveying High 5’s for that sucker story embellished with loving whopping inaccuracy. 

Oh and how the dazzled Hurst went on, prattling that the president glided “through a long, carefully reasoned brief in the rotunda of the storied National Archives” which sneered in contrast at former Vice President Dick Cheney’s “message across town in a cramped-by-comparison conference hall at the conservative [sic] American Enterprise Institute.” The AP continues to label such think-tanks as AEI and Heritage as “conservative” but name groups like the liberal Brookings “non-partisan.” Just another thumb-in-the-eye from the wire service 

In the welter of praise for Obama the “scholar,” Hurst never got around to reporting that despite Axelrod’s Cecil B. DeMille like backdrop…and the soft strains of violins Hurst certainly detected in his imagination…Obama failed to deliver a solution to the problem he created for himself when he huckstered the Left to his cause of closing Guantanamo in January, 2009 without a plan in God’s green world about what to do with terrorists. Nor did it occur to the journalist to refer to the leaked Pentagon report that concludes one in seven of the 534 prisoners already transferred abroad from Gitmo has gone back to terrorism. 

THOMAS F. ROESER, Chicago Daily Observer

Obama advisors plays Hollywood

You have perhaps been touched by the words of President Obama at Notre Dame calling for “open hearts, open minds, fair-minded words” in debates on cultural issues such as abortion and gay marriage. Touching. Very touching. But as usual with the Obama White House, they don’t follow their own high-minded advice. Take David Axelrod who just before Obama delivered his stirring encomium, described Carrie Prejean, Miss California, as a dog for the only reason that she opposes gay marriage.

Axelrod whom I’ve debated many times in years past…before he became the media guru to Obama…is reputed for his so-called devastatingly clever wit and is celebrated for brilliant slash and burn tactics. He rarely gets tabbed with the blame because his best lines are usually leaked to favorite media writers without his name attached. But last week he made sure his name was attached. He appeared on the haughty NPR high-brow-toned “Wait-wait! Don’t Tell Me!” When the subject of Obama’s dog came up and how he got his name, Axelrod couldn’t help himself.

He said that he was called in to judge the efficacy of three names proposed for the Portuguese Water Dog who was eventually called “Bo.” Axelrod said his first suggestion was that the dog would be named “Miss California.” An obvious heavy slur at Carrie Prejean…referring to her as a dog, an insult delivered to women by men of another era…meaning ugly, stupid. He imparted that slur to a young 21-year-old whose only offense to extreme radical-liberal sneerers like Axelrod is that she supports marriage’s definition as between a man and a woman. Axelrod’s supposedly devastating barb evoked gales of laughter from the superciliously liberal NPR radio audience.