Team Obama reached a new low in deceptive campaign ads with the one that features Joe Soptic talking about the death of his wife. The add was produced by Super PAC Priorities USA, headed by former deputy press spokesman, Bill Burton.
First, here’s the ad:
Now, here are the facts. Joe Soptic worked for GST Steel when Bain Capital bought it. (The Romney side of the story) The mill was in near-bankruptcy and Bain attempted to rehabilitate it. Soptic was offered a buyout in 1999 and refused it. At about the same time Mitt Romney left Bain to run the Salt Lake City Olympics.
In 2002, GST went into bankruptcy. Soptic’s wife initially had her own insurance after her husband. In 2006, she hurt her rotator cuff and when she was examined in the hospital it was discovered that that she had stage four cancer. She died 22 days after the fatal diagnosis in 2006, almost 7 years after Romney left Bain. As a matter of fact, he was Governor of Massachusetts at the time.
Soptic’s script is manipulated in such a way as to convince the viewer that everything happened in a brief time frame, not over 7 years. Soptic was in a previous deceptive ad for Obama where he and another worker criticized Romney and Bain for their handling of GST Â Steel. Of course, these ads have no facts to back them up. They’re simply hit pieces by Team Obama. This ad was produced by BarackObama.com. You’ll note that in some of scenes Soptic was wearing the same shirt as he is in the Priorities USA ad.
It should be noted that Team Obama and the White House have both denied knowing anything about the circumstances of Mr. Soptic’s wife’s illness. Obama Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter denied on CNN Wednesday morning to say, among other things, that “I don’t know the facts” about the case of Joe Soptic’s wife.
Yet, in May Cutter herself hosted a conference call in which Soptic detailed his case to reporters. During the call, as he did in the ad, Soptic explained how his wife fell ill after he lost his job, and how he lost his health insurance. The call took place as Soptic began appearing in Obama campaign ads, and was featured in a profile on the Obama campaign website.
Several things should be noted here. On the face of it, Team Obama and Priorities USA seem to be coordinating their advertising. This is a violation of Federal election law but let’s remember that Obama doesn’t believe that any law applies to him.
Finally, all of the players on the Obama side: Stephanie Cutter, Robert Gibbs and Jay Carney, seem to be lying about these ads. But what more could we possibly expect from the “most transparent administration in American history?”
