On topic,this is no surprise.Obamas re election strategy was released months ago and MSNBC is part of Obamas re election team
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/60929.html#ixzz1jpmN3EHW
Barack Obama's 2012 plan: 'Kill Romney'
By ALEXANDER BURNS | 8/9/11 6:53 AM EST
Barack Obamaâs aides and advisers are preparing to center the presidentâs re-election campaign on a ferocious personal assault on Mitt Romneyâs character and business background, a strategy grounded in the early stage expectation that the former Massachusetts governor is the likely GOP nominee.
The dramatic and unabashedly negative turn is the product of political reality. Obama remains personally popular, but pluralities in recent polling disapprove of his handling of his job and Americans fear the country is on the wrong track. His aides are increasingly resigned to running for re-election in a glum nation. And so the candidate who ran on âhopeâ in 2008 has little choice four years later but to run a slashing, personal campaign aimed at disqualifying his likeliest opponent.
In a move that will make some Democrats shudder, Obamaâs high command has even studied President Bushâs 2004 takedown of Sen. John F. Kerry, a senior campaign adviser told POLITICO, for clues on how a president with middling approval ratings can defeat a challenger.
âUnless things change and Obama can run on accomplishments, he will have to kill Romney,â said a prominent Democratic strategist aligned with the White House.
The onslaught would have two aspects. The first is personal: Obamaâs re-elect will portray the public Romney as inauthentic, unprincipled and, in a word used repeatedly by Obamaâs advisers in about a dozen interviews, âweirdâ ...
The second aspect of the campaign to define Romney is his record as CEO of Bain Capital, a venture capital firm which was responsible for both creating and eliminating jobs. Obama officials intend to frame Romney as the very picture of greed in the great recession â a sort of political Gordon Gekko.