(Photo: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

It felt like old times earlier today when I spent close to an hour stalking former Democratic Rep. Artur Davis while he participated in a Google meet-up here at the Republican National Convention.

Aside from a friendly hello, Davis wasn’t talking and his handlers were fiercely protective of both the new Republican and the speech he would deliver later.

The waiting is over and there’s no turning back for Davis.

I knew that his speech would target Democrats and independents, who like him, are disappointed in President Obama’s record. What I didn’t expect, however, were the snarky references to what he described as Obama’s celebrity.

“What a difference four years makes,” Davis said. “The Democrats’ ads convince me that Gov. Romney can’t sing, but his record convinces me he knows how to lead, and I think you know which skill we need more.”

Citing the 2008 Democratic National Convention, he said that some people may have mistaken the glare of the lights as Obama spoke for a halo.

Seriously?

I have no problem with Davis’ switch in party affiliation. In fact, it spices things up a bit and lends not just another African-American voice on that ideological side of the aisle but also a smart one. But weren’t he and Obama kind of friends or at least friendly? If some people, including Davis, it seems, mistook the man for a messiah back then, shame on them.

And shame on Davis for repeating his new party’s false claim that the president is gutting the welfare to work requirement. Less than an hour after he made it, Politifact tweeted: “Again: Not true.”

(Photo: Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

Just last week Mitt Romney was simply aghast by what he called the negative tone of the presidential campaign and accused President Obama of taking things to a new low.

“Mr. President, take your campaign of division and anger and hate back to Chicago,” he said at a campaign event in Ohio.

And then what does he turn around and do this week? Makes a birth certificate joke on Friday while campaigning in Michigan, the state where he grew up and hopes to put in play in November.

“Now I love being home in this place where Ann and I were raised, where both of us were born,” Romney said. “Ann was born in Henry Ford Hospital. I was born in Harper Hospital. No one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place that we were born and raised.”

The remark sounded an awful lot like it came straight out of the playbook of so-called birthers who’ve insisted that the president wasn’t born in the United States even after he publicly released  copies of his birth certificate. Romney’s campaign hastened to say that he believes Obama is an American citizen and it was just his way of expressing hometown pride.

But to some people it will seem more like his way of speaking in code to appeal to certain members of the GOP’s far-right base. The Obama campaign definitely sees it that way.

“Throughout this campaign, Gov. Romney has embraced the most strident voices in his party instead of standing up to them. It’s one thing to give the stage in Tampa to Donald Trump, Sheriff Arpaio and Kris Kobach. But Gov. Romney’s decision to directly enlist himself in the birther movement should give pause to any rational voter across America,” said Obama for America national spokesman Ben LaBolt.

As if to underscore LaBolt’s point, radio host Rush Limbaugh applauded  the incident on his program, proclaiming Romney’s remarks “right on, right on, right on.”

Hmmmm …

(Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Remember when the Drudge Report was the first thing that the people who live and breathe politics turned to in the morning for the latest scoop? Now, it seems, not so much. At his daily briefing with reporters on Aug. 7, White House spokesman Jay Carney dismissed a report on the web site that President Obama had told a supporter that Central Intelligence Agency chief Gen. David Petraeus will be rival Mitt Romney’s vice presidential choice.

“I can say with absolute confidence that such an assertion has never been uttered by the president,” Carney said, adding this warning to his questioner: “Be mindful of your sources.”

Carney, who frequently punts campaign-related questions to the campaign, also denounced a new Romney campaign ad that accuses the president of trying to “gut welfare reform” implemented by Bill Clinton that requires recipients to conduct serious job searches in exchange for benefits.

“This advertisement is categorically false, and it is blatantly dishonest,” Carney said.

But Carney was not so adamant when asked about a new television ad produced the Priorities USA super PAC that suggests Romney was responsible for the death of the wife of Joe Soptic, who lost his job and benefits after the steel mill he worked at was acquired and sold by Bain Capital.

“You know, I have not seen the ad, and I would refer you to the campaign or to the organization,” Carney said. “I can’t comment on an ad I haven’t seen.”

He may not like what he sees, however. A fact check has found that Soptic’s wife was employed and had access to health care coverage through her job when her husband lost his and she actually died in 2006, as Romney was nearing the end of his term as Massachusetts governor.

President Obama’s re-election campaign released an ad over the weekend that featured Republican rival Mitt Romney singing “America the Beautiful” and a series of headlines that say Romney as governor of Massachusetts outsourced jobs and that he offshores his millions in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. In retaliation, and to steer attention from calls for Romney to disclose multiple tax returns and more details about his tenure at Bain Capital, his campaign on Monday released an online video with President Obama crooning the opening lyrics of the Al Green classic “Let’s Stay Together” and headlines that accuse the president of political cronyism.

By Monday afternoon, BMG Rights Management, which owns the rights to the Al Green song said, “Let’s not stay together” and claiming copyright infringement, forced the campaign to remove the video (“America the Beautiful” is in the public domain).

When will Team Romney learn?

The Republican, who was still in the midst of his primary battle, broke into song at a campaign event after Obama pretty much wowed the world with his singing ability during a January fundraiser at the Apollo Theater. It was like Romney’s competitive nature got the best of him and the result was not pretty. Instead of coming off as cheeky and charming like Obama, his performance was kind of embarrassing to watch. Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul accused the president of mocking “America the Beautiful,” which this politi-chick finds laughably tone deaf.

At any rate, the Romney team has denied copyright infringement and has vowed to get its video back up.

“Our use was 100 percent proper, under fair use, and we plan to defend ourselves,” a campaign official said.

But they’ve got bigger fish to fry. People on both sides of the ideological aisle are still clamoring to know what’s in those tax returns and the exact nature of Romney’s role at Bain during his “retroactive retirement.”

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  (Photo: Face the Nation)

President Obama on Friday craftily announced a major shift on immigration policy, just a few hours after Republican rival Mitt Romney hit the road on his “Every Town Counts” bus tour. Former Republican National Committee chairman and BET.com commentator Michael Steele called it a “gotcha” move and his fellow GOPers complained over the weekend that it was purely “politics.” Maybe so, but as they well know, in an election this tight, every vote counts and both Obama and Romney will need every Latino one that they can get in November.

As Romney’s caravan rolled from state to state, he hoped to turn the media’s attention to his criticisms of Obama’s handling of the economy. Instead, they wanted to know if he would repeal the president’s executive order that prevents an estimated 800,000 young Latinos from being deported if they meet certain criteria and also enables them to work legally in the U.S.

So, where does he stand? The answer only Romney knows as he repeatedly dodged the question or gave vague responses.

“He has a great allergy to specifics and details,” conservative columnist and commentator Rich Lowry said on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday. “And he actually said in an interview a little while ago that he thinks one of the things that hurt him in his 1994 race against Ted Kennedy was that he was too specific so it creates these targets for the other side.”

But Romney was very specific on his way to the nomination, suggesting that illegal immigrants “self-deport,” taking a very hard-line stance on immigration to win the hearts and votes of die-hard conservatives.

So now he’s stuck in part because those same conservatives don’t want to hear about comprehensive immigration reform. That’s why it also will be interesting to hear what Romney has to say when he addresses a conference of Latino elected officials later in the week.

The big question is: Will he say what he means or what he thinks Hispanics or conservatives want to hear? Unfortunately for Romney, he can’t have it both ways.

(Photo: REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton)

The amount of money that teams Obama and Romney will raise to pummel each other along the campaign trail this year is going to be epic — and kind of scary. Already they’ve spent enough money on negative advertising to support a small developing nation. Even scarier is that the two campaigns have agreed that it’s a good idea to allow voters to text message campaign donations. And Monday night, the Federal Election Commission voted in favor of it.

The goal is to counter the impact of the big, bad super PACs that watchdog and other groups fear will be able to essentially buy the presidential and other federal elections because of the unrestricted amounts of money they can collect. Now ordinary Americans will be able play their part in the democratic process. And just like concertgoers wave lighters as they sway in unison along with songs that move them emotionally, a fired up campaign rally crowd can whip out their cell phones to make a donation.

“With billionaires and super PACs drowning out the voices of hardworking Americans, text message campaign contributions can enhance the role of small donors and, combined with public matching funds, could provide a megaphone for the masses,” said Nick Nyhart, president of Public Campaign.

At first, some people will be excited when they see a text message from Obama or Romney responding to their contributions. But dialers beware: those messages will grow more frequent and kind of weird with requests and reminders from the candidates’ surrogates talking about “midnight” deadlines, “help me celebrate my anniversary,” and “I want to see you at the convention.”

That’s when the thrill starts feeling more like spam.

(Photos from left: Joe Raedle/Getty Images,Rainier Ehrhardt/Getty Images)

By Joyce Jones

Last week Mitt Romney’s campaign sent a group of hecklers to disrupt a rally in Boston led by Obama senior campaign strategist David Axelrod to target the former Massachusetts governor’s jobs record. It was tit for tat, according to Romney, who made an unfounded claim that Team Obama has done the same at events hosted by his campaign.

“Most of the events I go to, or many of the events I go to, there are large groups of, if you will, Obama supporters there heckling me,” Romney told reporters. “And at some point you say, ‘You know what, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.’ If they’re going to be heckling us, why we’re not going to sit back and play by very different rules.”

But apparently the rules change when it comes to comparisons of the opponents’ job creation records. Romney frequently complains when the president points to the economic crisis his administration inherited from former President George W. Bush to tout his administration’s achievements in moving the nation’s economy from the brink of disaster. Romney said at a fundraiser in San Diego recently that Obama is “very good at finding other people to blame.”

Now that Obama’s campaign has shifted its focus from Bain Capital, the venture capital firm Romney once led and that he frequently cites as the reason he’s best qualified to reduce stubbornly high unemployment in the U.S., Team Romney is singing the same song.

“He inherited a $3 billion projected deficit,” Ed Gillespie, a senior advisor to Romney, said on Fox News Sunday, responding to the decline in job creation during Romney’s tenure as governor.

“When Mitt Romney arrived, Massachusetts was an economic basket house,” top aide Eric Fehrnstrom said on ABC’s This Week.

Axelrod called such remarks “breathtaking hypocrisy” in a conference call with reporters this week, and he has a point. But that didn’t stop Kerry Healey, Romney’s lieutenant governor, from evoking the double standard in an interview with CNN’s John King Tuesday night.

“What voters want to know is what direction are you moving,” she said.

But what she and the other surrogates really meant, it seems, is that what’s sauce for Romney isn’t sauce for Obama.

(Photo: Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

By Joyce Jones

Donald Trump is back on the birther bandwagon and his zeal for bashing President Obama could come back and bite Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney in the butt.

“A book publisher came out three days ago and said that in his written synopsis of his book,” he said in an interview with The Daily Beast last week. “[Obama] said he was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia. His mother never spent a day in the hospital.”

The misguided mogul was referring to a decades-old client catalog produced by Obama’s literary agent that incorrectly claimed that the future president was born in Kenya. Miriam Goderich, who was an assistant at the agency at the time, publicly acknowledged that she’d misidentified Obama’s birthplace.

But why let the facts get in the way of an attack?

“He didn’t know he was running for president, so he told the truth. The literary agent wrote down what he said,” Trump rattled on. “Now they’re saying it was a mistake. Just like his Kenyan grandmother said he was born in Kenya, and she pointed down the road to the hospital, and after people started screaming at her she said, ‘Oh, I mean Hawaii.’ Give me a break.”

Romney should take heed of the adage “if you lay down with dogs, you’ll get up with fleas” since Trump is hosting a Las Vegas fundraiser for him next week. Will Romney denounce Trump’s dogged pursuit of his ridiculous birther theory, or remain silent and wake up with fleas? If Romney is smart, he’ll disassociate himself from Mr. Bad Combover because crucial independent voters might think twice about supporting him over Obama.

(Photo: Olivier Douliery/ABACAUSA.com/Getty Images)

By Joyce Jones

“I never bought into the notion that by electing me, somehow we were entering into a post-racial period,” President Obama recently said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine. Neither did I, but I still find it shocking how deeply rooted racism still is in the U.S.

That was definitely the case when I read a New York Times article about how race prevented voters in the working class town of Steubenville, Ohio, who normally support Democratic tickets, from casting ballots for Obama. More shocking still is how willingly they expressed their racism in a national newspaper.

“He was like, ‘Here I am, I’m Black and I’m proud,’ ” Lesia Felsoci told the Times over a beer in Applebee’s. “To me, he didn’t have a platform. Black people voted him in, that’s why he won. It was Black ignorance.”

Another woman likened youthful enthusiasm for Obama’s first White House win to a fad because young voters wanted to help make history.

“It was a fad to like him,” said 22-year-old pizza shop worker Dee Kirkland, who added that “race shouldn’t hinder you, but it also shouldn’t help you.”

Their ignorance is chilling but, as they say, better the devil you know.