The influence of independent expenditure groups like PACs and SuperPACs has become a major factor in this year’s presidential election. Consequently, the news that President Obama has decided to encourage donations to the Priorities USA Action SuperPAC is dominating political news today, with handwringing on the left and the right about the President’s prior vocal opposition to outside groups. Philosophically, he’s just taking a page from Ronald Reagan‘s book.

On Wednesday’s edition of Now with Alex Wagner, perpetual motion machine and Hardball host Chris Matthews showed up to liven things up. In a segment about the current slugfest between former Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Gov. Mitt Romney in Florida, Matthews (seated next to former Obama spokesman Bill Burton) called out GOP strategist Phil Musser for being a “Romney guy,” and concluded the segment by throwing host Alex Wagner off, responding to her kind outro by saying “This is how you dump guys, huh?”

At a campaign event in New Hampshire Sunday, GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney made another ill-considered attempt to relate to the common man, telling the crowd that “I know what it’s like to worry whether you’re going to get fired. There were a couple of times I wondered if I was going to get a pink slip.”

The remark has drawn fire from many, but an oppo memo from Priorities USA Action‘s Bill Burton really brings the absurdity of Mitt’s alleged anxiety into stark relief.

Last week, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow made the case that current GOP frontrunner Newt Gingrich is nominally winning the “Fox News Primary,” but a new oppo memo from former Obama White House spokesman Bill Burton suggests he’s getting his…well, he’s getting beaten in the Karl Rove primary. Citing several recent statements by Rove, and the fact that a Rove operative runs a pro-Romney SuperPAC, Burton wonders if Rove ” might have a dog in this fight.”

With the ascension of Newt Gingrich to the top of the GOP presidential field, perennial silver medalist Mitt Romney has recently sought to contrast himself with the former House Speaker by casting himself as a political outsider, resurrecting a long-running theme. A new ad from American Bridge PAC torpedoes that notion, in hilarious fashion, with a Proustian collection of clips from the start of Romney’s political career, including that iconic slow-speed chase.

Mitt Romney‘s ”Believe in America” ad has generated a lot of coverage for its dishonest use of a quote from President Obama, and a great discussion on the absurd lengths the media take to avoid calling a lie a “lie,” but one obvious theme has been missed. The out-of-context tactic that the Romney campaign unapologetically used in the ad is yet another in a series of reactions to Bill Burton‘s sustained offensive on Romney.

With Herman Cain‘s days as GOP frontrunner looking to expire like a carton of used milk, movement conservatives are starting to panic at the looming prospect of a Mitt Romney nomination. That prospect is so terrifying that Redstate editor-in-chief Erick Erickson felt compelled to deliver a blistering dose of reality to the base that includes a Team Obama-worthy assessment of Romney, a curt dismissal of the Newt Gingrich buzz, and a quasi-endorsement of (gasp!) Jon Huntsman.

After many, many months of attacking GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney as a flip-flopping political weather vane with  ”no core,” former Obama spokesman Bill Burton‘s Priorities USA Action PAC has taken a new tack, supported by a six-figure social media push, that paints the former Massachusetts Governor as a man with a plan, a very bad plan, for a place called Mitt Romney’s America.

On Sunday morning’s Meet The Press, host David Gregory told his panel that senior White House adviser David Plouffe “broke new ground” in attacking GOP establishment presidential hopeful Mitt Romney as having “no core.”

Republican panelist Mike Murphy thought Plouffe owed Romney an apology, while Tom Brokaw pointed out that “the record is there,” but they’re all really late to the party here.

Earlier today, Politico reported that Texas Gov. Rick Perry‘s campaign demanded that near-frontrunner Mitt Romney release his tax returns, which Romney’s camp says he won’t do until “next tax season.”

In a rare (these days) bit of bipartisanship, former Obama spokesman Bill Burton released a statement agreeing with the Perry camp, and zinging a recent Romney gaffe. If Romney does release his tax return, though, will Perry have to run it through Donald Trump to see if it’s real?

Early on in his appearance on Tuesday’s Morning Joe, Obama campaign chief strategist David Axelrod quickly steered the conversation around to his campaign’s relentless, laserlike focus on former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney. Asked to assess new GOP frontrunner Herman Cain, Axelrod told host Joe Scarborough that Cain is just the latest indication of Romney’s weakness as a candidate, and coyly dropped in a reference to Romney’s infamous dog-on-the-roof road trip. It’s going to be a ruff campaign.

In a sign of the lightning-fast times, President Obama‘s chop-busting exchange with Fox News’ Ed Henry at Thursday’s joint press conference is the star of a new Mitt Romney ad that was released later that same day, and was “exclusively previewed” on Chuck Todd‘s The Daily Rundown this morning. The ad cobbles together bytes of the President and his advisers saying Romney’s name, and as the ad’s title suggests, poses them as a sign that the President is “Nervous” about Romney’s candidacy.

Former Obama spokesman Bill Burton‘s Priorities USA Action PAC continues to strafe Mitt Romney like an ED-209 on a sugar high, this time with an ad pegged to Romney’s recent assembly of a foreign policy team. While the spot cleverly toggles from Romney’s foreign policy chops to his record of exporting American jobs, the real significance of this ad is the fact that it’s the first sign of terrorism as an issue in the 2012 campaign, one that President Obama is well-positioned to run on.

In recent weeks, the fireworks show that is the Republican Party’s never-ending string of exploding frontrunners has intensified, culminating this week in the cooling embers of Rick Perry‘s candidacy, the ascent of Herman Cain, and surrender flares from Chris Christie and Sarah Palin. Through it all, though, former Obama spokesman Bill Burton has focused his [...]

The Republican presidential race has taken a stunning turn, as the latest CBS News poll shows upstart candidate Herman Cain tied with Mitt Romney for first place, at 17%, and former frontrunner Gov. Rick Perry disappearing in the rear view mirror at 12%. Like the fabled 1969 “Miracle Mets,” Cain has long enjoyed the adoration of supporters who didn’t think he could win, but with this latest round of polls, and Chris Christie out of the way, it looks like we’ve got ourselves a pennant race.

In a memo to reporters, former Obama Spokesman and current Senior Strategist for Priorities USA Action Bill Burton is calling out the current Republican presidential field for veering sharply from support for federal education programs, in an attempt to appeal to a Tea Party that’s out of step with mainstream public opinion. Citing polls that show overwhelming public support for education funding, Burton blamed the Tea Party for “push(ing) the candidates far beyond the bounds of mainstream America.”

A few weeks ago, we reported that former Obama spokesman Bill Burton‘s Priorities USA Action released a memo charging GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney with being “phony” in a barrage of tweets that highlighted the jillionaire candidate flying commercial and eating Subway food. Right about then, the slumming tweets stopped, but three weeks later, the New York Times is reporting on them, and in a weird coincidence, Romney is promising crowds he won’t be phony like those other guys.

During last night’s presidential address before a joint session of Congress on the American Jobs Act, Democratic public opinion firm Hart Research Associates conducted the kind of interactive dial focus group popularized by Republican pollster Frank Luntz. According to Hart Research, the group was composed of “swing voters” who left the speech with a much more positive attitude toward President Obama’s handling of the economy than they had going in. Even taken with a grain of salt, the study is revealing.

This weekend, former Obama Spokesman Bill Burton attacked Mitt Romney as a “phony” for tweeting about his love of flying commercial, and of eating Subway sandwiches, in what Burton sees as an attempt to change his image with regular folk. In an email to reporters, Burton said the tweets show that Romney “is willing to do or say anything to become President, even if it means changing his positions, his appearance and his sandwich.”

Conservatives in general, and Fox News in particular, have gone to town on Politico like a rumpspringa tour bus over their “Is Rick Perry Dumb?” headline from yesterday. However, after watching three separate Fox News segments on the article, featuring guests Tucker Carlson, Michelle Malkin, and Laura Ingraham, I’ve noticed that while Fox guests are certain Politico is biased, and/or really, really wish people would call President Obama dumb, too, none of them offers even a syllable in defense of Perry’s intellect.

Former Obama Spokesman Bill Burton is calling out GOP hopeful Mitt Romney over his response to a voter at a New Hampshire town hall meeting. Ask for his reaction to the tense exchange, Burton tells Mediaite that Romney got “testy” because he “has no core principles,” and points out the former governor’s hypocrisy in bragging about balancing the state’s budget, while opposing the revenue increases that allowed him to do it.

Former White House Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton appeared on Fox News Sunday this morning to debate Karl Rove on job creation, but Rove didn’t stop at attacking Burton and President Obama. The former Bush Chief of Staff also lashed out at host Bret Baier for exposing the rigidity of the GOP presidential field by asking them if they would walk away from a deal with $10 in spending cuts for every $1 of tax revenue, telling Baier, “With all due respect, that was a lousy question for a debate.”

It is on. A new online campaign ad attacking Mitt Romney has been released, funded by a recently group called Priorities USA Action. Who is that you ask? Well, its founders former Deputy Press Secretary for the White House Bill Burton, and Sean Sweeney, who is former senior adviser to former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel; and CNN contributor Paul Begala, who was a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton. So, safe to say its a a pro-Obama group.

On the heels of newly-minted White House Press Secretary Jay Carney‘s first daily briefing, Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton (a heavy favorite for the job that went to Carney) announced Wednesday that he is leaving the White House. Burton has been floated as a candidate to fill the House seat vacated by “Shirtless” Chris Lee (R-NY), but, in an email to Mediaite, Burton has ruled out such a run.

The announcement of Jay Carney as successor to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has ended weeks of speculation, but raises questions about how Carney will take to his new post, and it to him. In exclusive comments to Mediaite, members of the White House Press Corps expressed optimism about Carney’s tenure, and identified possible challenges for the new Press Secretary, including his own status as a former journalist, his relative distance from the Obama administration’s inner circle, and his boyish good looks.