David Axelrod, senior advisor to President Obama’s reelection campaign, engaged in a contentious interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Monday over the appropriateness of attacks on the private equity firm Bain Capital. Mitchell and Axelrod spoke over each other several times as he attempted to explain an interview that Newark, N.J. Mayor Cory Booker gave on NBCs Meet the Press on Sunday in which he appeared to contradict the Obama campaign’s messaging regarding former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s tenure with Bain.

Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod appeared on CNN’s State of the Union today to discuss a discarded Super PAC ad proposal that was trying to bring President Obama‘s old pastor Reverend Wright back into the race. Some liberal pundits have been saying that because conservatives think Wright is fair game, Mitt Romney‘s Mormon faith should be on the table as well. Axelrod was quick to repudiate any attacks on Romney’s religion, and contrasted the Obama team’s handling of that issue with how Romney’s team has handled the Wright situation.

There’s been a lot of talk about the “enthusiasm gap” between President Obama and his Republican rival Mitt Romney. Conventional wisdom says that Obama can get voters excited and inspired in ways that Romney simply can’t. But does the president have his own enthusiasm gap to deal with? On ABC’s This Week today, Jake Tapper asked David Axelrod if Obama is still capable of drawing the same large crowds he did back in 2008.

On MSNBC, Chris Matthews opened Hardball on Monday with a discussion of the heavy-handed reframing of President Obama’s campaign against former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney by reelection team officials. The Chicago team is moving from describing Romney as a substanceless, serial office seeker with no values to a secret conservative who has skillfully hid his brand of arch conservatism from voters during the campaign, but is prepared to unleash this terror on an unsuspecting people right after he is inaugurated. No, really. But what is still more laughable in this, well I guess you could call it a strategy, is the Democratic party’s reliance on the same tactic they’ve used on their opposition over the last three years; namely, call them “extreme” and hope it works.

Dana Perino appeared on Fox & Friends on Monday to discuss David Axelrod’s comments on Fox News Sunday in which he appeared to suggest that the “path we’re on” needed work. Perino said in response that Mitt Romney is on track “in the next six to eight weeks, Romney will definitely pull ahead and be the frontrunner in the race.”

Shown a Washington Post / ABC poll comparing President Barack Obama and GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, Axelrod said people don’t think Romney really “gets” what’s going on in their lives where the economy is concerned. But, as host Joe Scarborough pointed out, the poll shows Romney beating the President by four points when it comes to the matter of who voters trust with “handling the economy.”

As if this presidential campaign hasn’t already been ruff enough (sorry) on former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, his opponents have begun to exploit the tail (sorry) that has dogged (okay, I’m not really sorry) the candidate for years: Seamus The Dog’s wild ride. However, despite multiple references to the incident by Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod and Santorum adviser/latter-day Robert DeNiro look-alike John Brabender, a new poll suggests that Seamus isn’t costing Romney votes…yet.

During a conference call with reporters Wednesday, Obama campaign senior adviser David Axelrod called the Republican’s Super Tuesday “Super Glue Day,” saying that Mitt Romney is “still stuck” in a drawn out primary process that’s like a “death march.”

He also took several shots at Romney’s weak response to the Rush Limbaugh “slut” controversy, at one point calling it a “test of leadership,” and asking “”If you don’t have the strength to stand up to the most strident voices in your party, how are you going to stand up to (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad?”

Chief Obama strategist David Axelrod posted a cutting photo tweet implicitly targeting Republican hopeful Mitt Romney. The photo featured President Obama riding in his car with his Portuguese water dog, Bo, with the caption “How loving owners transport their dogs.” Oh snap!

In a bad sign for Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney‘s presidential hopes, senior Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod set his sights on current GOP frontrunner Newt Gingrich today, a rare deviation from their constant whipping of Romney. At a press conference at the DNC, Axelrod told reporters “the higher a monkey climbs on a pole, the more you can see his butt.’ So, you know, the Speaker is very high on the pole right now and we’ll see how people like the view.”

On Sunday’s Meet the Press, senior adviser to President Obama‘s reelection campaign David Axelrod was asked by David Gregory to respond to NJ Gov. Chris Christie‘s rant about President Obama earlier this week. Axelrod pointed out that Christie endorsee Mitt Romney opposed saving the auto industry, telling Gregory, “I don’t think he’s in a position to talk about who was a bystander.”

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.

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.

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.

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, former RNC Chairman Michael Steele pressed senior Obama adviser David Axelrod on the Politico piece that suggested Team Obama’s strategy would be to paint GOP hopeful Mitt Romney as “weird.”

Axelrod called the Politico story “garbage,” and agreed with Steele that any Obama campaign staffer who used such an attack against Romney would be fired. For now, at least, we’re still talking about how “weird” Romney is.

I can’t say I started crying during the opening credits of the upcoming HBO documentary By The People: The Election of Barack Obama, but only because I got to the theater five minutes late. The film — which will air on November 3 on HBO — begins in Iowa in 2007, eight months before the caucuses and light years before today, and spends nearly half of its two-hours focusing on the state and the young supporters populating its campaign headquarters.