Political Columnist: Obama Sounded Like Romney In Convention Speech
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Political columnist John Hayward reacted to President Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention and his attempt to win over some Republican voters who are turned off by Donald Trump.
Hayward, who writes for Breitbart, said attacking Trump is a strategy that could pay off for Democrats.
"They're not wrong to think hammering Donald Trump's negatives is the way to go. He has really high negatives. That's the thing about him. He's a very controversial candidate. They're thinking that's their opening. They're just going to pound him remorselessly. I thought one of the most interesting things last night in Obama's speech at the end. After all the other stuff he did, he launched into this riff where he was basically giving a speech that Mitt Romney would've given in 2012. He's talking about all these, basically, conservative values and at one point, he even made a crack about Trump not being conservative. You can look at all that and you're scratching your head like this the opposite of everything you believe and everything you govern as."
However, he claims that, in making a play for Republicans, Obama is turning his back on what he has done while President.
"He's trying to make an appeal to conservative never Trumpers. There's this Never Trump movement out there, people that are conservative that hate him. They say they'll never vote for him. This is Obama's naked play for them. He gets away with it because he knows his own voters don't think about what he says. They just reflexively applaud every word that comes out of his mouth. He's up there talking like Romney did in 2012 and if any Republican said those things, these people in the audience would be sick to their stomachs, but it's their glorious leader, Barack Obama, so they all just applaud. That, again, is a great advantage. He knows he can make that play without damaging Hillary in the slightest."
Hayward thinks it would be a mistake for Republicans to choose Clinton over Trump, despite any differences they may have with him.
"[Obama] can basically repudiate everything he believes because he know there's this contingent, and it's pretty sizable, of people on the Republican side that just hate Trump and they don't want to vote for him and he's trying to open the door and grease the path and say vote for Hillary, maybe she believes some of these things more than Trump does. That's a scam and anybody that falls for it is a fool but he's making that attempt. He knows that opportunity exists."
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