With the recess appointment of Richard Cordray to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (after the GOP minority in the Senate essentially filibustered the appointment), it's clear that the Obama campaign is awake and feisty.
Mitt Romney responded to the appointment with hyperbole:
[Emphasis added]President Obama’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is perhaps the most powerful and unaccountable bureaucracy in the history of our nation, headed by a powerful and unaccountable bureaucrat with unprecedented authority over the economy. Instead of working with Congress to fix the flaws in this new bureaucracy, the President is declaring that he ‘refuses to take no for an answer’ and circumventing Congress to appoint a new administrator. This action represents Chicago-style politics at its worst and is precisely what then-Senator Obama claimed would be ‘the wrong thing to do.’ Sadly, instead of focusing on economic growth, he is once again focusing on creating more regulation, more government, and more Washington gridlock.
I don't know how Romney thinks this will play successfully. The CFPB was put in place to protect against the kind of Wall Street abuses that led to this economic crisis in the first place. Romney, who most people (correctly) believe is a Wall Street crony anyway, is standing up against the CFPB, thus solidifying his creds as a Wall Street one-percenter crony. How does that help him?
But the Obama campaign is hitting back, and right on target:
“Mitt Romney today stood with predatory lenders and Republicans in Congress over the middle class. He doubled down on his promise to eliminate the Wall Street watchdog and allow Wall Street to write its own rules again, leaving consumers vulnerable to hidden fees, financial traps and excessive risk taking that will hit their pocketbooks. Governor Romney has made clear he has not learned the lessons of the economic crisis, instead, he’s giving the most irresponsible financial actors a bright green light to pursue profit at any cost to communities across America.”
Bullseye. More like this please.