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Obama launches “Truth Team” in Fl, other states

Posted Feb 13, 2012 by William March

Updated Feb 13, 2012 at 04:15 PM

President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign is launching a “Truth Team“ with news conferences today in Florida and other states that will recruit grassroots supporters to promote his achievements, respond to attacks and “hold the eventual Republican nominee accountable.”

In Florida, state Democratic Party Chairman Rod Smith and several Democratic state legislators will participate in a news conference this afternoon in Tallahassee to announce the effort.

It includes a web site, BarackObama.com/TruthTeam, with sections on responding to attacks, criticizing Republican presidential contenders and touting the Obama administration’s accomplishments, plus tools for social media sharing, volunteering, and sending postcards, emails and letters to newspapers and undecided voters.

The effort is similar to the Fight the Smears initiative during Obama’s 2008 campaign, which the campaign today says involved a million people; the goal this year is to double that.

Obama partisans say the rise of “super PACS,” independent political organizations that can raise money in unlimited contributions and spend it on political campaign advertising, makes the effort more important this year.

In remarks prepared for the news conference, Smith said, “Mitt Romney and his Republican allies will say anything – no matter how untruthful or over-the-top – to win,” and that Romney “has been caught lying about everything under the sun.”

He said the Truth Team will be “a sustained program that we’ll be relying on for the next nine months as our primary resource for providing information to our army of supporters.”