RNC Chairman Michael Steele distanced himself from the document. And a handful of Republicans have labeled the document, which includes a caricature of Obama as The Joker from Batman, unhelpful.
But outside the Washington bubble, reaction to the document among Republican leaders has been decidedly less, well, worked up — if they’d heard about it at all. And a number of members of the RNC say that the fundraisers’ message of voter fears about Obama and a big government move toward “socialism” is a conventional party talking point, and not contained within the province of the more extreme anti-tax Tea Party movement.
“I’m a member of the Republican National Committee and a pretty ordinary businessman, and I refer to what Democrats are doing as socialism,” says Curly Haugland of Bismarck, N.D. “This conversation is in the mainstream already; it’s not just a public relations tool,” he says. “It is a reflection of the exact feelings on the street.”
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