WHAT BIG BIRD GOT TO DO WITH AMERICAN ELECTION

Mitt Romney and his Republican allies have struck a tone of exasperation about President Obama’s use of Big Bird as a campaign issue ever since Romney invoked the giant, yellow “Sesame Street” character at last week’s debate in Denver.And although Obama has let the Big Bird attacks take flight on the campaign trail, and most recently, in a tongue-in-cheek television ad, it’s also worth noting how frequently Romney has deployed the popular Sesame Street character throughout the 2012 election.

“You have to scratch your head when the President spends the last week
talking about saving Big Bird,” Romney said on Tuesday in Van Meter, Iowa.Earlier in the day, Romney campaign spokesman Kevin Madden also railed against the president.“Right now you’ve got 23 million American’s struggling to find work. You’ve got household incomes going down. You’ve got a federal deficit — federal debt that’s now over 16 trillion dollars,” Madden told reporters. “I just find it troubling that the president’s message — the president’s focus — 28 days from election day is Big Bird.”

The Republican National Committee is referring to the kerfuffle as the  ”Big Bird Backfire.” The RNC even used “Sesame Street’s” Count von Count in their pushback against Obama on Tuesday.
But back as far back as December 28, 2011, in Clinton, Iowa, Romney started talking tough about the giant yellow bird.
“You might say, ‘I like the National Endowment for the Arts.’ I do. I like PBS. We subsidize PBS. Look, I’m going to stop that. I’m going to say, ‘PBS is going to have to have advertisements,’” Romney told a crowd at a deli in the Eastern Iowa town. “We’re not going to kill Big Bird, but Big Bird’s going to have to have advertisements, all right? And we’re going to have endowments for the arts and humanities but they’re going to be paid for by private charity not by taxpayers — or by borrowers.”
President Obama has been mocking Romney on the stump for declaring at last week’s debate, “I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I’m going to stop other things. I like PBS, I love Big Bird.”