Obama campaign senior adviser David Axelrod argued Wednesday that the campaign's attack ads are not the reason more respondents in a new poll say the Obama campaign is negative than Romney's. Instead, according to Axelrod, the finding is a product of a Romney ad campaign:
SCARBOUROUGH: One of the numbers that really jumped out at all of us around the table was the question on who was the more negative, who's running the more negative campaign, and almost by a two-to-one margin, the respondents said the Obama campaign was running the more negative campaign than the Romney campaign.
AXELROD: Partly, Joe, that's because the Romney campaign and their -- and their friends in the super PAC world have just spent tens and tens of millions of dollars specifically on spots accusing Obama of running a negative campaign. So I'm not surprised to see those numbers jump a little.
SCARBOROUGH: So it’s not your negative ads, it's their negative ads accusing you of being negative that has caused --
AXELROD: I think that had an impact on the numbers.