Dems Start Shoveling Dirt on VP Contenders

No matter who Mitt Romney picks as a running mate, Democrats are already working to convince voters there's a problem with said potential veep. The Obama campaign has gathered plenty of what it considers to be dirt on each name that's been floated, and isn't wasting any time in emailing that info out. The AP offers a sampling of the Obama campaign's lines of attack on several of the contenders:

• Tim Pawlenty raised "painful" fees on middle-class families.
• Rob Portman helped design the "top-down Bush budget" that "crash(ed) our economy."
• Marco Rubio "led the way on almost every extreme position Mitt Romney has embraced."
• As for Chris Christie, there's "no lack of material to work with."

And Team Obama isn't going it alone. A Washington-based super PAC has already compiled 1,651 pages' worth of information on five potential VP choices—Portman, Rubio, Pawlenty, Bobby Jindal, and Paul Ryan—including statements, voting records, and the fact that one of them likes pricey wine. Says the super PAC's head: "You don't want to start too soon, but you don't want to be in a situation where there's 80 days until the election and everything is being jammed in so much that things are being lost." (More Democratic Party stories.)