Todd Akin: “I don’t believe that the comments I’ve made doom the entire Republican Party.”
Snapshots of the polling in Colorado, where Obama has a growing lead, and in Michigan, where Romney has closed the gap some.
I noticed how on Twitter today a number of Republicans were introducing a new spin on Labor Day. As in Labor Day, the day we celebrate job creators.
Unquestionably, the one that made me day in humor value terms was that of GOP House Majority Leader Eric Cantor …
Today, we celebrate those who have taken a risk, worked hard, built a business and earned their own success.
— Eric Cantor (@GOPLeader) September 3, 2012
Labor Day, the day we celebrate … employers.
Look, I don’t expect Republicans, whose party has moved to a place of mutual loathing with the US Labor Movement, to use Labor Movement slogans. But people “who have taken a risk …. and built a business”? Really?
More on New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s investigation into a tax avoidance practice that is a favorite of the private equity firms, including Bain.
When I first heard about Gallup’s poll of reactions to the Republican convention, I thought they’d said that reactions to Romney’s speech were only better than Bob Dole’s in 1996. That’s not correct. Gallup has only been tracking the question back to 1996. And Romney’s fared worse than any of the convention speeches back those 16 years. Read More
I’ve now seen folks on both sides of the aisle quibbling, chattering about when the clock starts for the ‘4 years ago’ question: early September 2008, a couple weeks before Lehman and the full jobs meltdown? or late January 2009, when most of the job losses and contraction had actually occurred and when President Obama took office. Obviously, each side has a reason for starting the clock in its favored position. But I think for any voter who is even remotely persuadable this is a literalism that misses the point. People get the point.
More broadly, trying to say that somehow things were still rocking couple weeks before the bottom officially fell out recalls that classic joke about the guy who falls out of a 50 story building and gets asked half way down “How’s it going?”
To which he answers, “So far, not bad!”
I generally despise the counter-intuitive pundit take (pace TNR). But I think there’s a chance this renewed focus on the ‘4 years ago’ question could backfire on Team Romney. The best campaign posture for Romney is on the present. Because, let’s face it, 8+% unemployment sucks. I would go so far as to say that anything that gets the debate off the immediate present is a bad thing for Romney.
Context is Obama’s friend. We’re not doing great? Sure, but remember the catastrophe I got handed? Fine, we’re not where we should be. But look how far we’ve come. Read More
The latest on the state of the presidential race in the two convention host states.