In North Carolina House debate, Republican Mark Meadows tells voters: I’m no Mitt Romney! Read More
Ann Romney says Mitt was taken out of context, doesn’t disdain poor.
As the Romney campaign continues to struggle and an Obama victory seems more likely, we’re starting to hear an odd replay of 2008. Part of it is the claim that the press isn’t nice to Mitt Romney, wants Obama to win blah, blah, blah. Partly, this is just what partisans fall back on when their candidate starts to fail. Reporters got negative when Mitt said half the country was made up of mooching losers. Everybody can see through this. But there’s also that particular take on Barack Obama: Mitt isn’t winning because he hasn’t really taken the gloves off, given Obama the beating he deserves — whether it’s Reverend Wright or Socialism or hating America or whatever. Read More
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD), on Romney’s 47 percent comments: “It’s going to help us in every swing district in America.”
From Sahil Kapur: “Senate Republican leaders fled their weekly press conference after delivering prepared remarks Wednesday without taking a single question from reporters eagerly seeking their thoughts on their presidential nominee’s newly unearthed remarks dismissing nearly half of American voters.”
Michael Falcone of ABC News quotes RNC Chair Reince Priebus: “This is going to be a choice election whether you’re Hispanic or Greek like me.”
That’s a big admission. From the beginning, the Romney campaign and the RNC has pushed to make this a referendum on President Obama. How’d he do? The Obama campaign has always wanted it to be a choice election. Who do you prefer? Barack Obama or Mitt Romney?
Since the economy is still pretty bad and people like Obama more than Romney, you can see which one the Obama campaign prefers.
Brian Beutler traced the origin of the 47 percent meme in a piece he did for us today all the way back to the Nixon-McGovern race in 1972, but Bob Mann, a former Senate aide and author who now teaches at LSU, points to what may be the closest historical parallel to Romney’s 47 percent comment.
In 1963, Barry Goldwater told the Saturday Evening Post, “Sometimes I think this country would be better off if we could just saw off the eastern seaboard and let it float out to sea.” In the 1964 race, LBJ turned that into a memorable TV ad that is remarkably similar to this week’s reaction to Romney’s 47 percent remarks. Read More
Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) does the requisite distancing from Mitt Romney’s 47% comments … Read More
From Reuters …
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday showed that more than two in five registered voters, or 43 percent, viewed Romney less favorably after an excerpt of the video was shown to them online.