The Fix: Mitt Romney
Obama team offers Romney tax return deal: five years
President Obama’s campaign is proposing a grand bargain when it comes to Mitt Romney’s tax returns.
In a letter to Romney campaign manager Matt Rhoades early Friday, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina wrote that if Romney releases five years of returns — three more than he currently has agreed to — the Obama campaign will not call on him to release any more.
Why Romney is distancing himself from Ryan’s Medicare cuts
In his first one-on-one interview since announcing Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate, Mitt Romney sought to put some distance between himself and Ryan’s Medicare proposal.
Echoing his rhetoric on the campaign trail in recent days, Romney emphasized that he is the leader of the GOP ticket and that he does not agree with the Medicare cuts in Ryan’s budget — which are similar to the cuts in President Obama’s health care bill.
What’s the matter with Iowa?
President Obama is in the midst of a three-day campaign swing through the state of Iowa, his longest visit to one state so far in the 2012 race and a sign of the concern and consequence with which his side holds the Hawkeye State.
President Barack Obama stops for a snow cone at Tropical Sno, Monday, Aug. 13, 2012, in Denison, Iowa, during a three day campaign bus tour through Iowa. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
“I have nightmares about the electoral college coming down to 266-266, with Iowa to decide it,” said longtime Iowa Democratic operative Jerry Crawford. “It’s not as far-fetched as it might sound.”
Added Dave Roederer, who ran the George W. Bush operation in Iowa: “This is an unprecedented five-city tour. I doubt he’s here for the mountains.”
How Paul Ryan impacts the electoral map. Or doesn’t.
The word “game-changer” is being thrown around quite a bit in regards Mitt Romney’s selection as Paul Ryan as his vice presidential running mate over the weekend.
And there is a case to be made — and Republicans will make it — that Ryan re-focuses the election on the need for big ideas and hard truths.
But, does Ryan really change the game as it relates to the race for 270 electoral votes? Not really, according to our latest look at the Fix’s electoral map.
Positive views of Ryan jump higher after pick
Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan — the freshly minted Republican vice presidential candidate — got an immediate ratings boost in the wake of his selection as Mitt Romney’s running-mate, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Republican vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., gives a thumbs-up at a rally Sunday, August 12, 2012, in Mooresville, N.C., at the NASCAR Technical Institute. (AP Photo/Jason E. Miczek)Little known nationally before Saturday’s announcement, favorable impressions of Ryan jumped 15 percentage points among the overall electorate with positive views soaring from 49 to 70 percent among conservative Republicans.
In Wednesday through Friday interviews, fully 45 percent of Americans expressed no opinion of Ryan, dropping to 30 percent on Saturday and Sunday. The increasing familiarity all went to the positive side of the ledger, giving Ryan an initial advantage in the sprint to define his candidacy.
Overall, in interviews after his selection, 38 percent of all Americans express favorable views of Ryan, 33 percent negative ones. (Before the the announcement, Ryan was somewhat underwater, scoring 23 percent favorable, 32 unfavorable.) The most recent national numbers on Vice President Joe Biden are from a July Pew Research Center poll showing a split decision, 40 percent favorable, 37 percent unfavorable.
Five issues where Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan differ
Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are joining forces to try and return the Republican Party to power in Washington.
But, as with any newly formed team, there have been times when and issues on which they haven’t been on the same page.
There don’t appear to be many major policy differences between the two men, but here are five worth noting:
1. The auto bailout
Ryan supported the auto bailout four years ago, while Romney opposed it.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks alongside his running mate, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, during a campaign rally at the NASCAR Technical Institute in Mooresville, N.C., on Sunday. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
Winners and losers from the Paul Ryan VP pick
For the better part of the last two months — and for some of us far longer than that — the Republican vice presidential sweepstakes has dominated the thought of any political junkie worth his or her name.
Now that we know the identity of Mitt Romney’s vice presidential pick — it’s Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, in case you have been in a news blackout since Friday night — the last major piece of the 2012 presidential puzzle has been fit into place.
Given the high stakes of the veepstakes, now that it’s over we thought it would be worth sorting through the entrails to come up with some winners and, of course, some losers from the process that was.
Our picks are after the jump. Have some winners/losers of your own? The comments section awaits.
Mitt Romney goes bold (and risky) with Paul Ryan vice presidential pick
The news that Mitt Romney has chosen Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his vice presidential nominee today in Norfolk, Virginia amounts to a decidedly bold stroke for the typical risk-averse GOP presidential candidate, a pick that will almost certainly turn the race into a choice between two competing — and strikingly contrasting — visions for the country.
Ryan, a seven term Congressman from Wisconsin, has emerged from (relative) obscurity in the last several years to become the intellectual and policy center of the Republican party thanks in large part to the budget proposal he has offered that would, among other things, fundamentally re-shape Medicare and other social safety net programs in an attempt to get the country’s fiscal house in order.
While that proposal has won him kudos among Republicans, it’s turned him into something of a whipping boy for Democrats, who insist that Ryan’s budget is not only bad policy but also bad politics. In fact, Democrats were openly rooting for Romney to pick Ryan as his VP over the past week, believing that it could well help their efforts to keep control of the Senate and win back the House in November.
In naming Ryan to the national ticket, Romney is sending a simple message to those Democrats: Bring it.
The Fix’s Final Five Republican VP picks
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney continues to offer few clues about the identity of his vice presidential pick or the timing of the announcement — “I don’t think I have anything for you on the VP running mate,” Romney told NBC’s Chuck Todd on Thursday — but with the Republican National Convention just 17 days away, we know the decision is close.
U.S. representative (R-WI) Paul Ryan attends a vigil in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, August 7, 2012. REUTERS/John Gress
Despite the tight-lippedness (is that a word?) of Romneyworld when it comes to the veepstakes, it does now appear that the short list is getting shorter. 
Below are our rankings of the five men — yes, they are all men — most likely to get the nod from Romney. These rankings are a combination of reporting, buzz and gut — all in relatively equal measure.
The number one ranked candidate is considered Romney’s most likely VP pick. To the Line!
The lamest week of the 2012 campaign
It’s official: The 2012 presidential campaign has hit rock bottom.
President Obama delivers remarks during a campaign event at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on Thursday. (AFP PHOTO/Jim Watson)In the course of the last week, the following things have occurred:
* Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Mitt Romney hadn’t paid taxes in a decade, but refused to name his source.
* President Obama referred to the Republican presidential nominee as “Romney Hood” because he allegedly robs from the poor to give to the rich.
* Romney dubbed Obama’s alleged exaggerations about his record as “Obama-loney.”
* A Democratic super PAC ran an ad that not-so-subtly suggested that Romney’s actions led to the death of a woman.
* The Romney campaign released an ad accusing Obama of working to “gut” welfare reform, a claim that independent fact-checkers found highly questionable.
The vice presidential pick is overrated. Here’s why.
The political world — up to and including this blog — is consumed at the moment with trying to divine the identity of Mitt Romney’s vice presidential pick. Travel schedules are pored over, public statements are parsed, Wikipedia is consulted.
Lyndon B. Johnson (second from left), the last VP pick that really mattered - CREDIT: ASSOCIATED PRESS.Given that level of attention, you would think that the pick is of the utmost importance in the presidential race, that a look back at past picks reveals make or break moments centered on the identity of the presidential nominee’s ticketmate.
Not so much.
The simple reality is that the vice presidential pick — viewed through the lens of recent history — has almost no broad influence on the fate of the ticket and, to the extent the VP choice has mattered, it’s been in a negative way.
“VP picks can provide a temporary burst of excitement to a ticket, but pretty soon things settle down and the race is once again about the man at the top,” said Ari Fleischer, a former Bush Administration official. “With communications reaching everywhere for the last few decades, the race is about the presidency, not the vice-presidency.”
Romney on not releasing more tax returns: ‘I’m not a business’
The man who once said “corporations are people” apparently doesn’t believe the inverse.
When pressed on why he’s not releasing more tax returns in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Mitt Romney justified it by saying: “I’m not a business.”
Bloomberg asked Romney whether, if he was investing in a company, he would want to see more than two years of financial reports, likening that process to the American people electing a president. But Romney suggested the standards aren’t the same for people and businesses.
Romney moves to embrace ‘Romneycare’
The health-care law which shall not be named is starting to get mentioned.
Twice today, Mitt Romney’s campaign has cited the health-care law he signed as Massachusetts governor — seeking credit for something it took pains to explain away during the Republican primary race.
Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul, responding to a harsh new super PAC ad featuring a man who blames Bain Capital for his uninsured wife’s death, broke new ground for the campaign by praising Romney’s health insurance mandate.
“To that point, if people had been in Massachusetts, under Gov. Romney’s health care plan, they would have had health care,” Saul said on Fox News. “There are a lot of people losing their jobs and losing their health care in President Obama’s economy.” (These comments are around the 2-minute mark in the video above.)
Similarly, at an event in Iowa today, Romney seemed to suggest his bill qualifies him to tackle reforming Obama’s bill: “We’ve got to do some reforms in health care, and I have some experience doing that as you know, and I know how to make a better setting than the one we have in health care.”
The case against Paul Ryan for vice president
On Tuesday we made the case for why Mitt Romney should pick Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his vice presidential nominee.
Today we argue the opposite case.
Partisans love to hate President Obama and Mitt Romney
More than eight in 10 Republicans view President Obama unfavorably, while a similar number of Democrats see former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in an negative light, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
The numbers are just the latest sign of the deep partisan divide gripping the 2012 presidential race.
Eighty-four percent of Republicans view Obama unfavorably, while 80 percent of Democrats feel the same about Romney. Those are among the highest numbers ever measured for the opposing candidates in Post-ABC polling, far outdistancing all but how Republicans viewed Bill Clinton in 1996 (78 percent unfavorable) and how Democrats saw George W. Bush in 2004 (76 percent unfavorable).
Here’s a full chart detailing how the opposite party has felt about the presidential nominees dating back to 1988:
Five reasons why David Petraeus won’t be the VP
Speculation that Gen. David Petraeus may be under (super secret) consideration as former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s running mate — fueled by a report in the Drudge Report — is running wild in political Washington today.
While it’s an interesting distraction on a slow political news day, the Petraeus pick just ain’t happening. Here’s why — in five easy steps.
The case for Paul Ryan to be vice president
Welcome to the Paul Ryan vice presidential boomlet.
In the past 48 hours or so, talk of the Wisconsin Republican Congressman as Mitt Romney’s pick for vice president has surged — largely due to a piece written in the Weekly Standard urging the GOP presidential nominee to choose Ryan.
Ryan has been a mainstay on our Veepstakes Line — in which we rank the top contenders to be Romney’s pick — for months, and in our last list he was our #3 choice behind only Ohio Sen. Rob Portman and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty .
With so much chatter about Ryan, we thought now was a good time to make our cases for and against him to be Romney’s ticketmate. We tackle the case for Ryan today and the case against him later in the week.
(And make sure to check out our cases for and against Portman and for and against Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal for vice president.)
What the Republican convention speakers say about the GOP
Republicans have added four names to Monday’s initial list of seven speakers who will address the party’s national convention in Tampa, Florida later this month. Each of the 11 picks says something about the party — and the image GOP nominee Mitt Romney wants to convey as he seeks to introduce (or reintroduce) himself to a national audience.
Of the 11 announced speakers, four are women, five are current governors and three are men Romney has run against for president.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., left, accompanied by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., gestures during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington Thursday Oct. 13, 2011, to discuss the introduction of a Republican alternative jobs bill. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Below is a rundown of the names and why they were chosen.
Mitt Romney’s money edge — and whether it matters
In the past two months, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee have outraised President Obama and the Democratic National Committee by $61 million.
And, while Obama’s campaign has yet to release its cash-on-hand total at the end of July, it’s a near-certainty that Romney’s $26 million edge at the end of June widened in July.
Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (C) greets supporters as he arrives at a campaign event with U.S. Senate Candidate Richard Mourdock (L) at Stepto's Bar B Q Shack on August 4, 2012 in Evansville, Indiana. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Add to those numbers the fact that, as of mid-July, Republican super PACs and other conservative aligned outside groups were outspending their Democratic counterparts by a seven-to-one margin on the TV airwaves in swing states, and you are left with a simple, inescapable conclusion: The President of the United States is likely to be heavily outspent in the final three months of this campaign.
Why Mitt Romney is fighting a losing battle against Harry Reid — in 2 charts
We wrote this morning that Senate Majority Harry Reid has picked a fight with former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney on the latter’s tax returns that the Nevada Democrat will almost certainly win.
Just to put a finer point on that, well, point, we went looking for the latest favorable and unfavorable ratings for both men. Then we put them into two pie charts.
‘America the beautiful’: The most memorable ad of the 2012 campaign (so far)?
Katy Perry has nothing on Mitt Romney when it comes to getting their songs on the air.
The GOP presidential candidate’s dulcet tones, it seems, have been playing in great rotation on cable TV stations for ages now via the Obama campaign’s “America the Beautiful” ad, which features Romney singing the song (poorly) over scenes of the far-off places where he has bank accounts and where Bain Capital outsourced jobs.
The ad, which went off the air Monday, strikes us as perhaps the most memorable of the cycle so far, if not necessarily the most impactful.
The reason? It’s utterly unavoidable.
Romney outraised Obama in July, $101.3 million to $75 million
Mitt Romney outraised President Obama by more than $25 million in July, according to numbers released Monday by the campaigns.
Romney’s campaign announced it raised $101.3 million, while Obama’s team said in a tweet that it brought in $75 million.
The gap is slightly smaller than it was in June, when Romney raised $106 million and Obama brought in $71 million, but it’s the second-straight month that Romney has pulled in nine figures and the third-straight month he has outraised the incumbent president.
Mitt Romney’s Harry Reid problem
Talk of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s allegation that Mitt Romney had not paid any taxes at all for 10 years dominated the Sunday talk show circuit as Republicans denounced the (still-unsubstantiated) charge.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid speaks to reporters in the Capitol in Washington in this file photo taken April 24, 2007. REUTERS/Kevin LamarqueRepublican National Committee Chairman
Reince Priebus called Reid a “dirty liar,” noting that the top-ranking Democrat in the Senate had still not made public who allegedly told him about Romney’s tax history. (Romney, for his part, has said he paid taxes every year.) Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, the head of the Republican Governors Association, called Reid’s allegation a “reckless and slanderous charge”.
Why President Obama needs to make history in 2012. Again.
Amid the back and forth about Friday’s jobs report, one thing is abundantly clear: To win a second term on November 6, President Obama is going to have to defy history.
US President Barack Obama pauses while speaking during an event in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus August 3, 2012 in Washington, DC. Obama spoke to urge Congress to pass tax cuts for the American middle class. AFP PHOTO/Brendan SMIALOWSKIWhy? Because the July jobs report affirmed the now-certain reality that the unemployment rate won’t drop below eight percent between today and November. And no sitting president since World War II has been re-elected with the unemployment rate above 7.2 percent.
The case against Rob Portman for vice president
Earlier this week, we made the case that Ohio Sen. Rob Portman is the perfect vice presidential pick for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.
Today we argue the opposite case — a case that can be summed up by three “B’s”: Bush, budget and boring. (If you want a much longer case against Portman, be sure to check out the Democratic super PAC American Bridge’s briefing book on him.)
The case for Rob Portman to be vice president
Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign unveiled an app — you can download it here — this morning that will be the first place where they announce the former Massachusetts governor’s pick to be his vice president.
That means one thing: We are getting close.
With the day of reckoning rapidly approaching, we continue our “case for/case against” treatment of the top contenders for the VP pick. (If you missed our case for and case against Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal make sure to check them out.)
Today we make the case for Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, the presumed frontrunner for the veep slot. Later this week, we’ll make the case against him.
Mitt Romney’s foreign trip didn’t go well. Does it matter?
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney later today wraps up his foreign tour, a trip that drew a series of negative headlines and has left many Republicans wondering what exactly the GOP presidential nominee was hoping to accomplish.
The assessments of the trip, which saw Romney visit London, Israel and Poland over the past week, ranged from scathing to resigned among the Republican professional political class.
“I find this entire trip borderline lunacy,” said one senior Republican strategist granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Why on earth is he seeking to improve his foreign policy cred when there will not be a single vote cast on that subject?”
Romney’s less-than-Olympic narrative
Mitt Romney is still waiting for his gold medal from the American public.
If you look across Romney’s public and private sector record, his time as head of the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City stands out as what should be his greatest and most politically advantageous achievement.
Unlike his tenure at Bain Capital and as governor of Massachusetts, there’s very little Democrats can say that will undermine or pick apart Romney’s Olympics record. It’s also a high profile example of Romney’s business acumen that actually has a real-world connection to most peoples’s lives.
And, as luck would have it, the Summer Olympics in London is being held just a few months before the U.S. presidential election — a terrific opportunity for Romney to take a victory lap, right?
Maybe.
Mitt Romney and the ‘wimp’ factor
Is Mitt Romney too wimpy to be president?
U.S. Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney delivers foreign policy remarks at Mishkenot Sha'ananim in Jerusalem, July 29, 2012. REUTERS/Jason Reed That’s the (purposely) provocative question Newsweek asks on its cover this week. It’s a question sure to stir controversy — and one without an easy answer.
How Mitt Romney’s tax returns stack up — in 1 chart
Unless you haven’t been paying attention to politics for the past few months, you know by now that former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is very wealthy.
But, how does Romney’s wealth — as translated in the political conversation through his tax returns — compare to that of the last few presidents? Thanks to the Sunlight Foundation, the Fix’s new favorite site, we know.
The chart below shows both the year-by-year incomes of and the effective tax rate paid by Romney as well as the last five presidents (including Obama).
Who wins a “devil you know vs devil you don’t” election?
One thing is starkly clear from the last month of the 2012 presidential campaign: We are headed toward a lowest common denominator, devil-you-know-versus-devil-you-don’t election in which the winner will not so much triumph as survive.
A devil you know. (Photo by Rick Scavetta/U.S. Army Garrison Kaiserslautern)The latest NBC-Wall Street Journal poll makes that point in stark terms. Forty three percent of respondents viewed President Obama negatively while 40 percent saw Romney in that light; the percentage of people who regarded Obama and Romney “very negatively” was at an all-time high (or low, depending on your perspective) in the NBC-WSJ data.
“This is not characteristic … for July,” GOP pollster Bill McInturff, who conducted the survey with Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart, told NBC. “These are numbers you usually see in October.”
2012: It’s the values, stupid?
President Obama’s best chance at winning a second term this fall revolves around turning the race from a straight referendum on his economic policies and toward a debate about which candidate better shares voters’ values, according to two new national polls.
In a new NBC-Wall Street Journal poll, President Obama held a 49 percent to 33 percent edge on the question of which candidate is “looking out for the middle class” while new Gallup data showed Obama with a 50 percent to 39 percent edge on who “understands the problems Americans face in their everyday lives”.
How super PACs are saving Mitt Romney
Republican-aligned super PACs and other outside conservative groups have spent more than $144 million on general election ads in swing presidential states, a huge outlay of cash that has allowed former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney to not only combat but exceed heavy early ad spending by President Obama.
In this May 8, 2012 file photo, Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks in Lansing, Mich. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File)Roughly 80 percent of all ad spending by Republicans on the general election has come from these super PACs, as Romney has expended a relatively meager $35 million to date on ads in swing states, according to ad buy figures provided to the Fix by a GOP media buyer.
By contrast, the $20 million that Democratic super PACs have spent on ads so far in the general election accounts for just 19 percent of total ad spending on the Democratic side.
Obama campaign pushes back on ‘burn rate’ criticism
In the wake of a report that the Obama campaign’s burn rate — the amount of money they are spending per month on the race — has raised concerns among some within the party, the president’s campaign manager insisted that every penny is being well spent.
“We made a big bet in this campaign,” Obama campaign manager Jim Messina told the Fix in an interview this afternoon. “Ground organization matters and building one takes a lot of money. It’s an expensive proposition.”
Mitt Romney’s ‘exotic’ tax problem
For years, President’s Obama’s political opponents have used his background — Kenyan father, Kansan mother, raised in Indonesia and Hawaii — to cast him as somehow exotic, someone whose life makes it hard for him to understand the average American.
And yet, it’s Mitt Romney, Obama’s general election opponent, who is now dealing with an “exotic” issue that is centered on his considerable wealth and being played out in the ongoing fight over whether he will release more than two years worth of tax returns.
When politics stops — and how it never really does
In a speech today addressing the tragic shootings in Aurora, Colorado, President Obama said that “there are going to be other days for politics...This, I think, is a day for prayer and reflection.”
US President returns early to the White House in Washington,DC on July 20, 2012 after cancelling a campaign stop in Florida. Obama and his rival Mitt Romney suspended their campaigning out of respect for the victims of a shocking shooting at a Colorado movie theater that left 12 people dead and over 50 injured. AFP PHOTO/Nicholas KAMMHe’s right. Both Obama and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney canceled planned campaign rallies, pulled negative ads and generally refrained from doing anything that appeared even remotely political.
But, to assume that politics ever truly stops in this country — even in moments of national tragedy and mourning like this one — is a mistake. Politics and political campaigns don’t happen in a vacuum. Every external event — from the joyous to the tragic — is a piece of the broader political puzzle.
Is the 2012 election the 2004 election all over again?
A few months back, we wrote that the election most analogous to the 2012 contest was the 2004 race between President George W. Bush and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry .
And, as the race has played itself out since then, we feel more and more confident in that comparison.
In this Jan. 16, 2010 file photo, former President George W. Bush listens as President Barack Obama speaks in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)
The case against Bobby Jindal for vice president
On Wednesday, we made the case for why Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal should be Mitt Romney’s vice presidential pick. Today we argue the opposite.
One warning: we are agnostic about Jindal’s relative merits as a VP pick. Rather these dueling posts are aimed at exploring the good and the bad — as explained to us by those in the know — of selecting him. With that caveat out of the way, here’s our case against Jindal.
A tale of two campaigns
There are two campaigns for president happening simultaneously right now.
One is being staged inside Washington — and President Obama is winning that one resoundingly. The other is set in the rest of the country — and that one is a dead heat between Obama and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.
Mitt Romney, his tax returns, and shiny objects
Mitt Romney isn’t releasing his tax returns. That’s his decision, and his campaign is sticking to it (at least for now).
And really, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise.
Romney’s general election campaign, from day one, has taken the long view. When the waters get choppy, his response is almost uniformly to not panic, hope to ride it out, and stay focused on the long-term campaign (and more specifically, the economy). In other words: to avoid the shiny objects.
But is that a successful strategy in the era of not just 24-hour news, but 24-hour political news?
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney gestures during a campaign stop on Wednesday, July 18, 2012 in Bowling Green, Ohio. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Why President Obama’s reelection is no sure thing — in 2 charts
Judging from the coverage of the presidential race over the past few weeks — questions about Mitt Romney’s staff, his exact departure date from Bain Capital and whether or not he should release his tax returns — you could be forgiven for thinking that it’s time for President Obama to break out the champagne and start celebrating his likely re-election in November.
But to draw that conclusion ignores the broader currents at work in the political waters, currents that will make it very tough for President Obama to win a second term almost no matter what Romney does between now and this fall.
Once you step back from the day to day knife fight of the campaign — and make no mistake that Obama is getting in more and better swipes than Romney at this point — you’re reminded that the overarching dynamic of this race is the sputtering economy and a continued lack of confidence within the electorate that things are or will get better.
The case for Bobby Jindal to be vice president
With the Republican National Convention now only 40 days off, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney appears to be moving into the final stages of picking his vice presidential nominee — with some people even speculating that the announcement could come as soon as this week.
While we remain skeptical that Romney will make the pick any time before mid-August, there are signs that the process is nearing its conclusion.
Reuters’ Steve Holland reported on Tuesday that the Romney short list is down to Gov. Bobby Jindal (La.), Sen. Rob Portman (Ohio) and former governor Tim Pawlenty (Minn.). And, the Romney campaign announced this week that it has hired Randy Bumps and Kevin Sheridan to serve as senior staffers to the vice presidential nominee whenever he (or she) is picked.
Given those signs as well as the (relatively) narrow time frame left for Romney, we thought now was the right time to begin making our cases for and against the most likely vice presidential picks.
We kick it all off today by making the case for Jindal. Tomorrow we’ll make the case against him.
Some Republicans still not sold on Mitt Romney’s campaign
One in four self-identified Republicans has an unfavorable view of how Mitt Romney is running his campaign, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. The poll represents the latest evidence of unease within some segments of the GOP about how the former Massachusetts governor is progressing in the 2012 race.
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney leaves a fundraiser that included Gov. Bobby Jindal, R-La., on Monday, July 16, 2012 in Baton Rouge, La. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)Sixty-six percent of GOPers in the poll viewed the way Romney is running his campaign in a favorable light, while 24 percent viewed it unfavorably. Those numbers lagged behind how President Obama’s campaign is viewed among Democrats — 75 percent of whom regard his bid favorably.
Why Mitt Romney should just release his tax returns
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney continues to be steadfast in his refusal to release any more than his last two years of tax returns, a position that has already become a distraction to his presidential campaign and could cause considerably more trouble if he doesn’t figure out a better answer — and soon.
Demonstrators stand outside a fundraiser for Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney on Monday, July 16, 2012 in Baton Rouge, La. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
“Perception is becoming Romney’s reality and these issues have now risen above mere distractions,” said John Weaver, a Republican consultant and former senior adviser to Sen. John McCain’s (R) 2000 and 2008 presidential campaigns. “The President has had the worst three months of any incumbent, due to the economy, since George H.W. Bush in 1992, and yet Romney has lost traction among key demographic groups in the vital swing states. He has got to get this behind him or he’s going to face summer definition ala [Bob] Dole and [John] Kerry. ”
Why Democrats are willing to walk off the fiscal cliff
Less than 24 hours after Democrats publicly pronounced their willingness to jump off the so-called fiscal cliff later this year if Republicans refuse to drop their opposition to ending tax cuts for certain income levels, they got a bit of good news: the public is on their side.
A cliff. Not a fiscal one. BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/GettyImagesForty-four percent of people in a new Pew Research Center poll said that a tax increase on incomes over $250,000, which is what President Obama and congressional Democrats are pushing, would help the economy, while 22 percent said it would hurt the economy.
Similarly, 41 percent of Pew respondents said that raising taxes on income over $250,000 would make the tax system “more fair,” while 21 percent said it would make it “less fair”.
Mitt Romney’s unsolvable Bain problem
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney continues to struggle to get out from under questions regarding just when he departed from his job at Bain Capital. And there’s reason to believe that he won’t be able to solve his Bain problem anytime soon.
HOUSTON, TX - JULY 11: Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney addresses the NAACP National Convention at the George R. Brown Convention Center July 11, 2012 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Eric Kayne/Getty Images)Politics 101 says that when your campaign is bleeding — and Romney’s camp is bleeding right now — the best way to stop it is to get as many facts out as quickly as possible and then insist that it’s a dead issue and refuse to answer questions on it moving forward.
That won’t likely work for Romney because of the seeming contradictions about when he left the company — and the exotic nature of his financial life.
Romney super PAC raised record $20 million in June
The top super PAC supporting Mitt Romney set a new standard for fundraising by a super PAC in June, collecting $20 million, a PAC aide told The Fix.
Restore Our Future’s unprecedented total is four times what the super PAC raised in May and more than three times what the top super PAC supporting President Obama raised in the same month. (That super PAC, Priorities USA Action, also set a personal best in June with $6 million raised.)
Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, right, is introduced by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker as Rep. Paul Ryan ( R- Wis.) looks on during a campaign stop at Monterey Mills on Monday, June 18, 2012 in Janesville, Wis. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
What President Obama has learned from Republicans
The last week of the presidential campaign has been the nastiest to date, with outrage stoked, allegations leveled and apologies demanded.
Nothing new there. Campaigns are — in the modern era — races to the bottom, a lowest common denominator battle to slime the other guy before he slimes you. (USA! USA!)
What has changed is that it’s Democrats pushing the political envelope and Republicans insisting that a line has been crossed.
Can Mitt Romney be likeable? Does he need to be?
Three months ago, Mitt Romney became the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. His prize? He entered the general election with the worst personal image numbers of any major party presidential nominee in recent history.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney addresses the NAACP annual convention in Houston, Texas on July 11, 2012. (AFP PHOTO/Nicholas Kamm)
Since then, things have gotten better for Romney. His favorable rating has rebounded from the low-to-mid-30s, and a few recent polls have even shown more people expressing a positive view of Romney than a negative one.
But through it all, it’s become pretty clear: Romney is not a teddy bear that people want to hug. He’s not a guy most people want to have a beer with. And the Republican base is not over-the-moon about its nominee.
The question is: Is there anything he can do about it? And perhaps more importantly, does it even matter?
The tax return fight and the cult of transparency
President Obama is amping up the pressure on Mitt Romney to release more of his past tax returns, an attempt to change the subject from the still-struggling economy and bring the issue of transparency to the fore in the 2012 campaign.
“What’s important if you are running for president is that the American people know who you are and what you’ve done and that you’re an open book,” Obama told a New Hampshire reporter on Tuesday. “And that’s been true of every presidential candidate dating all the way back to Mitt Romney’s father.”
Vice President Joe Biden, as he is wont to do, took the critique of Romney’s reluctance to release his tax returns a step further. “Mitt Romney wants you to show your papers, but he won’t show us his,” Biden told a Hispanic audience Tuesday in Las Vegas.
And then there was this web video released by the Obama campaign that asked “why is Mitt Romney hiding the rest of his tax returns?”
The remarkably unchanging 2012 race
The past 14 months have had their fair share of historic moments — the killing of Osama bin Laden, the ongoing debt crisis in Europe, the debt ceiling fight, the Republican presidential primary fight and the Supreme Court’s ruling on President Obama’s health care law to name just a handful.
And yet, in spite of the massive news coverage that each of those stories has drawn, none of them seem to have impacted the race between President Obama and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in any meaningful way.
No immigration bounce for President Obama
President Obama’s announcement of his support for relaxed enforcement of immigration laws on young illegal immigrants has not provided any lift for him on the issue according to the new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
His approval rating on dealing with immigration issues is no better (nor worse) than it was two years ago, and he runs evenly with former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney on who people trust to handle the issue. Fewer than one in five voters — 18 percent — say immigration is an extremely important issue in their vote.
For Romney backers, the election is all about President Obama
Nearly six in 10 of those siding with Mitt Romney in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll say their vote is primarily “against” President Obama not in favor of the former Massachusetts governor, a testament to how much of Romney’s support is built on opposition to the current occupant of the White House.
By contrast, about three-quarters of Obama’s supporters are voting affirmatively “for” the president.
President Obama’s massive swing state spending edge
President Obama has spent more than $91 million on television ads in eight swing states as of July 6, a massive sum that dwarfs the $23 million former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has disbursed on campaign commercials in those same places. Only heavy spending by Republican super PACs is keeping Romney within financial shouting distance of the incumbent on television at this point.
The data, which was provided to the Fix by a Republican media buyer, paints a fascinating picture of Obama’s overwhelming ad advantage in each of the states — Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Virginia — where both campaigns are spending.
The spending disparity between the campaigns is particularly pronounced in three of the swingiest states: Florida, Ohio and Virginia.
In Florida, Obama has spent $17 million on TV ads as compared to $2 million for Romney. In Ohio, it’s $22 million for Obama to $6.5 million for Romney; and in Virginia, Obama has spent $11 million on TV ads to less than $3 million for Romney.
One man’s tax cut is another man’s tax increase
One man’s tax cut is another man’s tax increase.
That political reality will be proven — yet again — in the aftermath of President Obama’s decision to call on Congress to extend the Bush era tax cuts for those making under $250,000 — and, therefore, for those not making more than $250,000.
Make no mistake: This proposal isn’t going anywhere legislatively before the election. (Republicans were quick to remind voters that Obama already pushed virtually this same proposal earlier this year.) It is a purely political gambit by the President designed to force Republicans to defend what the White House believes is an untenable position: preserving tax cuts for the wealthiest among us.
Romney outraised Obama in June, $106 million to $71 million
Updated, 10:55 a.m.: Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign outraised President Obama by $35 million in June, pulling in $106 million to the incumbent president’s $71 million, according to numbers announced by the campaigns Monday.
It is the second straight month that Romney has outraised the president and should leave the two candidates on close to equal financial footing just three months after Romney secured the Republican nomination.
Ohio at the epicenter of 2012 ad battle
More than $39 million has been spent on television ads in Ohio by the two presidential candidates and their affiliated outside groups as of early July, according to data provided to the Fix by a Republican media buying firm, a massive outlay of campaign cash that re-affirms the centrality of the Buckeye State in the electoral calculus of both parties.
U.S. President Barack Obama greets residents of Beaver, Ohio July 6, 2012. Obama is on a two-day campaign bus tour of Ohio and Pennsylvania. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque President Obama’s campaign has spent an eye-popping $22 million on ads in Ohio already in the race while former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has dropped $6.4 million. Ohio is the state where both Obama and Romney have spent the most money on TV ads so far in the campaign.
The most important chart of the 2012 election
The June jobs report — 80,000 jobs added in the month and an unemployment rate of 8.2 percent — is full of bad news for President Obama as he seeks to make the case to the American electorate that the economy is slowly but surely improving.
The politics of the economy are heavily dependent on perception and that perception is heavily driven by the unemployment rate. (Economists roll their eyes at using such a simplistic measure to gauge the relative health of the economy but — and we can’t believe we are writing this — it is what it is.)
President Obama’s troubling trend line on jobs
The news from the Bureau of Labor Statistics this morning that the economy added just 80,000 jobs in June and the unemployment rate stayed stuck at 8.2 percent suggests that any hope that President Obama will be able to run for reelection bolstered by an improving financial picture is rapidly disappearing.
The June jobs report and President Obama’s summer swoon(s)
The three summers of President Obama’s first term in office have been decidedly unkind to him on the economic front, a trend that puts even more importance on this morning’s June jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
MAUMEE, OH - JULY 05: U.S. President Barack Obama arrives to speak at a campaign event at the Wolcott House Museum Complex July 5, 2012 in Maumee, Ohio. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)In each of the past three summers, the unemployment rate has bumped upwards while the job creation numbers have either leveled off or dipped downward. That trend — plus the fact that we are 123 days before the election — makes the BLS’s 8:30 announcement of the utmost political importance.
Does Mitt Romney have a staff problem?
Talk of a shakeup in Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign is running rampant, with the expectation within the Republican political class that the former Massachusetts governor will add seasoned hands rather than part ways with any of his current senior staffers.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney finishes speaking about the Supreme Court ruling on health care in Washington, Thursday, June 28, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
At the heart of the critique of the Romney campaign, which began with a tweet from News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch and has continued with a stinging Wall Street Journal op-ed and harsh words for the campaign from the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol today, is the idea that the presidential candidate’s staff may not be up to the task of running the sort of race it will take to beat President Obama.
“The campaign needs to show the GOP elite world and the media a lot of competence going forward or this shake-up talk will only get louder and continue,” predicted one Republican adviser watching from the sidelines.
Mitt Romney’s tax gamble on health care
On July 4, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney tried to explain the (close to) unexplainable: How a penalty in Massachusetts is a tax nationally.
At issue is the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold President Obama’s health care law by stating that those who don’t opt in to the insurance system can be taxed for not doing so.
The political fallout from health care reform — in three charts
The Supreme Court’s ruling in support of President Obama’s health care law isn’t even a week old yet but we are already seeing some fascinating numbers about how the ruling changed — or didn’t change — how people feel about the Affordable Care Act.
The Kaiser Family Foundation, which has been polling on attitudes regarding health care since time immemoriam, released new data today that tells a fascinating story about the political future of the law.
What is that future? It depends on which numbers from the poll you look at it. Below are three charts that provide three varying narratives on what the law meant, means and will mean in our political landscape.
How John Roberts became the story
In a 2010 Pew poll less than three in ten Americans knew that John Roberts was the Chief Justice of the United States. But, his pivotal role in Thursday’s Supreme Court decision to uphold President Obama’s health care law might well turn Roberts into a more household name.
According to Google data, searches for Roberts soared between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. eastern time Thursday, far outdistancing other terms like “individual mandate” and “SCOTUS”.
Here’s a chart from the good people at Google detailing the top five rising search terms over that critical three hours on Thursday.
Gaming out the politics of the Supreme Court’s health care ruling
In less than 24 hours, the Supreme Court will hand down its ruling on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, the defining achievement of President Obama’s first term in office.
A view of the Supreme Court in Washington, Wednesday, June 27, 2012. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)The stakes — from a political and a policy perspective — are absolutely massive although, as we have noted, public opinion on the law itself seems to be relatively cemented.
While the ruling isn’t likely to drastically change how people perceive the law, it could well have a major impact on how voters perceive the two parties — and their respective candidates for president — with 131 days left before the November election.
Below we examine the three most likely decisions from the Court — affirmation of the law, rejection of the law and some middle ground — and how the two parties would seek to shape them politically.
We’ll know what the Court decides by (around) 10 am tomorrow. Until then, the political world waits with bated breath. (Looking for something to do between now and then? Use this interactive to find out what the different rulings from the Court could mean to your health care.)
Poll: Obama, Romney lack clear plans for nation
Majorities of Americans say neither President Obama nor Mitt Romney has a clear plan to fix the nation’s problems, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday, a signal that neither candidate has made a successful case to be president in 2013.
FILE - In 2012 file photos President Barack Obama, left, Talks to reporters in Washington on June 8 and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks during a campaign stop in Cincinnati, Ohio, on June 14 (AP Photo/Scott Applewhite, left, and Evan Vucci, file)Fifty-nine percent of the public says Obama, who has been in office more than three years, lacks a clear plan to fix the country’s problems. Slightly fewer, 53 percent, say the same of Romney.
And, the problems for both candidates go deeper than that. Even as both outline their vision on the campaign trail, many Americans will be leery of trusting them: Six in 10 say Obama and Romney each change their positions on issues for political reasons.
Condoleezza Rice for vice president? Nope.
It’s happening again. Chatter is rising in political (and non-political) circles about the prospect of Bush Administration Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice being tapped as the Republican vice presidential nominee this fall.
Former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice talks to reporters at Mississippi College in Clinton, Miss., on April 17.Much of the Condi buzz is attributable to her reported star turn over the weekend at a Park City, Utah retreat for donors and supporters of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.
Wrote ABC’s Shushannah Walshe and Arlette Saenz:
“Many of those same attendees said the star speaker of the weekend was former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who received a standing ovation. Ambassador Charles Cobb, who served as ambassador to Iceland from 1989 to 1992, said Rice was ‘spectacular’ and described her as a ‘very bright, sophisticated, articulate lady.’”
Arizona immigration decision puts Romney in a (temporary) tight spot
The Supreme Court rejected large portions of a controversial Arizona immigration law but left intact the ability of police to stop suspected illegal immigrants and demand to see their papers, a sort of split decision that should hand President Obama a political cudgel with which to take after former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.
A rally against Arizona's immigration law on April 25 outside of the US Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.Virtually any way that the Court decided on the Arizona measure would have forced Romney to respond on an issue he’d rather not address between now and November. But, the Court keeping the “stop and check” provision in the law — and the fact that Romney is scheduled to be in Arizona later today (someone get the scheduler on the line!) means that he will have to walk a very fine line, rhetorically speaking, on an issue that has major long term consequences for the Republican party.
Mitt Romney’s hidden campaign cash
Mitt Romney is quickly closing the cash gap on President Obama. But as of right now, we don’t know exactly how close it is.
One of the quirks of campaign finance reporting is that, while the committee Obama uses to raise money for his campaign and the Democratic National Committee — also called a “joint fundraising committee” — reports its totals monthly, Romney’s version of that joint committee has yet to file a report.
Republican Presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney greets attendees after speaking at the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) conference in Florida. (Gerardo Mora/Getty Images)
The “Romney Victory Fund,” as it’s called, was launched in April and will file its first quarterly report next month. We’re also pretty sure it has tens of millions of dollars in it right now.
But even that conclusion involves some guesswork, and Romney’s campaign isn’t saying much.
Is President Obama baiting House Republicans?
In the past six days, President Obama has sent a very clear message to Republicans in Congress. And that message goes like this: Bring it on.
His decision to stop actively deporting young illegal immigrants, which was announced last Friday, and his action Wednesday to invoke executive privilege over documents tied to the “Fast and Furious” program both amount to a finger in the eye of House GOPers.
Marco Rubio and the dangers of VP reporting
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney said late Tuesday that Marco Rubio is being fully vetted as a potential vice presidential pick, directly rebutting reporting that the Florida Senator was not in the running.
What this episode reveals — for the umpteenth time in the history of the veepstakes — is that reporting on who will or won’t be the vice presidential pick is fraught with peril.
Marco Rubio isn’t being vetted as VP: What does it tell us? (Or maybe he is)
NOTE: Mitt Romney said late Tuesday that Marco Rubio is in fact being thoroughly vetted by his vice presidential selection team — contrary to previous report that said he was not.
ORIGINAL POST
The news that Florida Sen. Marco Rubio isn’t being seriously vetted by Mitt Romney’s vice presidential selection team is both surprising and enlightening.
FILE - In this April 23, 2012, file photo Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, campaigning with Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., talks to reporters in Aston, Pa. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)Surprising because many people — the Fix included — had touted him early and often as a potential frontrunner to be Romney’s number two. (Heck, we compared him to Lionel Messi!)
Enlightening because it provides us a window into the sort of person that Romney (and Beth Myers, his head of vice presidential vetting) are looking for in a running mate.
That person? Someone whose credentials and readiness are beyond question. And, more than likely, someone who calls to mind “plain” more than “pizzazz”.
Why Republicans can’t write off Hispanics
Much has been made in the last 96 hours of President Obama’s decision to stop deporting young illegal immigrants and its impact on the 2012 election.
And while the short-term political impact of how the announcement could impact Obama’s strength among Hispanic voters is significant, it pales in comparison to the long-term political effect if Hispanics become a solidly Democratic voting bloc in the way that African-Americans have.
Since 1992, Republicans have lost ground with with black and Asian-American voters while largely holding steady(ish) with Hispanics. The only gains they have made are with white voters; 40 percent of whites voted for George H.W. Bush in 1992, while 55 percent of white voters chose John McCain in 2008.
Here’s the full vote breakout — courtesy of our partners @postpolls — of the vote by race from 1992 to 2008.
President Obama made a political decision on immigration. So what?
In the immediate aftermath of President Obama’s decision to stop deporting young illegal immigrants on Friday, Republicans stayed silent as they sought to calculate the right response — one that would walk the fine line between alienating their political base and sending (another) negative signal to the Hispanic community they badly need to court.
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney eventually released a statement and then followed up on it during an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation” — his first non-Fox News Channel Sunday show interview during the campaign to date.
Here’s what Romney told “Face” host Bob Schieffer:
“ I think the timing is pretty clear, if [Obama] really wanted to make a solution that dealt with these kids or with illegal immigration in America, than this is something he would have taken up in his first three and a half years, not in his last few months.”
Schieffer followed up by asking Romney if that meant that the president’s motivations were solely political. “Well, that’s certainly a big part of the equation,” responded Romney.
Romney’s right. And it doesn’t matter a bit.
Republicans struggle to respond to Obama’s immigration decision
Updated at 4:21 p.m.
Just hours after word leaked out that the Obama administration would stop deporting young illegal immigrants who were brought to the United States by their parents, the issue is already causing headaches for the Republican Party.
The party, which has previously split over its own president’s efforts on illegal immigration reform, is similarly stuck when it comes to Obama’s decision.
And at a time when party unity is paramount, the move is exposing fissures.
This photo provided by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Wednesday, March 28, 2012, in New Jersey, shows agents taking a person into custody during operation Cross Check III. (AP Photo/U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement)
President Obama’s mythical black voter problem — in three charts
A new North Carolina poll conducted by the automated pollster (and Democratic affiliated) Public Policy Polling has set the political world on its head — suggested that not only has former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney made up significant ground on President Obama in the swing state but that the incumbent is losing roughly one in every five black voters in the Tarheel State.
Here’s the problem: There’s no evidence — outside of this single PPP poll — that Obama is suffering any significant erosion among African American voters.
The story of Obama’s continued — and sustained — strength in the black community can be told in three charts, all of which examine Washington Post-ABC News polling conducted over the first three-plus years of Obama’s presidency. (HUGE thanks to the Post polling team for building out these charts; do yourself a favor and follow them on Twitter @postpolls.)
Obama’s ‘08 economic advantage disappears
Roughly four in 10 voters assess the economic proposals offered by President Obama and Mitt Romney favorably in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, a sharp contrast to the wide lead the incumbent enjoyed over John McCain on the issue in the 2008 presidential race.
In the latest Post-ABC poll, 43 percent of voters express favorable opinions about Obama’s economic agenda, while 40 percent say the same of Romney.
Compare that relative parity on economic plans to the 20-point edge Obama held over McCain in a 2008 election eve poll, and you begin to grasp the challenge before Obama when it comes to winning the economic argument this fall.
Why Europe won’t save Obama
President Obama’s goal at last Friday’s press conference, according to those who know him best, was simple: Explain to a confused American public why the struggles in Europe are having ripple effects across the global economy — up to and including the United States.
“One concern is Europe, which faces a threat of renewed recession as countries deal with a financial crisis,” said Obama at the start of his prepared remarks. “Obviously this matters to us because Europe is our largest economic trading partner. If there’s less demand for our products in places like Paris or Madrid it could mean less businesses — or less business for manufacturers in places like Pittsburgh or Milwaukee.”
Romney video targets Obama’s ‘doing fine’ comment
Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign is up with a new ad targeting President Obama for his remark on Friday that the private sector of the economy is doing “fine.”
The video features footage of Americans describing their personal economic hardships and then repeats the clip of Obama saying the “private sector is doing fine” three times.
It closes with “No Mr. President, we are not doing fine.”
President Obama tries to change the subject
President Obama’s decision to make remarks — and take questions from reporters — Friday morning on the economy was a seemingly obvious attempt to pivot away from his worst week, politically speaking, in months.
It almost certainly won’t work, however, because Obama offered little new in terms of policy and adopted a largely presidential — rather than a political — approach to the questions reporters posed to him.
Bill Clinton sticks another fork in Obama’s Bain strategy, says Romney had ‘sterling’ business career
The shelf life of President Obama’s Bain Capital strategy appears to be rapidly shrinking.
Less than two weeks after Newark Mayor Cory Booker caused the Obama campaign plenty of heartburn by calling on it to “stop attacking private equity,” the biggest name in Democratic politics (outside of Obama) has lodged his own torpedo.
Bill Clinton, in an appearance on CNN last night, said that Mitt Romney has a “sterling business career” and that the campaign shouldn’t be about what kind of work Romney did.
“I don’t think we ought to get into the position where we say this is bad work; this is good work,” Clinton said, adding: “There’s no question that, in terms of getting up, going to the office, and basically performing the essential functions of the office, a man who’s been governor and had a sterling business career crosses the qualification threshold.”
Why the first Friday of the month matters so much
Every day in a presidential campaign matters, because there just aren’t that many of them left. (It’s 158 days until the election — but who’s counting?) But some days matter more.
Political strategists — and economic policy wonks — have the first Friday of every month between now and November circled in red pen on their calendars (if those things still exist), because it’s the day that the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the previous month’s jobs report.
Today is one of those days. And the May jobs report, which will be released at around 8:30 a.m. eastern time, is the start of a critical three-month period leading up to the national party conventions that will set the economic terms of the fall campaign.
The Boston Obama press conference: Welcome to the circus
Top Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod said Thursday that Mitt Romney’s stewardship of the Massachusetts economy shows how his career in private equity doesn’t prepare him to govern. But his message was drowned out by pro-Romney protesters.
“It wasn’t happenstance that Massachusetts struggled under Romney,” Axelrod said at a press conference in Boston, noting several negative statistics on the state’s performance during Romney’s four years as governor (more on that here). “He brought the orientation of a financial engineer” whose goal was to make money, added Axelrod.
“This may work in the world of leveraged buyouts and quick scores, but it’s not how you build for the future,” Axelrod said. “Romney economics didn’t work then, and it won’t work now.”
Is the vice presidency worth having?
Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush doesn’t want to be Mitt Romney’s vice president. Just ask him.
After an Italian newspaper purported to have an exclusive interview with Bush in which he left the door open to the vice presidency, Team Bush quickly stamped out the idea.
“Nothing has changed, Gov. Bush will not be candidate for VP,”a Bush spokeswoman told Yahoo News Wednesday.
Mitt Romney is the Republican nominee. Now what?
Mitt Romney formally clinched the Republican presidential nomination on Tuesday night, crossing the 1,144-delegate plateau with his victory in the Texas primary.
In reality, the GOP nomination fight has been over for the better part of two months — since former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum formally ended his candidacy on April 10, a week after he fell short in the Wisconsin primary.
Romney app misspells ‘Amercia’
Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign misspelled the word “America” on its new iPhone app, and it’s already paying a price for it.
In the app, the phrase “A Better America” is misspelled “A Better Amercia.” The misspelling was picked up and tweeted widely Tuesday night, soon spawned a hashtag-driven Twitter meme in which people imagined just what Amercia stood for and what kind of policies Romney had planned for Amercia.
The Romney campaign told The Fix that it had submitted a corrected version of the app to Apple, which has to approve the update.
Is the Bain attack working?
President Obama’s campaign is in the midst of an extended attack on Mitt Romney’s time spent at Bain Capital, an effort to define the former Massachusetts governor as out of touch with average Americans.
Ads have been run, conference calls have been held, press releases (and then some more press releases) have been sent — an all-out effort that speaks to how important it is for the Obama campaign to win this fight over who Mitt Romney really is.
Gay marriage? Bullying? Voters don’t care.
The political world has been consumed in recent weeks by President Obama’s decision to come out in support of same-sex marriage and by a Washington Post story detailing allegations of high school bullying by former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney .
And what sort of reaction have these two major stories elicited from the voting public? In a word: “Eh”.
Kentucky, Arkansas primaries: Is it racism?
That President Obama lost roughly 40 percent of the vote in Democratic primaries in Arkansas, Kentucky and West Virginia over the last two weeks has drawn massive national headlines.
Those headlines have drawn a collective eyeroll from Democrats — and many others who closely follow national politics — who ascribe the underperformance by the incumbent to a very simple thing: racism.
Why the 2012 election will be the closest since Bush vs Gore
The 2012 presidential election is going to be close. Very close. Incredibly close. Like Al-Gore-vs-George-W.-Bush close.
A review of the last year’s worth of national polling conducted by the Washington Post and ABC News makes clear that not only is the electorate almost equally divided between President Obama and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney but people are also equally split on which of the two men is better equipped to handle the economy, which, of course, is the only issue that matters to a majority of voters.
David Axelrod scolds Cory Booker on Bain Capital
President Obama’s chief political strategist hammered comments made by Newark Mayor Cory Booker regarding former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s work at Bain Capital as “wrong”, the latest attempt by the White House to get out from under the burgeoning controversy.
“In this particular instance he was just wrong,” Axelrod told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell — speaking about Booker’s defense of private equity firms. “There are specific instances here that speak to an economic theory that isn’t the right economic theory for the country.”
Cory Booker commits the classic Washington gaffe
In Washington, there’s an old cliche: A gaffe is when a politician is accidentally honest.
That’s what happened to Newark (N.J.) Mayor Cory Booker during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. Booker, who is widely regarded as a fast riser in Democratic politics, veered badly off message when he defended Bain Capital — the longtime employer of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney — and described the negative tone of the campaign as “nauseating”.
How Mitt Romney might outraise Barack Obama
Political observers have spent the last four years marveling at President Obama’s fundraising might. But now even Democrats are admitting that former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney — and his allied party and outside groups — may very well outspend the current occupant of the White House between now and the Nov. 6 election.
Why a Jeremiah Wright attack (probably) won’t work
The news that a conservative super PAC is contemplating an attack on President Obama’s association with the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright has lit the political world on fire. (You can read the full document here.) But there’s plenty of reason to think such an attack simply wouldn’t work.
The main one? People like President Obama personally and it’s hard to imagine an assault on someone he has already repudiated would undermine that basic likability factor.
Mitt Romney raised $40 million in April
Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney raised more than $40 million in April for his campaign and the Republican National Committee, his campaign said early Thursday.
The total — $40.1 million — comes in just shy of the $43.6 million President Obama’s campaign raised last month for itself and the Democratic National Committee.
Romney campaign releases response ad on Bain
Mitt Romney’s campaign is already up with a response to an attack from President Obama’s campaign on Romney’s time at Bain Capital.
While the two-minute Obama ad, released this morning, focused on Bain Capital’s acquisition and handling off GS Technologies steel mill, the Romney campaign’s new ad, titled “American Dream,” focuses on another steel company Bain guided — Steel Dynamics.
“Steel Dynamics started with an empty field and a big dream,” the ad begins, before one employee labels the company “a perfect entrepreneurial story.”
Mitt Romney’s big gay marriage punt, and what it means
During Mitt Romney’s address this weekend to the evangelical Liberty University, he made precisely one mention of gay marriage, saying simply: “Marriage is a relationship between one man and one woman.”
By passing on the opportunity to fire up the socially conservative base in perhaps the most ideal setting, Romney served notice of two things.
Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney attends commencement ceremonies as the scheduled commencement speaker at Arthur L. Williams Stadium on the campus of Liberty University on May 12, 2012 in Lynchburg, Va. Liberty University is one of the country's largest Christian colleges. (Photo by Jared Soares/Getty Images)
First, he made clear (again) that he’s not going to make President Obama’s embrace of gay marriage an issue in the 2012 campaign — at all. This much has become pretty apparent over the course of the last week.
And the second, perhaps more significant lesson, is that Romney’s team is not worried about turning out the GOP base in November.
Was Mitt Romney a bully? Does it matter?
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney apologized this morning for “hijinks” during his high school years at a prep school in Michigan, an admission that came just hours after the Washington Post reported of his involvement in an episode in which a student was held down and his hair was cut by the presidential candidate
“I participated in a lot of hijinks and pranks during high school and some might have gone too far and for that, I apologize,” Romney told radio host Brian Kilmeade this morning. As far the specific allegation regarding cutting the boy’s hair, Romney said: “I don’t remember that incident.”
Republican presidential candidate former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, gestures as he speaks to supporters at Oklahoma state Republican Party Headquarters in Oklahoma City, Wednesday, May 9, 2012.(AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)Romney’s acknowledgment of his behavior in high school so soon after his campaign issued something close to a denial in the Post story, which included a series of on-the-record retellings from others who participated, is a recognition on behalf of the campaign that prolonging this story would be detrimental to him and his chances this fall.
It also raises a larger question, however. Is how a person running for president acted more than four decades ago relevant to who they are today — and what they might be like as president?
Trio of wins inch Romney toward officially securing nomination
Mitt Romney won all three primaries on Tuesday and is closing in on the number of delegates he needs to officially secure the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.
108 delegates were available Tuesday, and Romney is likely to win all 27 up for grabs in Indiana, the vast majority of the 52 available in North Carolina and most or all of the 28 in West Virginia.
Parsing President Obama’s 2012 campaign kickoff speech
President Obama made it official (again) on Saturday: He is running for re-election. No surprises there. Nor is it surprising that Obama chose Virginia and Ohio — two of the swingiest states in the country — to stage his first two 2012 campaign rallies.
President Barack Obama speaks during his campaign rally at the Siegel Center in Richmond, Va., Saturday, May 5, 2012. (AP Photo/Richmond Times-Dispatch, Eva Russo)What was interesting — or at least worthy of note — was what Obama said in his speeches to the crowds in Richmond and Columbus. This was a speech that was very carefully crafted and one that will almost certainly serve as the blueprint for how Obama will seek to frame the general election against former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.
This being politics, Obama said less than he meant. But, that’s where we come in. Below are a few of Obama’s best or, at least, most quotable lines and our — slightly longer — translation of the message he was trying to send.
For Virginians, Barack Obama fits just right (for now)
President Obama’s current lead over Mitt Romney in a new Washington Post poll in Virginia is due in large part to a belief that the incumbent’s ideology is a better fit for the state than that of the former Massachusetts governor.
A majority of Virginians — 52 percent — say that “Barack Obama’s views on most issues are just about right” as compared to 37 percent who say the same of Romney’s views. Among electorally critical independents, 52 percent say Obama’s views were about right as opposed to just 34 percent who say the same of Romney. Just look at this chart.
Could David Rivera cost Marco Rubio the vice presidency?
You can sum up Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s biggest impediment to being chosen vice president in two words: David Rivera.
Rivera is the very controversial Florida U.S. House member who remains under FBI and IRS investigation for a series of campaign finance irregularities that led Miami-Dade prosecutors to conclude recently that the Sunshine State Republican “essentially live[d] off” donations from campaign contributors for the better part of a decade. (Those prosecutors did not bring criminal charges against Rivera — though it’s worth reading the full 16-page memo on their findings here.)
Why President Obama shouldn’t run any more positive ads
President Obama’s reelection campaign is out with a new ad in Ohio, Iowa and Virginia today that bashes former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney for shipping jobs overseas and for — you guessed it! — having a Swiss bank account.
The new ad is the third of the Obama reelection effort. He began his advertising campaign in January with a commercial touting the Administration’s successes on energy and ethics while slamming Americans for Prosperity. His second hit Romney for supporting “big oil”.
Republicans’ electoral map problem — in one chart
In our Monday Fix column, we argued that former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney faces a very narrow path to the 270 electoral votes he needs to claim the presidency in November.
What we were most struck by while writing the piece was the fact that it’s been more than two decades since the Republican presidential nominee broke 300 electoral votes. During that same time, Democratic presidential nominees — Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996 and President Obama in 2008 — have won more than 350 electoral votes.
It’s also a remarkable turnaround from the three successive elections in 1980, 1984 and 1988 in which Republican presidential nominees received more than 400(!) electoral votes.
Here’s a chart we put together detailing the electoral map up and downs for each side in the past three decades:
Nothing in the chart above suggests that Romney can’t win this fall. Rather, it highlights the fact that Romney’s margin for error is both small and smaller than that of President Obama.
President Obama is cool. Mitt Romney isn’t. (Part 2)
Earlier this week, we wrote a piece making the case that President Obama is cool, that Mitt Romney isn’t and that that reality could actually work in favor of the Republican nominee this fall.
American Crossroads, the leading conservative outside group in this election, seemed to agree with that sentiment — releasing a web video on the subject of Obama’s coolness less than 24 hours after we published our item.
Rick Perry endorses Mitt Romney
Texas Gov. Rick Perry has endorsed Mitt Romney for president, switching his endorsement now that reports indicate Newt Gingrich will drop out of the race.
Here’s the full Perry statement:
“Mitt Romney has earned the Republican presidential nomination through hard-work, a strong organization, and disciplined message of restoring America after nearly four years of failed job-killing policies from President Obama and his administration. So today I join the many conservative Republicans across the nation in endorsing Mitt Romney for President and pledge to him, my constituents and the Republican Party that I will continue to work hard to help defeat President Obama. American jobs, economic stability and national security depend on electing a new president. Mitt’s vision and record of private sector success will put America back on the path of job creation, economic opportunity and limited government.”
Barack Obama is cool. Mitt Romney is not. What does it mean for 2012?
Here’s a fundamental fact of the 2012 presidential race: President Obama is cool. Mitt Romney isn’t.
Obama slow jams the news with Jimmy Fallon. He makes three pointers. He sings Al Green in tune.
Romney praises the height of trees. He sings “Who let the dogs out”. He fakes that a New Hampshire waitress grabbed his behind.
Newt Gingrich’s most memorable campaign moments
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich is ending his presidential bid within the next week.
He may had had some organizational issues, and he may have only won two states. But Gingrich knew how to make a memorable moment, either with a clever attack line or a novel idea. Here are the Fix’s highlights of the campaign that was.
Polls suggest Arizona a dead heat
Arizona looks competitive, Obama knows he can sing, Marco Rubio goes bipartisan and Jon Tester shows the beef.
Make sure to sign up to get “Afternoon Fix” in your e-mail inbox every day by 5 (ish) p.m!
Mitt Romney and RNC move to synchronize efforts
Less than 24 hours after sweeping five primaries and declaring the Republican presidential nomination fight officially over, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee are moving quickly to coordinate their efforts.
“Governor Romney’s strong performance and delegate count at this stage of the primary process has made him our party’s presumptive nominee,” said RNC Chairman Reince Priebus. “In order to maximize our efforts I have directed my staff at the RNC to open lines of communication with the Romney campaign.”
Who is Richard Grenell?
Mitt Romney’s new foreign policy spokesman, Richard Grenell, is causing a bit of a stir.
Over the weekend, media reports noted the newly-hired Grenell’s many inflammatory tweets offering very blunt takes on taboo political issues like Newt Gingrich’s multiple marriages, comparing MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow to Justin Bieber, commenting on the appearance of various women including Hillary Clinton and Cindy McCain, and berating the media.
US Ambassador John Negroponte, right, speaks to his spokesman Richard Grenell after Security Council consultations regarding Iraq at United Nations headquarters Thursday, May 8, 2003. (AP Photo/David Karp)
(DAVID KARP - AP)
Grenell wound up scrubbing his Twitter account in response to the reports and apologizing.
In addition, Grenell’s hire has drawn the ire of some in the social conservative movement because he is openly gay (though the resistance has yet to hit the mainstream of the social conservative movement in any significant way).
So just who is this newly relevant political hand?
Why a vice presidential candidate’s home state doesn’t matter (much)
Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) have a leg up in the GOP veepstakes, the logic goes, because they come from extremely valuable swing states.
It’s certainly a fair argument; but it’s also over-sold.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). (AP Photo/Alan Diaz, File)
If history has shown us anything, it’s that the home state of a potential vice presidential nominee shouldn’t be over-estimated as a factor in the process. In fact, it’s relatively rare that a presidential nominee picks a running mate from a swing state with an eye toward picking up that state’s electoral votes in November.
Over the last 40 years, only three vice presidential picks (out of 15) have come from legitimately competitive swing states, and the last one came in 1992 when Bill Clinton picked then-Sen.Al Gore and went on to carry Gore’s home state of Tennessee twice. (And Tennessee wasn’t really considered all that much of a swing state back then.)
Before that, the last two swing-state VP nominees were Rep. Geraldine Ferraro (D-N.Y.) in 1984 and Texan George H.W. Bush in 1980, when their states were more competitive than they are today.
Rob Portman is the insider’s VP pick. That’s a bad thing.
Ohio Sen. Rob Portman’s (R) vice presidential chances seemed to get a nice boost over the weekend: an informal survey of Republican party insiders showed that he was their top choice to be former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s running mate this fall.
Two thirds of the state party chairmen and Republican National committeemen and women polled by the online news site BuzzFeed said that the Ohio senator was the most likely and best pick to be Romney’s running mate.
How much Hispanics matter in 2012 — in one chart
Republicans have a Hispanic problem.
Unless they can find ways to begin convincing the nation’s fastest growing population — Hispanics accounted for half of all the growth of the U.S. population over the last decade — that the GOP is a potential political home for them, they won’t remain a credible national party in 2016, 2020 and beyond.
President Obama has 10 times more cash on hand than Mitt Romney
President Obama’s campaign had 10 times as much cash on hand as former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney at the end of March, according to financial reports filed Friday with the Federal Election Commission.
Obama’s presidential campaign closed March with $104 million in the bank as compared to $10.1 million for Romney. The former Massachusetts governor raised $12.6 million in March, his best fundraising month to date. Obama brought in $35 million last month.
What Brian Schweitzer meant by his ‘polygamy commune’ remark
Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D) is causing a bit of a stir with his comment that Mitt Romney’s family came from a “polygamy commune.”
In an interview with the Daily Beast on Thursday, the outspoken governor suggested Romney could identify with Latinos better if he talked about his family’s roots in Mexico.
It’s “kinda ironic, given that his family came from a polygamy commune in Mexico, but then he’d have to talk about his family coming from a polygamy commune in Mexico, given the gender discrepancy,” Schweitzer said. (Schweitzer noted that women, in particular, object to polygamy, or the practice of having multiple wives.)
Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D) testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington in 2007. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
President Obama’s campaign quickly disavowed the comments and said it would not engage in “attacking a candidate’s religion.” In fact, the remarks are outside the bounds of what both sides have said is acceptable discourse for the campaign.
But despite Schweitzer’s overly blunt and inartful phrasing, it’s worth looking at the broader point he was trying to make.
Stephen Colbert on Republican veepstakes (VIDEO)
The Fix is a big fan of Stephen Colbert. (And, yes, this is a blatant ploy to get on the “Colbert Report” when the “Gospel According to the Fix” comes out in July.)
Colbert — along with partner in crime Jon Stewart — do more politics than almost anyone else on cable television and, yes, they have influence.
So, we thought it worth flagging to Fix readers that Colbert did an entire segment on the Republican vice presidential sweepstakes — and specifically Ohio Sen. Rob Portman — on Wednesday night.
Here’s the segment:
The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive
The GSA and Secret Service scandals: A political problem for President Obama?
It’s been a rough few weeks for the federal government.
First, the lavish spending of the General Services Administration on a wild Las Vegas retreat came to light. Then came the Secret Service scandal where a number of agents advancing the President’s trip to Colombia were caught with prostitutes.
The question that’s largely been left out of the coverage of the twin scandals — in which new details seem to emerge daily if not hourly — is whether they carry any political danger for the man at the head of the federal government: President Obama.
Mitt Romney is the momentum candidate. But why?
It’s official: Mitt Romney is the momentum candidate in the presidential race.
The Gallup daily tracking polling has shown him up three and five points on President Obama over the last two days. A CBS/New York Times survey released this morning showed the race tied at 46 percent. And a Pew Research Center poll pegged Obama’s lead over Romney at four points, down from a 12-point bulge last month.
The incredibly shrinking swing vote
Billions of dollars — literally — will be spent between now and Nov. 6 in hopes of reelecting or defeating President Obama.
Those billions will be directed at a tiny sliver of truly undecided voters, according to new polling data from the Pew Research Center.
Less than one in four registered voters described themselves as swing voters in the Pew poll, well below the 33 percent who said the same in a June 2008 Pew survey and consistent with the 21 percent who said they were truly undecided in June 2004 — the last time an incumbent president sought reelection.
A permanent gender gap problem for Republicans?
New poll data from the Pew Research Center suggests that not only does President Obama enjoy a clear edge over former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney among women but that younger women favor the incumbent overwhelmingly, a data point that suggests a potential long term problem for the GOP.
Obama leads Romney among all women by a 53 percent to 40 percent margin, which, interestingly, is down from the 20 point edge that he enjoyed in a March Pew poll.
Jim DeMint conducts his own VP search
South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, who has built a political brand for himself in recent years by searching out conservative GOP Senate candidates, is now sticking his nose in the GOP vice presidential search.
DeMint’s Senate Conservatives Fund is hosting a poll on its website asking supporters who they would like to see as the party’s No. 2 on the ticket this fall, using The Fix’s list of the 10 frontrunners in the so-called “veepstakes.”
And at least so far, the results aren’t close.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla) speaks in Washington last October. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari, File)
With 3,000 votes (and counting) in, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is the clear leader with more than 40 percent of the vote, and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is second with 23 percent, according to results provided to The Fix.
Mitt Romney is the least popular presidential nominee in three decades. So what?
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney made history on Monday — but not in a good way.
New polling from the Washington Post and ABC News showed that Romney is the least popular presidential nominee since at least 1984, according to Post-ABC data. (His favorable rating among registered voters is 40 percent while his unfavorable rating is 48 percent.)
Why the presidential race is going to be closer than you think
The dominant narrative since the beginning of 2012 has been that President Obama has regained his footing after a rocky 2011 and is trending upward. Ask 10 political types who will win in November, and eight of them (or so) will say Obama.
But, like all conventional wisdom, it’s only true until it changes. And, on Monday, a new poll came out that provided at least a hint that the CW might be in for a shift.
Mitt Romney’s tax return problem
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney announced late Friday that he had sought an extension to file his 2011 tax returns, the newest piece of evidence of the political problem those documents have and will continue to cause him in his presidential bid.
“Sometime in the next six months, and prior to the election, Gov. Romney will file and release the 2011 return when there is sufficient information to provide an accurate return,” said spokeswoman Andrea Saul in a statement that arrived in the Fix email inbox at 5:16 pm on Friday night. (Hello, Friday news dump!)
Democratic super PAC targets Romney’s wealth in new ad
The top Democratic super PAC supporting President Obama’s reelection campaign is going up with a new ad casting Mitt Romney as the candidate of the wealthy.
President Obama’s (very) cautious economic optimism
Two of President Obama’s key surrogates took to the weekend political chat circuit to spread the message that the administration’s economic policies were working — kind of, sort of.
Senior strategist David Axelrod in an interview with “Fox News Sunday” said that “The choice in this election is between economy that produces a growing middle class and that gives people a chance to get ahead and their kids a chance to get ahead, and an economy that continues down the road we are on, where a fewer and fewer number of people do very well, and everybody else is running faster and faster just to keep pace.”
Ranking the Republican presidential candidates: The best and worst
The Republican primary is now over. Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum’s decision to end his bid on Tuesday means that former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney will be the Republican standard-bearer against President Obama in the fall.
The end of the race means a time for reflection in Fixworld. (We are nothing if not introspective.) And, regular readers know the Fix loves looking back at the campaign that was and deciding who did it best and, more deliciously, who did it worst. (Some people call this back seat driving; we call it “analysis”!)
Hilary Rosen throws Mitt Romney a lifeline in ‘war on women’
Mitt Romney was losing the so-called “war on women.” Badly. Until Democratic operative Hilary Rosen appeared on CNN Wednesday night and seemingly derided his wife’s decision to stay at home and raise the couple’s five boys.
“His wife has actually never worked a day in her life,” Rosen told Anderson Cooper. “She’s never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school and how do we — why we worry about their future.”
How YouTube and Twitter are hurting Mitt Romney
It’s a strategy as old as American politics: You run toward the party base — on the left or right — in the primary and then move to the ideological middle once you become your party’s standard-bearer.
But, the explosion of video-sharing sites like YouTube and microblogging technology like Twitter badly complicate this age-old formula.
Mitt Romney 2012 = John Kerry 2004?
Political reporters — all of whom are history nerds at heart — spend countless hours trying to figure out which past election the current elections most reminds them of.
It’s part parlor game — you usually win when you compare the current election to the most obscure election of the past possible (this reminds me of the 1876 election between Samuel Tilden and Rutherford B. Hayes) — and part useful political analysis. While no two elections are ever exactly the same, there are elections whose dynamics clearly resemble one another and where studying what happened can help you understand what will happen.
Obama campaign releases video on Romney’s ‘severely conservative’ greatest hits
President Obama’s campaign isn’t going to let Mitt Romney or Americans forget the things he said during the Republican primary campaign — at least, not anytime soon.
The Obama campaign today debuts a new Web video compiling clips of the many things Romney has said on the campaign trail while appealing to conservatives for their votes, reinforcing Romney’s claim that he was a “severely conservative” governor of Massachusetts.
What Rick Santorum meant — and why he was right to drop out
Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum ended his presidential bid today, bringing to a close a campaign that succeeded beyond the expectations almost anyone — perhaps up to and including the candidate — had set for him.
By ending his campaign two weeks before the Pennsylvania primary, Santorum avoided what could have been an embarrassing defeat to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in his home state and preserved not only his raised profile within the party but his chances of running as a viable candidate in either 2016 or 2020.
Rick Santorum drops out of the presidential race
Updated at 3:09 p.m.
Rick Santorum announced Tuesday that he is suspending his presidential campaign, all but bringing to a close the 2012 GOP presidential contest and effectively handing the nomination to Mitt Romney.
“We made a decision over the weekend that, while this presidential race for us is over — for me — and we will suspend our campaign effective today, we are not done fighting,” Santorum said at a campaign event in Gettysburg, Pa., the site of the historic and pivotal Civil War battle.
The former Pennsylvania senator had been Romney’s top opponent, but he suffered a trio of defeats last week in Wisconsin, Maryland and the District of Columbia, and over the weekend his daughter, Bella, was hospitalized for the second time this campaign due to complications from a rare genetic disorder.
In announcing his decision, Santorum said Bella’s condition caused him to reconsider his campaign but that she “is a fighter and doing extraordinarily well.”
He did not endorse or urge the delegates that he has won to support another candidate, but spokesman Hogan Gidley told MSNBC that the Romney campaign has requested a meeting about an endorsement, which he said Santorum is “open” to.
Barack Obama’s empathy edge
Presidential elections are rarely won and lost on policy. Voters instead tend to choose the person they most want to be president based on who they like. And that feeling is heavily influenced by which of the candidates they believe best understands their hopes and dreams.
Call it the empathy factor. And it matters. A lot.
Mitt Romney is the Republican nominee. Now what?
One fight for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is over. He will be the Republican presidential nominee this fall.
But, now a bigger challenge awaits. A slew of recent polling shows him running well behind President Obama and with some of the highest unfavorable ratings of any presidential nominee at this time in the race.
How “Saturday Night Live” can hurt Mitt Romney
The opening of “Saturday Night Live” over the weekend, which pilloried former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney as a core-less politician willing to tell his audience what it wants to hear (literally), got us to thinking: Could the explosion in popularity of news/comedy hybrid shows hurt Romney in the general election?
Why Ron Paul matters more than Newt Gingrich
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich’s long, slow fade into political oblivion in this presidential primary race has received lots — and lots — of attention.
Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, cheer as Paul speaks at the University of California at Berkeley, Calif., Thursday, April 5, 2012. (AP Photo/Ben Margot) “People walk up again and again and say, ‘Please stay in, and please fight for conservatism’,” Gingrich told the Post’s Karen Tumulty over the weekend. (Gingrich has never been one to hide his light under a bushel.)
Rumors fly constantly — some cropped up late last week — that conservatives are attempting to broker a deal whereby Gingrich gets out of the race (he’s not going to) and throws his support behind former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum. Conservatives are united and reenergized, the logic goes, and Gingrich, who has won a total of one state outside of his home state of Georgia, saves the conservative cause.
There’s only one problem with all of that: There’s virtually no evidence that Gingrich retains any significant constituency within the GOP or will play an influential role in the presidential race as it moves to its general election phase.
In fact, there is a case to be made that Gingrich matters far less in the contest than Texas Rep. Ron Paul.
Rick Santorum huddles with conservative leaders, ponders future in race
Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum met with conservative leaders Thursday in Northern Virginia to discuss his path forward in the Republican presidential race, according to sources familiar with the gathering.
The conversation focused on the struggling candidacy of former House speaker Newt Gingrich and whether a final push could be made to unite conservatives and stop the likely nomination of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. The idea of Santorum leaving the race was not raised.
Romney takes big delegate prize from Wisconsin, Maryland and D.C.
Mitt Romney expanded his delegate lead significantly on Tuesday, taking at least 83 delegates from Wisconsin, Maryland and the District of Columbia and reinforcing that he is on a clear path for the GOP presidential nomination.
Rick Santorum, meanwhile, is projected to have won six delegates, with six yet to be determined.
Romney has expanded his delegate lead over Santorum to 655 to 278, according to the most recent AP projections. (For all the numbers, see the Post’s delegate tracker.)
The 83 delegates Romney won for sure makes Tuesday his second-biggest single-day delegate haul of the GOP primary season.
Romney finally puts it all together
For the first time in a competitive primary, Mitt Romney won some elusive demographics.
Exit polls from the Wisconsin primary Tuesday showed Romney expanding his appeal to groups that have consistently voted against him this year, including evangelical Christians, voters who describe themselves as “very conservative,” strong supporters of the tea party movement and voters making less than $50,000 per year.
The result was Romney’s most complete performance of the 2012 campaign. And it strongly suggests that the Republican Party is dropping its long-standing resistance to embracing Romney.
Mitt Romney and Maryland. Perfect together.
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s convincing victory in Maryland’s presidential primary was no surprise as none of his rivals even contested the Old Line State.
A look inside the exit polls makes clear why Maryland was such Mitt country. Romney’s biggest strengths in the Republican presidential race to date are with voters who make more than $100,000 and college graduates. Maryland has lots of both.
Wisconsin primary: Rick Santorum’s Waterloo?
Is it over yet?
Even the most die-hard political junkies could be forgiven for wondering when the Republican presidential race will take its last heaving breath and keel over, never to be heard from again.
The death rattle is clearly audible in the race these days, as former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney spars with the White House while former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum tries, in vain, to convince an ever-shrinking piece of the Republican electorate that this race is still a race.
Obama takes on Romney over “Big Oil” in new ad
President Obama is taking on former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney by name in a new campaign ad, the first time he has done so in the 2012 race and the latest sign that the general election has now begun in earnest.
The new ad, which begins airing tonight in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia, seeks to link Romney to major oil companies.
Mitt Romney’s women problem
The protracted GOP presidential primary process has badly damaged former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney as he begins to turn his attention to the fall general election fight against President Obama, according to a new poll conducted in 12 swing states by Gallup and USA Today .
In the 12 states — Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin — included in the Gallup/USA Today survey, Obama leads Romney 51 percent to 42 percent.
Why Marco Rubio’s endorsement matters to Mitt Romney
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s decision to formally endorse Mitt Romney’s presidential bid on Wednesday night doesn’t matter all that much in and of itself.
After all, the Florida Republican presidential primary was almost two months ago and everyone already knows that Rubio will be one of the major contenders to be vice president when Romney makes his pick later this summer. (He is ranked #1 in our vice presidential Line.)
Etch a Sketch overkill?
Etch a Sketch was everywhere last week.
In the wake of a comment by senior Mitt Romney aide Eric Fehrnstrom on Wednesday comparing the children’s toy to how his candidate would address some of the more conservative positions if he became the GOP presidential nominee, the political world exploded. (This blog posted two long-ish analyses on what Etch a Sketch might mean.)
Is Mitt Romney underrated? Your answers!
We asked Fixistas on Monday whether former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is underrated as a presidential candidate. (We made the argument that he is in our newspaper column here.)
You responded — via Quora, Facebook and the regular old comments section of the blog. Here are excerpts of a few of our favorite responses:
The next 5 things that will happen in the presidential race
But, with every political death comes political birth — circle of life! — and the end of the primary signals the official start of the general election.
Here are five things to watch for over the next few weeks as the candidates and the political world transitions from the intrasquad scrimmage to the real thing.
Is Mitt Romney underrated?
In our newspaper column today, we argued that Mitt Romney is underrated as a presidential candidate.
Our argument, in brief, went like this:
* Romney is a Mormon in a party dominated by evangelicals.
* Romney represented a Northeastern state in a party still quite South-centric.
How Mitt Romney gets to 1,144 delegates
The Republican presidential race isn’t even half over.
Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney visits a campaign headquarters Jan. 19 in Charleston, S.C.
(Joe Raedle - Getty Images)
That’s right, we haven’t even handed out half the delegates yet, and Mitt Romney isn’t yet halfway to winning the 1,144 delegates he needs to secure the nomination.
Which means there is a long way to go.
At the same time, the states that have voted so far have given us a pretty good idea about where each candidate’s strengths lie — Rick Santorum in Southern and Midwestern states and among more conservative voters, and Romney in the Northeast and West and among more affluent voters, etc.
With that in mind, we thought it worthwhile to take a look at just how Romney gets to that magical number: 1,144 delegates.
The “walking dead” phase of the Republican primary is upon us
This is how primary campaigns end — not with a bang but with a wimper. Or, more accurately, a whine.
Rick Santorum lost his temper with the New York Times’ Jeff Zeleny on Sunday when Zeleny, perhaps the most even-tempered reporter we know, pushed the former Pennsylvania Senator on his remark that former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney would be the “worst Republican” to nominate against President Obama .
Ron Paul video pokes at Romney opponents’ focus on Etch a Sketch
Ron Paul just did Mitt Romney another favor.
The Texas congressman, who throughout the campaign has given Romney a series of assists, is now shunning the media’s coverage of and Romney’s opponents’ reaction to the controversy over a Romney adviser’s Etch a Sketch comments.
A new web video from Paul’s campaign features video of the aide, Eric Fehrnstrom, along with footage of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum wielding Etch A Sketches on the campaign trail in an effort to attack Romney.
Following the Etch a Sketch footage and clips of the media talking about the issue, the words “$15 trillion in debt” flash on the screen, followed by “12 million unemployed” and “a country at war.”
Finally, the screen shows the words, “Tired of the games?” and pitches Paul as the antidote to silly campaign stunts.
But the real beneficiary of the ad is Romney, who again has Paul backing him up when it matters most.
Veepstakes 2012: The Inaugural Edition
There is nothing — literally, nothing — that the Fix loves more in politics than the speculation surrounding who the presidential candidate will pick as his vice presidential running mate.
Why Louisiana could prolong Romney’s Southern slide
Brad Coker, the president of Mason-Dixon polling, offered a thoughtful counterpoint to our piece this morning on why Louisiana may be more hospitable to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney than other Southern states.
We asked him to let us post it to the Fix, and he agreed.
The Etch-a-Sketch incident and the art of the political gaffe
All political gaffes are not created equal.
Some come to define campaigns, others disappear in a single news cycle (or sometimes less).
So what differentiates the gaffes that enter campaign folklore from those that even the most committed political junkies struggle to recall even a few weeks after they happen?
Rick Santorum’s end game (and why it matters)
The last 48 hours have not been kind to former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum’s presidential prospects.
He lost the Illinois primary badly to Mitt Romney on Tuesday and, in the process, fell 300 delegates behind the former Massachusetts governor. And, adding insult to injury, former Florida governor Jeb Bush finally decided to wade into the presidential race on behalf of Romney on Wednesday, a signal to the Republican political world that primary race is at an end.
The next big endorsements for Mitt Romney
Mitt Romney landed one of the biggest fish left in the GOP endorsement pond on Wednesday in Jeb Bush , and the thinking among many in the GOP is that the party will begin publicly coalescing around the former Massachusetts governor soon.
But what would that look like? How will we know when that’s happening?
Below, we look at the endorsements Romney can get that would signal such a shift — followed by some endorsements that he probably can’t or won’t get (until the race is decided, at least).
What did we miss? The comments section awaits. (And be sure to check out the Post’s endorsement tracker for the latest on who’s backing who.)
ENDORSEMENTS ROMNEY CAN GET
* Rand Paul: This one makes too much sense. The Kentucky senator’s dad, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), of course is 
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) walks through the Senate Subway at the U.S. Capitol in August. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)still a candidate, so nothing’s happening while he’s still in the race. But Ron Paul and Romney have been friendly on the campaign trail for a long time, and now that the elder Paul’s campaign seems to have wound down in recent weeks, there are increasing rumors about Romney’s team cutting a deal with him.
What better way to cement the alliance than have Ron Paul drop out and Rand Paul endorse Romney? It would certainly help Romney with the tea party, but it might not sit well with Paul’s base.
New Mitt Romney ad touts ‘Conservative Record’
In a new 30-second spot airing in Wisconsin, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney touts his record as a “proven fiscal conservative” with quotes from columnists praising his work in Massachusetts.
“Conservative Record” was almost certainly made before Tuesday. But it works as pushback on yesterday’s firestorm, sparked when a Romney adviser unwisely compared the general election to an “Etch a Sketch” that erases what came before.
Many on both the right and left interpreted those words as proof that Romney would abandon his conservative positions once he won the Republican nomination.
Etch a sketch politics: How small things become big things
Today should be a moment of celebration for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. Not only did he cruise to victory in the Illinois primary on Tuesday night but he received the endorsement of former Florida governor Jeb Bush today.
The 2012 GOP presidential race — in 5 charts.
The Fix has spilled tens of thousands — maybe even hundreds of thousands (gulp) — of words on the 2012 presidential race. (Heck, we started covering it around the middle of 2009!)
But, in truth, the entire race — at least on the Republican side — can be explained in five charts.
Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney and the Fix endorsement hierarchy
Immediately after the news broke this morning that former Florida governor Jeb Bush had decided to get off the presidential sidelines and endorse former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney , the political world wondered just one thing: Where does this fit in the Fix Endorsement Hierarchy?
Never fear, political world. (Sidebar: “Political World” is an underrated Bob Dylan tune.) We have your answer.
Jeb Bush endorses Mitt Romney
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush announced his support for Mitt Romney’s presidential bid this morning, a major boost for the former Massachusetts governor as he seeks to rally the party behind his candidacy.
“Congratulations to Governor Mitt Romney on his win last night and to all the candidates for a hard fought, thoughtful debate and primary season,” Bush said in a statement released by his office on Wednesday morning. “Primary elections have been held in thirty-four states, and now is the time for Republicans to unite behind Governor Romney and take our message of fiscal conservatism and job creation to all voters this fall. I am endorsing Mitt Romney for our Party’s nomination.”
Romney expands lead to 300 delegates
Mitt Romney took a 300-delegate lead on Rick Santorum in the GOP presidential race after a decisive victory Tuesday in Illinois’s primary, according to projections.
AP projections show Romney won 43 of 54 delegates available in the state, with 10 delegates going for Santorum. That final delegate available Tuesday hasn’t been awarded.
The results mean Romney now leads Santorum 563 delegates to 263 delegates. Romney is now almost exactly halfway to the 1,144 delegates he would need to clinch the nomination. He needs to win about 46 percent of the available delegates in the remaining two dozen contests.
5 counties to watch in the Illinois primary
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is expected to cruise to victory over Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum in tonight’s Illinois Republican presidential primary.
But, how will you know if Romney is running at, above or below expectations? With 102(!) counties in Illinois, it’s tough to know where to look. That’s where we come in.
Mitt Romney + Eminem (VIDEO)
The Fix is a big fan of video mashups. So, when someone — someone named Hugh Atkin to be specific — combined Eminem’s mega-hit “The Real Slim Shady” with a series of quotes from former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney , we were more than a little intrigued.
Check it out. And you can thanks us later.
The 2012 presidential race. By Google.
The story of the 2012 Republican presidential race — as told by Google searches. (If you have not bookmarked Google’s Politics and Elections blog, you should. Like, immediately.)
What Rick Santorum’s Puerto Rico sideshow tells us about his campaign
Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum spent several days in Puerto Rico over the past week but won only 8 percent of the vote and no delegates in Sunday’s primary, a result that suggests that his visit amounted to both a colossal waste of time and a considerable strategic mistake.
“Insurgencies live and die on momentum and I’m sure that drove their decision-making, but the failure to recognize the structural nature of the Puerto Rico primary indicates impulse decisions instead of cold-eyed analysis,” said Brad Todd, a Republican media consultant who is unaffiliated in the 2012 presidential contest.
Romney ad: Santorum is an ‘economic lightweight’
Mitt Romney’s campaign is up with a new ad in the Illinois primary labeling Rick Santorum an “economic lightweight” and comparing him — surprise! — to President Obama.
The ad picks up on bad reviews of Santorum’s economic plan from several sources, one of which labels it the worst plan in the GOP field.
“Rick Santorum: Another economic lightweight,” the ad says as it juxtaposes video of Santorum with to video of Obama.
Why Mitt Romney should win Illinois
If past is prologue, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney should win the Illinois presidential primary on Tuesday.
It’s not because he’s ahead — albeit narrowly — in most polling in the Prairie State. And, it’s not because he is a better ideological fit for the state than former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum.
Republicans on the 2012 GOP field: Blah.
None of the top three Republican presidential candidates has created much enthusiasm among GOP voters, according to new poll numbers released by Gallup on Thursday.
Just 35 percent of Republicans said they would “enthusiastically” support former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney this November, while 42 percent said their vote would be primarily against President Obama.
Are there moderates left in the GOP?
With all the focus in the Republican presidential race on former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s struggles with conservatives, we got to wondering about the other end of the ideological spectrum within the Republican party.
Put simply: How many Republicans identify themselves as moderates or liberals in exit polling conducted in the 2012 race to date? And are there enough centrists in the party to deliver Romney the nomination?
Seamus the dog : An explanation
Seamus is the dog who won’t die, politically at least.
Almost three decades after former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney put the dog in a cage strapped to the roof of his family truckster — ok, it was Chevy station wagon — the issue continues to, ahem, dog him on the campaign trail.
John Brabender, the chief strategist for former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum’s presidential campaign, was the latest to hit Romney for the Seamus story. “Quite frankly, I’m not sure I’m going to listen to the value judgment of a guy who strapped his dog to the top of the roof of his car and went hurling down the highway,” Brabender said on CNN on Wednesday. (Make sure to read Phil Rucker’s terrific story on the history of Seamus.)
California could decide the GOP nominee
California is not exactly the GOP’s idea of home turf.
But in the 2012 Republican presidential primary, it’s the most important state on the calendar.
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks during a campaign stop at William Jewell College on Tuesday, in Liberty, Mo. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
California’s June 5 primary, despite being the second-to-last contest, is looking more and more like it may determine whether Mitt Romney can win the Republican nomination or whether the party goes to its August convention without a nominee.
“If Gingrich drops out and Santorum can go at Romney one on one, it could be competitive all the way to California, in which case California would pretty much decide the nomination,” said John Ryder, a Republican National Committeeman from Tennessee who is an expert on the delegate process.
What you might have missed in the Alabama, Mississippi exit polls
The Fix loves exit polls. Like, a lot.
But, once primary day/night passes, the political world rapidly moves on to the next Tuesday, the next state that is, or so we say, really going to matter. And the poor exits poll get lost in the shuffle.
Not this time! Here are five observations from the exit polls Tuesday night that tell us something important about the race going forward. Want to sift through them on your own? The Washington Post polling unit has a terrific sortable interactive exit poll tool. It’s fun — and educational!
Mitt Romney: City slicker
Mitt Romney is definitely not at home on the range.
Primaries in highly rural Alabama and Mississippi on Tuesday reinforced what a problem Romney has with rural conservatives, who tend to be more conservative than their urban and suburban counterparts.
Here’s all you need to know:
(The Washington Post)
Notice how Romney’s Alabama support is clustered almost exclusively around the three big cities on the map?
It’s something we’ve seen over and over again.
Romney’s delegate lead grows
Despite his losses in the Alabama and Mississippi primaries, Mitt Romney appears to have expanded his delegate lead on Tuesday.
The most recent projections from AP show Rick Santorum took 31 delegates from Alabama and Mississippi, while Newt Gingrich took 24 delegates and Romney got 23.
But this morning, Romney was projected to win all nine delegates from American Samoa’s caucuses, and he also won the Hawaii caucuses by a large margin.
AP projections show Romney beat Santorum 18 delegates to four in those jurisdictions.
Romney survives the conservative gauntlet
Even in defeat, Mitt Romney is nothing if not consistent. In nearly every state where he has campaigned, exit polls show Romney performing basically the same in every major demographic group, give or take a few points.
And despite the results Tuesday night, it’s almost definitely good enough for him to win the GOP nomination.
Comedian Jeff Foxworthy introduces Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, at a campaign stop at the Whistle Stop Cafe, Monday, in Mobile, Ala. (AP Photo/ John David Mercer)
That’s because, while those demographics have been too tough for him to overcome in Southern primaries and Midwestern caucus states, those states are basically done voting.
The road forward goes through much less conservative voters.
Santorum says Fox News “shilling” for Romney
Rick Santorum is going after Fox News Channel, accusing it of “shilling for” Mitt Romney’s campaign.
On Brian Kilmeade’s Fox News Radio show today, Santorum said his campaign has noticed the trend.
“This is a man who’s had a 10-to-1 money advantage. He’s had all the organizational advantages. He has Fox News shilling for him everyday. No offense, Brian, but I see it,” Santorum said.
In Alabama and Mississippi, Romney aims for one-third of delegates
Romney sets the bar in the South; AFL-CIO backs Obama; Christie pulls in big bucks for Menendez challenger; and new ads in the Arizona and Nebraska Senate races.
Make sure to sign up to get “Afternoon Fix” in your e-mail inbox every day by 5 (ish) p.m!
Mississippi, Alabama primaries: 5 counties to watch
Need to know where to look to figure out who’s having a good night in the Alabama and Mississippi presidential primaries? We’ve got you covered.
We asked a handful of political operatives in both states to give us the one (or two) counties that will tell us something significant about how former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich are faring tonight.
The dirty little secret of the Alabama and Mississippi primaries
Here’s a simple fact that has been lost amid Mitt Romney’s newfound love of grits, Newt Gingrich’s desire for gun racks on Chevy Volts and Rick Santorum’s insistence that the South is a home game for him: None of the top three Republican presidential contenders are “of” the South in any meaningful way.
Alabama, Mississippi primaries: The Fix prediction contest!
Voters are voting in Alabama and Mississippi (and Hawaii and American Samoa)!
Madison United Methodist Church precinct worker Bob Shirley, left, hands off a "I Voted" sticker to a voter in Madison, Miss., Tuesday, March 13, 2012. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)That means it’s time for a Fix prediction contest where you, gentle reader, make the call on how the candidates will finish. If you win, the greatest prize known to man (or woman) — an official Fix t-shirt — is yours.
Here’s what you need to do: In the comments section below, predict the order of finish — with percentages! — for the top three candidates in Mississippi and Alabama. As a tiebreaker, give us your total turnout number for Alabama.
Polls close in both states at 8 p.m. eastern time so any predictions made after that time won’t count. And, to be eligible to win, you must make your prediction in the comments section.
Need some guidance? Here’s the latest polling in Alabama and Mississippi. Now get to it!
Mississippi, Alabama and the power of political surprises
For all of its unpredictability, there have been few actual surprises since voters began casting ballots in the 2012 Republican presidential race.
Mitt Romney won New Hampshire. Newt Gingrich won South Carolina. Romney won Florida. Even Rick Santorum’s (eventual) victory in Iowa wasn’t entirely surprising since polling suggested he was surging and social conservative candidates have a history of strong performances in the Hawkeye State. Santorum almost won in Michigan and Ohio, both of which would have been real surprises, but he didn’t.
Republican voters not in love with Romney, Santorum
The Ohio presidential primary revealed one key thing about the Republican electorate: They haven’t fallen head over heels for either of the two frontrunning candidates.
While former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum finished first and second, respectively, in the Ohio balloting (and won more than 900,000 votes combined) the support for both men, according to an analysis of the exit polling, was far more tepid than you might expect.
Mitt Romney’s most awkward moments (video)
In his Super Tuesday victory speech, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney praised his Republican rivals for their performances. “Thanks, guys,” he said. “Nice races.”
Um...awkward. Watch it for yourself (around the 2:05 mark):
That got us thinking about some of the most awkward moments over the years of Mitt Ronney, presidential candidate. The greatest hits are below. First, a caveat: Yes, Romney has made a cottage industry out of his awkwardness but....it’s also somewhat endearing. (The Fix is sympathetic since “smooth” has never been a word used to describe us.)
Vice President Rob Portman?
If you didn’t know by now, The Fix is skeptical that political endorsements matter much. If they matter at all. But if there’s one that has mattered in the 2012 presidential race to date, it might be that of Rob Portman.
The freshman Ohio senator and former Office of Management and Budget director during the Bush years is getting plenty of kudos for his work to help former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney win narrowly in the Ohio primary on Tuesday.
Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (C) tours Gregory Industries with Executive Vice President Matt Gregory (R) and U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio) during a campaign stop in Canton, Ohio, over the weekend. (REUTERS/Brian Snyder)
And for a guy who got a fair amount of vice presidential buzz four years ago, it’s likely that Portman will be a major player in the veepstakes as the year goes on. (The Portman chatter is starting already.)
What’s more interesting than the GOP race? President Obama.
Over the last 30 days, the Republican presidential race has been going great guns with a series of states voting, millions being spent and the candidates trading blows on a moment-by-moment basis.
And yet, for all the attention the GOP candidates have drawn, it pales in comparison to the interest directed at President Obama, according to a breakdown of searches conducted over the last month by Google.
Romney spent $12 million in February, ended it with $7.3 million on hand
Mitt Romney’s campaign spent slightly more than it brought in during the month of February and ended the month with $7.3 million cash on hand.
Romney’s campaign announced the cash figure Thursday; on Wednesday, it announced that it had raised $11.5 million for the month.
Is Mitt Romney getting a raw deal?
Mitt Romney, having won six of the ten states voting on Super Tuesday including the grand prize of Ohio, almost certainly woke up Wednesday morning, read the news coverage of his victories and thought to himself: “What else do I have to do?”
And he could be forgiven for thinking that way. After all, the pre-Super Tuesday expectation-setting by the media — up to and including this here blog — suggested that if Romney vanquished former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum in Ohio he would have not only “won” the biggest primary day of the year but also taken a major step toward emerging as the Republican presidential nominee. There was no discussion about what Romney’s margin of victory had to be in Ohio in order for the win to truly count as a win.
Mitt Romney’s muddled march to the GOP nomination
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney will almost certainly be the Republican presidential nominee when the party gathers in Tampa, Fla., to pick its standard-bearer this summer.
His path to Tampa in the aftermath of Super Tuesday, however, seems virtually certain to be marked not by a triumphant coronation but rather by a decidedly unglamorous process of delegate accumulation that will almost certainly force him to lose a series of battles in order to ultimately win the nomination war.
Southern swing could help Romney by elevating Gingrich
The South doesn’t like Mitt Romney very much.
The South is Mitt Romney’s best friend right now.
Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks during a Super Tuesday rally on Tuesday, March 6, 2012 in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)Those two statements, while seemingly at odds with each other, might both be true in the coming weeks.
While Romney has shown a complete inability to win Southern states (a quirky race in Virginia aside), a succession of Southern states holding contests in the weeks ahead could actually play right into his hands by elevating Newt Gingrich back to the level of serious contender.
And if that happens, Rick Santorum’s path to victory gets much tougher.
Super Tuesday: Winners and losers
Super Tuesday is over. Long live Super Tuesday!
The Republican presidential primary campaign’s busiest night — 10 states voted in all — turned more into a marathon than a sprint as the Ohio primary wasn’t called for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney until early Wednesday morning. (More on that below.)
Mitt Romney raised $11.5 million in February
Mitt Romney’s campaign said Wednesday that it raised $11.5 million in the month of February, the campaign’s second-strongest fundraising month of the campaign to date.
Romney increased his fundraising significantly from January, when he pulled in just $6.5 million. His campaign didn’t say how much money he had left on hand at the end of last month.
Romney’s big delegate lead — in one graph
Mitt Romney won more than twice as many delegates as Rick Santorum on Super Tuesday, taking advantage of the former Pennsylvania Senator’s failure to file for some delegates in Ohio or to get on the ballot in Virginia.
As the Post’s Phil Rucker is reporting, the Romney campaign is spinnning this development as the beginning of the end for the rivals to the former Massachusetts governor. .
And a look at the graph below affirms the delegate challenge for the non-Romneys — especially because states can’t award their delegates on a winner-take-all basis until April.
Romney has now won a clear majority of the 745 delegates that have been projected to date. Santorum’s deficit stands at 239 delegates with just 1,541 delegates to go.
Unless he puts together a pretty significant winning streak in the verty near future, Santorum’s best hope would be a brokered convention since he wouldn’t be able to win the nomination outright.
Wealthy voters deliver for Mitt Romney
A funny thing happened on the way to Mitt Romney’s victories in Michigan last week and Ohio on Tuesday:
Rich people showed up to vote. A lot.
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, greet supporters at his Super Tuesday primary night rally in Boston, Tuesday, March 6, 2012. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Exit polls in both Michigan and Ohio show voters making more than $100,000 per year turning out in much higher numbers this year than they did in 2008. And in both cases, they might well have provided the difference for Romney.
Super Tuesday: Rating the GOP candidates’ speeches
Ohio’s Republican presidential primary is still up in the air — and could be for a very long time — but all of the major candidates have already given their victory speeches.
With apologies to Ron Paul, whose speech wasn’t widely televised (cut the conspiracy theories!), here are our Fix ratings of the addresses given by former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. They are ranked from best to worst. Agree or disagree with our picks? The comments section awaits!
Ohio, Ohio, Ohio
Super Tuesday has played out exactly as we expected thus far. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has won in Massachusetts, Virginia and Vermont while former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has claimed his home state of Georgia and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum has claimed Tennessee.
What do those status quo results mean as we go forward tonight? That Ohio remains the entire ball of wax — or close to it.
Why Mitt Romney’s Virginia win could matter. A lot.
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s victory in Virginia, according to the Associated Press, will be quickly forgotten as the eyes of the political world turn to the primaries in Ohio and Tennessee — contests expected to be more closely fought on this Super Tuesday night.
It shouldn’t be.
Romney’s victory in the Commonwealth will almost certainly net him all 46 of Virginia’s delegates due to the fact that only he and Texas Rep. Ron Paul qualified for the ballot.
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