They gathered today's special round table session for the entire program [tag on the end their comments on an Arnold Schwarzenegger interview from the Press Pass] to reassess the state of affairs in the presidential campaign due to, of course, Governor Mitt Romney's strong performance in the debate on Wednesday night. If you didn't know the polls, the indication from today's group would have you think that Mr. Romney is now ahead. (51.1% Barack Obama to 47.8% Mitt Romney - fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com).
Today's players:
Senior Adviser to the Obama campaign, Robert Gibbs; former Republican
presidential candidate Newt Gingrich; Democratic strategist Hilary
Rosen; Republican strategist Mike Murphy; and NBC’s Political Director
Chuck Todd.
The reason is that in fact Mr. Romney performed better than the President that night, but the win may have some unintended repercussions, which we'll get to in a minute. But first there are a few themes that permeated throughout, one of which was the apathy among voters to want to 'start over' and go in a different direction [with Mitt Romney]. The other to a lesser extent was that the President lacks a vision of what his second term will look like.
They both play into the same one mistake that the Obama Administration has made in its reelection bid and that was that his policies were predicated on achieving a second term, a mistaken presumption. However, the notable legislation that has gone through - The Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank financial reform - needs a second Obama term in office to succeed. The Republicans know that once 'Obamacare' kicks in, people are not going to want to go back. It's just the way it will be because most people, a general consensus if you will, don't care if the insurance companies don't make as much profit as they have been.
Newt Gingrich said at the top of the discussion that the race is going back and forth, and everyone ran with it even though Mr. Romney has never lead in the race. Ms. Rosen and Mr. Gibbs played defense against Mr. Gingrich and Mike Murphy. We assume that the producers figured two referees in Chuck Todd and Mr. Gregory would be needed to somewhat table the hyperbole.
To that point, we return to Mr. Gingrich and his reaction to the unemployment figures dropping from 8.1% to 7.8%, a head-turner for certain, where he stated that people have such a distrust of Barack Obama that it leads people to come to conclusions such as the administration influenced the statistics, as insinuated by Jack Welch, former CEO of GE. That's correct because people like Newt Gingrich keep fueling it. This, relievingly so, prompted Chuck Todd to interject that there is too many corrosive statements by a few influential people an is causing a vital breakdown of trust in our institutions. And he's right. The new stat should be welcomed by everyone, but these days there's no having it.
Mr. Gingrich, one more time please. In the Republican primary race, Mr. Gingrich once called the man he now defends fundamentally dishonest. It's notable because in winning the debate, Mr. Romney has set up a bad dual dynamic - the campaign Romney and the debate Romney, which are at odds with one another, but will to meet at some point, and someone is going to get shafted. Republicans are attempting to hail this as the big swing because they have been so thirsty for a battle victory after feeling like one was never coming. However, in this desperation it seems like they are willing to look the other way when it comes to his policies, namely his tax plan. The debate Mr. Romney said that he would not cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans, while campaign Mr. Romney promises at 20% across the board cut.
Mike Murphy said that 60 million people got a look at Mitt Romney and they liked what they saw, but Lord knows Americans like a good sales pitch and that's where Mr. Romney's private sector experience came into play, in the interview. Oddly but like Mr. Gingrich, Mr. Romney does seem to feel that what he says one day is automatically discounted when he says the contrary on the next. But video exists and the reason it exists is because people watch it. Despite Mr. Murphy's bathroom statistic, it's the reason why trust is a factor in the race and it doesn't favor Mr. Romney.
However, Mr. Murphy did mention that Mr. Romney has talked about one of the tax loopholes that he would close, which was surprisingly candid on strategy given that Mr. Romney has not in fact mentioned it - the home mortgage deduction. This doesn't play well for anyone who aspires to or is now owning a home. It really didn't get that much discussion play, but it just illustrates that Mr. Romney needs to be more forthcoming in the specifics of his policy proposals. This, by the way, was a key factor in President Obama's poor debate performance. He didn't force Mr. Romney to be specific, especially since most people realize that Mr. Romney was just saying many things that people wanted to hear. Style over substance - it may not win but it will keep things interesting.
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