Mitt Romney

The Democrats threw down the gauntlet at their convention in Charlotte this week, putting health care front and center and warning the Republicans that they won’t get away with more of the health care fear-mongering they’ve been stirring up for years. This strategy was solidified on the second night of the convention when President Bill Clinton, in the words of former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum, “detonated the H-bomb of the 2012 campaign: the Medicaid issue.”

According to exclusive polling data, Mitt Romney received little to no post-convention “bump” following the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, last week. In Ohio, Obama’s previous lead over Romney of 45.3 percent to 44.4 percent has switched to a Romney lead of 46.8 percent to 43.7 percent. Although within the previous polls margin of error, the Republican convention appears to have given Romney a 2 point bump while taking 1 point from Obama. In the Senate race, before the Republican convention, Democrat Sherrod Brown held a narrow 43.6 percent to 41.4 percent lead over Republican Josh Mandel. Again, although within the margin of error, the post-convention poll gives Republican Mandel the advantage at 44.3 percent to 43.5 percent, representing a 3 point bump for Man del, while Brown’s take stayed basically constant.

I think everyone here comes together around the Ryan budget, which makes cuts to programs that have worked as safety nets for years. Cutting Medicare hurts seniors. It cuts Pell grants for college students. Repealing the Affordable Care Act makes cuts to all the programs in place that are helping women now. A million women in Missouri are now be helped by no-costs mammograms, cervical screenings, and pre-natal visits.

It was quite a cast of speakers taking the stage at the Republican National Convention’s penultimate night. Never mind the GOP’s newly anointed savior prince Paul Ryan, but of far greater importance were former Secretary of State Condileeza Rice, Puerto Rico Governor Luis Fortuno and New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez. They, among others, comprised a row of non-white faces streaming before a mostly white (read: almost exclusively white) audience.

Democrats cannot do better among working-class whites if they envision them as a uniform group that thinks and feels the same way everywhere, as the political pros quite often do. That is, an overwhelmingly middle-class and upper-class set of politicians, operatives, and pundits appear to have so little direct experience of working-class people of any color that they consistently fall into stereotyping that clouds their vision and often insults the voters they are trying to persuade.

Single women and married women split over choice for president
US President Barack Obama aggravated a culture war battle over contraception as he wooed women voters Wednesday, warning that MittRomney’s Republicans would turn back the clock to the 1950s.

Sure, Mitt Romney's foreign tour is proof that he's a diplomacy doofus, but his campaign is still laughing ... all the way to the bank. When he wasn't insulting the Brits in London, Mitt was raising millions from the people who made millions manipulating interest rates. Yeah, those guys at Barclays have plenty of easy money and they're eager to share the spoils with a fellow vulture-capitalist.

Once the words are spoken, it's very hard to take them back -- especially when they're so obviously true.
“If you have things to hide, then maybe you’re doing things wrong,” Bentley said. “I think you ought to be willing to release everything to the American people.”
Dr. Gov. Bentley's comments about Mitt Romney's tax returns are featured in a new highlights reel (below the fold) of Republicans saying Romney ought to release those returns ... at the same time Bentley is desperately backpedaling via press release.
"I believe my comments were taken out of context, they were not reported in their entirety, and I want to make sure the record is set straight," Governor Bentley said in a statement. "I believe in trasparency, and that was the basis for my answer. I personally choose to release my own returns each year, and there was no effort to imply that Mr. Romney has anything to hide."