Wednesday Open Thread

26 Oct 2011 Author: rikyrah

hat tip – several posters from The Obama Diary

One of the posters said about this segment about former Congressman Patrick Murphy’s segment on Hardball:

utaustinliberal
October 21, 2011 at 7:18 pm
Chipsticks I absolutely concur. Hopefruit you’re right. I saw Former Congressman and Veteran of the Iraq war Patrick Murphy on the live edition of Hardball and I’m watching the repeat because he was phenomenal. He, like PBO opposed the Iraq war but still served the country.
He vociferously thanked President Obama for the outcome of the Libya situation and for getting us out of the dumb war that was Iraq. He echoed the President’s words that the veterans will need healthcare, jobs, mental healthcare, houses, education. He thanked FLOTUS and SLOTUS in such a sweet manner for their Joining Forces work and thanked PBO for the updated GI Bill that helps veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
He lambasted Mitt Romney so beautifully for speaking out of his ass when releasing the stupid statement that said by pulling out of Iraq recklessley, PBO has made America and the troops unsafe. He lambasted the repugs in congress for their empty platitudes and sucking up to troops but voting against a jobs bill that will provide jobs for our veterans. He said President Obama is the epitome of a real leader and he is proud to have him as his President. He was absolutely wonderful. I hope he wins the race for Attorney General in PA.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Good Morning.

As you make it through Hump Day, don’t forget JJP.

Drop those links. Engage in debate. Give us trivia and gossip too.

And always, have a peaceful day.
……………………………..

Lawrence O’Donnell does a piece on the President and the Iraq War, tracing it back to then State Senator Obama’s speech about ‘ dumb wars’.

In the Rewrite, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell explains how many thousands of lives and trillions of dollars could have been saved if America had listened to then a 41-year-old Barack Obama. And in a twist of fate, ending the war would fall to that young then-ignorable state senator to end the war he opposed.

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Anonymous
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Anonymous
Why Mitt Romney’s Medicaid Cuts Are Even More Draconian Than Paul Ryan’s
By Igor Volsky on Oct 25, 2011 at 9:15 am
Medicaid, which is funded jointly by the states and the federal government, provides health coverage to approximately 53 million lower income Americans.
The federal government matches state spending on a per-claim basis and pays a percentage of each state’s Medicaid costs (anywhere between 50 and 75 percent). Conservatives like House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan and the GOP presidential contenders have proposed reducing the federal government’s commitment to the program by block granting Medicaid and paying states pre-established grants that may not reflect actual costs. The reduction in federal spending would require states to either appropriate additional funding towards Medicaid or lower program expenditures by cutting provider payment rates, limiting eligibility, and reducing benefits, the CBO has concluded.
Former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) has endorsed Ryan’s block grant proposal, and yesterday, during a radio interview with Sean Hannity, he revealed that his cuts to Medicaid could be even more draconian than Ryan’s. Ryan already aims to shrink the federal government’s contribution to Medicaid by 35 percent in 2022, converting the existing federal matching rate for each state into a block grant and growing the grant by approximately 3 percent annually (as compared to the estimated 6.5 percent to 7 percent annual growth* in federal expenditures that would occur under current law). Romney told Hannity that he would grow his Medicaid block grants by just 1 to 2 percent per year:
ROMNEY: It’s mathematically pretty straight forward how you hold down costs, which is you say, we’re going to cut it by a certain amount and then comes the hard work of saying where you’re going to cut it. And that why I’ve laid out a plan that balances our budget…taking Medicaid and giving it back to the states and growing it only 1 to 2 percent a year.
Comparatively, Romney’s reductions would result in even steeper cuts that would affect tens of millions of low-income Medicaid beneficiaries — seniors in nursing homes, people with disabilities, children — for whom the program has become a critical source of coverage. A very rough back-of-the envelope calculation using the CBO’s projected federal Medicaid expenditures for 2012 as a baseline (and then growing that number by 1.5 percent annually through 2021) demonstrates the sheer magnitude of Rommey’s cuts as compared to current law and Ryan’s plan.
The results show that Romney could reduce the size of the program by more than 40 percent over that period:
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/10/25/352367/why-mitt-romneys-medicaid-cuts-are-even-more-draconian-than-paul-ryans/
Anonymous
Romney: I Support Birth Control Because It ‘Prevents Conception’
By Marie Diamond on Oct 20, 2011 at 12:00 pm
At a campaign event in Iowa today, GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney was confronted by a woman in the audience about his support for so-called “personhood” laws that would define life as beginning at conception, effectively outlawing common forms of birth control. “98% of American women, including me, use birth control,” she said, “so could you help me understand why you oppose the use of birth control?”
Romney answered simply, “I don’t” — a surprising departure from the rest of the field’s radicalized anti-contraception views. Romney explained that his support of birth control is not inconsistent with his anti-abortion stance because, “I believe life begins at conception and birth control prevents conception.” Watch it:
As the woman pointed out, however, Romney studiously avoided commenting on the stickier side of this issue — whether he supports hormonal contraception (like birth control pills) that can also prevent eggs from being implanted, which many conservatives think is tantamount to abortion.
Romney was also less-than-straight about his pro-states’ rights approach to abortion. Although he claimed, “I would like to see the Supreme Court return this right to the states,” he has recently pledged to push for federal abortion restrictions.
Romney has a mixed record when it comes to supporting women’s access to safe, effective contraception. In an effort to pander to social conservatives powerful in the Republican base, Romney said he would expand a Bush-era rule that allows doctors to deny women access to contraceptives.
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/10/20/348941/romney-i-support-birth-control-because-it-prevents-conception/
Anonymous
October 26, 2011 8:05 AM
Romney’s ‘huge freaking deal’

By Steve Benen
At this point in the morning yesterday, it looked like the biggest political screw-up of the day would be Rick Perry’s latest Birther flirtations. As it turns out, though as ridiculous as this was, it was eclipsed rather easily.
Mitt Romney visited a Republican campaign headquarters in Ohio, fighting tooth and nail to protect a Republican measure to undermine collective-bargaining right. The GOP presidential frontrunner, however, aware of the polls showing public opposition to the law, refused to endorse the law his party is trying to save.
This one incident reinforced the worst of the perceptions surrounding Romney. After all, what’s the knock on the former governor? He’s an unprincipled flip-flopper, who cares about polls than convictions, and will say literally anything to advance his political ambitions. And in one swing through Ohio, Romney confirmed that his critics are right.
It wasn’t long before conservatives — some sympathetic to Romney, some not — were expressing their disgust. Here was the Club for Growth’s take, for example:

The big problem many conservatives have with Mitt Romney is that he’s taken both sides of nearly every issue important to us. He’s against a flat tax, now he’s for it. He says he’s against ObamaCare, but was for the individual mandate and susbidies that are central to ObamaCare. He thinks that collective bargaining issues should be left for states to decide if he’s Ohio, but he took the opposite position when he was in New Hampshire. This is just another statement in a long line of statements that will raise more doubts about what kind of President Mitt Romney would be in the minds of many Republican primary voters.”

Soon after, other prominent far-right voices were equally incensed.

Certainly if one of the Presidential candidates were to go to the state, show up, and were asked about it, we’d expect them to be supportive of both efforts,” said Brendan Steinhauser, the Federal and State Campaigns Director at FreedomWorks in an interview with TPM. “This is a no brainer for any of the Presidential candidate to get behind. We’re disappointed but not surprised in Romney’s lack of support.” […]
“This is a huge freaking deal,” wrote Red State founder Erick Erickson. “Playing it too safe is finally biting Romney in the rear end. He’s refused to call social security a Ponzi scheme. He’s refused to offer bold economic reform plans. He’s refused to address significant changes in entitlement reforms. His whole campaign has centered around tapioca.”
There were plenty of others offering similar condemnations.
Making matters slightly worse, Politico discovered that Romney actually endorsed the Ohio law in June, only to back off yesterday after seeing the polls. In other words, Romney is now refusing to express support for a key Republican policy that he’s already endorsed.
And as a strategic matter, if Romney reversed course again yesterday in response to the uproar, and re-endorsed the anti-collective-bargaining measure, he’d look even weaker.
I don’t know whose bright idea is was to send Romney to Ohio, have him rally the troops at a call center, and then refuse to support the policy they’re fighting for, but one thing appears certain: this unforced error is going to leave a mark.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_10/romneys_huge_freaking_deal033085.php
Anonymous
October 26, 2011 8:40 AM
Revulsion towards Congress reaches historic levels

By Steve Benen
There’s quite a bit to chew on in the newly-released New York Times/CBS News poll, which shows a public burdened with “a deep sense of economic anxiety and doubt about the future hangs over the nation.” As a result, the concerns raised by the Occupy Wall Street movement are resonating with much of the country.
But the number that stood out for me was Congress’ approval rating.
A remarkable sense of pessimism and skepticism was apparent in question after question in the survey, which found that Congressional approval has reached a new low at 9 percent. The disapproval toward Congress has risen 22 percentage points since the beginning of the year when Republicans took control of the House.

When was the last time Congress, as an institution, saw its approval rating drop to single digits? Never. The institution has never been popular, but since the dawn of modern polling, we’ve never seen the legislative branch of government that repulses Americans as much as this one.
Congratulations, Republicans. Less than a year after riding your big midterm wave, you’ve generated buyers’ remorse on a historic level.
Also note, President Obama’s approval rating, at least in this poll, is holding steady at 46%. That means, of course, that for all of the president’s political difficulties, Obama enjoys more than five times as much support as Congress.
Now, there’s ample reason to believe congressional Republicans just don’t care.
Sure, Americans are disgusted with developments on Capitol Hill, but if voters are inclined to take out their frustrations on the president, even if they agree with him, GOP leaders have an incentive to continue with their scorched-earth strategy. If they keep this up, as they fully intend to do, perhaps the American mainstream will further give up on their public institutions, advancing the Republican Party’s larger goals anyway.
That said, with the institution’s approval rating dropping to an astounding 9%, even Republicans have to appreciate the electoral volatility that comes with these attitudes — a combustible climate that could, for example, sweep the GOP out of the House majority.
I suspect some on the right might suggest Congress is widely hated, but there’s no reason to necessarily assume that’s a reflection on Republicans or their agenda. At first blush, this might seem fair. Democrats are ostensibly in the majority in the Senate, after all.
But the same NYT/CBS poll shows Americans under the impression that Republicans only care about catering to the rich, and don’t have a jobs plan at all. There’s also a strong public demand for addressing economic inequalities — a desire GOP officials consider offensive at a fundamental level.
With this in mind, if congressional Republicans, perhaps motivated by self-interest, wanted to boost the institution’s approval rating, they could do so rather easily — they could work with Democrats on a jobs bill, among other things. The poll found that 80% of Americans believe it’s a good idea to create jobs by investing in infrastructure, for example.
If Republicans would approve an ambitious infrastructure bill, they’d likely see Congress’ approval rating get back into double digits.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_10/revulsion_towards_congress_rea033086.php
Anonymous
Some Comforting Polling Data
by BooMan
Tue Oct 25th, 2011 at 09:12:53 PM EST
There’s a lot of interesting data in the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, most of which I consider positive news for the president and the Democrats. The president has a 46% approval rating. Congress has a 9% approval rating. Congress’s approval rating has fallen 22% since the Tan Man took over the House of Representatives. The president’s approval numbers appear to be relatively stable, but his 46%/46% approve/disapprove rating has slipped from 49%/39% since the January New York Times/CBS News poll.
Two-thirds of Americans feel wealth should be shared more equally, and 70% think Republican policies favor the rich.
Congressional Republicans are viewed even worse than the president, with 71 percent of the public saying the party does not have a clear plan for creating jobs. And support for several other Republican proposals is more tepid than for Mr. Obama’s initiatives to lift the economy.
Only about a quarter of the public said that lowering taxes on large corporations or repealing the entire national health care law was a good idea. But half of the public favors reducing or repealing regulations on businesses in the United States.
So, here’s the deal. The people aren’t buying anything the Republicans are selling. They aren’t interested in repealing ObamaCare. They want higher taxes on the rich, not lower. They oppose cutting corporate taxes. They don’t think the Republicans have an economic plan, and they don’t like any of the Republican ideas that are presented to them. They hate Congress, never more so than since the Republicans gained so much power at the beginning of this year. If McConnell and Boehner keep it up, their approval rating may go lower than the poll’s margin of error. Seriously. They’re polling at 9% approval. And, what’s more, they hate the Republican presidential candidates. Even the Republicans hate them.

With the nation’s first Republican nominating contests just two months away, a large majority of primary voters have yet to make up their minds about the candidate they hope becomes their nominee. About 8 in 10 Republican primary voters said it was still too early to tell whom they will support, and just 4 in 10 said they had been paying a lot of attention to the race.
Mr. Cain, the former chief executive of Godfather’s Pizza, is riding the latest wave of support among Republican primary voters that has placed him in a statistical dead heat with Mr. Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts. Support for Mr. Perry has weakened to 6 percent, placing him among the second-tier candidates with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Representative Ron Paul of Texas.
Does anyone else think that the Governor of Texas should be polling better than six percent? I know he’s not a good debater, but neither was Bush. Did you notice how all his support vanished instantaneously when he said that denying discounted in-state tuition to the children of undocumented workers is heartless? Despite an almost ludicrously conservative record as governor, with one hint of compassion and empathy, his campaign seemingly went up in smoke.
So, here we are. It’s Romney versus the guy with the stupid commercials who has no campaign infrastructure whatsoever. It’s the guy who killed Usama bin-Laden versus the human flapjack.
I wish I knew that we are going to win this thing. I can’t even imagine losing. If we do, it will because of this:

Not only do 89 percent of Americans say they distrust government to do the right thing, but 74 percent say the country is on the wrong track and 84 percent disapprove of Congress — warnings for Democrats and Republicans alike.
McConnell’s Plan has ramped up distrust of government to a near universal level. And that is what the Republicans will work with.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2011/10/25/211253/71
Anonymous
The Vanity of Liberal Perfectionism
Posted on 10/26/2011 at 7:23 am by Bob Cesca
Robert Parry wrote a fantastic item about the self-defeating tendencies of the far-left, and the trendy refusal to accept the president’s successes — including the end of the Iraq war. This passage was particularly solid:
However, some on the American Left operate under what might be called “the vanity of perfectionism,” the notion that what’s most important is to have the “perfect” analysis even if its consequences are destructive to mankind.
Thus, flawed political leaders who compromise are judged as no better than extremely dangerous ones who would initiate wars like the bloody mess in Iraq – or who would ignore long-term threats like global warming.
In Campaign 2000, Al Gore had shortcomings, but he was not the same as George W. Bush. To pretend otherwise was not only wrongheaded, it was reckless. It kept the race close enough for Bush to steal the White House.
The result was that many people died unnecessarily and the future of the planet was put at greater risk by Bush’s hostility to warnings about global warming.
And this section, regarding the SOFA and the end of the war, relates to something I wrote yesterday:
This final withdrawal of U.S. troops at the insistence of the Iraqi government – and with Obama’s acquiescence – is a very big deal. Oddly, it is being acknowledged more by the Right than the Left, with prominent Republicans condemning Obama’s announcement as an admission of U.S. defeat.
That’s because the neocons saw Bush’s SOFA as only a holding action and expected that the U.S. government would twist the arms of the Iraqis to get them to accept a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq. The neocons are now condemning Obama for not doing so.
But none of this plays to the disillusioned neo-PUMAs on the far-left who are more content to whine and stomp than to accept facts and political realities, as well as to the bloggers who have decided to milk this demographic.
http://bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2011/10/the-vanity-of-liberal-perfectionism.html
Anonymous
October 26, 2011
Who’s up, who’s down, and who cares?
Little in today’s politics is so utterly useless as our daily tremors over who’s up and who’s down in the GOP’s presidential brawl, and then forecasting the political winds of November, 2012. The election is months, years, centuries, eons away. Current predictions may entertain and satisfy the journalistic compulsion to vacantly occupy vacant space, nonetheless there’s not only a Heisenberg uncertainty principle in play, there are also tomorrow’s unintended consequences of today, as well as dumb luck, random chance, international maybes and domestic contingencies and hazardous externals and ticklish internals.
In sum, nobody knows a damn thing, but everyone’s guessing within oracular auras. That, or they’re palsied with fear. This item, from perhaps the nation’s most prominent political has-been and notorious largemouth, triggered my musings:
Everything worries me in this environment [said James Carville in a radio interview]. Nobody’s gotten [re]elected with these kinds of numbers. So, I’m worried in the general election. I profoundly admit that.
I suppose that means that Carville is profoundly worried, which he admits. In either case, he then goes on, effectively, to eviscerate any real cause for worry about Obama’s reelection. He dismisses Mitt Romney as a “windsock of a guy,” he “trashes” (to quote Politico) Rick Perry, and, in harmonious accord with what’s left of our rational universe, he rightly affirms that Herman Cain “is not going to be the president of anything.”
So what’s to worry? Put another way, What am I missing, James? We are justifiably anticipating a contest between an immensely competent incumbent and some draftee from the Cyclopean Losers Corps, and you’re worried about … everything?
What’s more, Carville even more rightly previews the average GOP voter’s enormous dilemma:
[I]f I had a conservative worldview and I was looking for our next election to have somebody to articulate that view, I would be unbelievably disappointed.
And that, I would say, is indeed the one certainty of 2012: Every pseudoconservative jackass will be disappointed with Romney, and every traditional conservative (all three or four of them) will be disappointed with virtually anyone else. From that stated certainty we move to the reasonable guesswork of probabilities: a third-party split or stay-at-home-ism of the anti-Obama vote.
But see? There I go, committing the very transgression that I scorned in the opening. Yet, what the hell, there are worse social sins — and the real mother’s milk of politics isn’t so much money as it is hypocrisy.
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2011/10/whos-up-whos-down-and-who-cares.html
Anonymous
Feds: Rick Perry-Signed Texas Redistricting Plan Reduces Voting Power Of 479,704 Hispanics
Ryan J. Reilly October 26, 2011, 6:00 AM 17029
There is “ample circumstantial evidence” that the congressional and state representative redistricting maps signed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry had not only the effect but the intent of limiting the voting power of Hispanic voters, Justice Department lawyers said in a court filing late Tuesday.
DOJ is seeking the block the maps, filing to deny Texas’ request for summary judgement in a case involving allegations that officials in the state tried to limit the voter power of Hispanic voters in violation of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.
Federal lawyers contended in the newest filing that there is “ample circumstantial evidence of a discriminatory purpose with regard to both the State House and Congressional plans” and that in the new maps nearly half a million fewer Hispanics would live in districts where they would have the ability to elect a candidate of their choosing.
“The proposed Congressional redistricting plan has a retrogressive effect because, compared to the benchmark plan, it decreases the percentage of districts in the Congressional plan in which minority voters have the ability to elect and because under the proposed plan 479,704 fewer Hispanics will reside in districts in which they have an ability to elect a candidate of choice,” lawyers with DOJ’s Civil Rights Division write. “Both plans were also adopted with a discriminatory purpose, and there are a substantial number of material facts in dispute with regard to both prongs of the Section 5 standard.”
Race and ethnicity, the lawyers wrote “were common themes during discussions between the Republican leadership and others, including a United States Congressman and staff. State leaders viewed race as a proxy for party, leading to redistricting decisions and movements of population based solely on the basis of race.”
The member of Congress in question is Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) — who as it so happens chairs the House Judiciary Committee, which has primary oversight over DOJ. Smith’s emails are cited as an example of officials plotting to protect their electoral interests while taking race into account.
Talking Points Memo on Facebook“While the existence of contemporaneous statements of direct racial intent related to current redistricting efforts may be rare, the email exchanges between United States Congressional representatives and staff, and State officials involved in devising the State’s plans, provide riveting circumstantial evidence bearing witness to the process discussed above, where data as to race and ethnicity rather than partisan data drove the line drawing for the proposed Congressional plan, and where the State sought to exclude minority representatives from the redistricting process,” DOJ lawyers said in reference to emails to and from Smith.
A redistricting expert hired by DOJ, Theodore S. Arrington, contended in a study included in the filing that the emails showed that Republicans and officials conspired to “make sure that no one who might look out for minority voters would be included” and that participants in the emails were aware of the “trade-offs between drawing minority election districts” and GOP prospects.
Justice Department officials said the only way this could be settled is for the facts to come out in court.
“Deviations from procedural and substantive standards, as well as racially-charged contemporaneous statements, also provide significant evidence of a discriminatory purpose,” DOJ lawyers argue. “The State has presented little evidence concerning the intent of the proposed plan, but the legislative staff who crafted the map and legislators closely involved in the process have provided conflicting testimony. Assessing the credibility of these witnesses and resolving other disputed factual issues cannot be performed until trial.”
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/10/feds_rick_perry-signed_redistricting_map_keeps_479704_hispanics_from_electing_candidate_of_their_choice.php?ref=fpa
Anonymous
Tom Joyner’s Call For Blacks To Reelect Obama Because He’s Black Draws Heat!
If you want to raise the ire of white voters, all you have to do is tell your 8 million African-American listeners that they need to re-elect President Barack Obama because he’s black, Annette John-Hall writes in her Philadelphia Inquirer column.
The influential “fly jock” and creator of the Tom Joyner Morning Show, a syndicated radio mix of R&B, news, comedy, and commentary, stirred up a tempest in a tea party with his recent blog post on his Blackamerica.com website.
Urging his overwhelmingly black listenership to “stick together,” he wrote: “Let’s not even deal with facts right now. Let’s deal with our blackness and pride — and loyalty. We have a chance to reelect the first African American president … And I’m not afraid or ashamed to say that as black people, we should do it because he’s a black man.”
Cue hand-wringing here.
One white columnist wrote that Joyner’s call for racial solidarity is “a terrible idea.” Given that the president was “elected on a promise of unity,” any of his supporters “who play that [race] hand will be doing a disservice to themselves and to the nation,” she argued.
Hmm. Seems to me that the real disservice is all those obstructionists who aren’t putting country first.
Remember Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell’s now-infamous quote: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”
If that’s what he means by unity, I wonder how he defines dissension?
http://www.theroot.com/buzz/joyners-call-blacks-reelect-obama-draws-heat?wpisrc=obnetwork
Anonymous
That “one white columnist” is Kathleen Parker. I don’t think blacks should vote to reelect Obama just because he’s black, but:
Needless to say, such words from a white man would earn him only ruin. It would be considered racist and, of course, it is. It is also unhelpful to Obama, who leads a nation of many races and ethnicities. To suggest that he owes his allegiance to only one segment of the population and can expect reciprocity runs contrary to everything we strive for.
What she’s calling “racist” pn the part of black people can be seen that way only if one ignores context.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obamas-african-american-supporters-shouldnt-play-the-race-card/2011/10/18/gIQA12m9uL_story.html
Anonymous
Agreed, her use of the term racism ignores context when you consider the history of Blacks and politics in this country. However, Joyner’s overt appeal to racial solidarity is a mistake. While it may serve to energize the Black vote it will have the opposite effect on independents and White progressives. Especially as Joyner’s statements are starting to be disseminated among a wider audience.
In the future he might try being a little more subtle in his approach.
Anonymous
The consortium news article by Robert Parry is a must read!!
http://www.facebook.com/people/Charles-Richardson/100002390594799 Charles Richardson
Romney: ‘110% Behind Governor Kasich’ On OH Anti-Union Bill
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/10/romney-i-am-110-behind-governor-kasich-on-ohio-anti-union-bill.php?ref=fpa
Remember when former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney went to a call center of conservative faithful in Ohio, as volunteers were dialing on behalf of the efforts to save SB 5, the state’s new union-busting bill? And then when asked by reporters, said he wasn’t going to take a position on the issue?
Well, that was yesterday.
Today it appears Romney does have a position: he supports Gov. John Kasich’s efforts to curtail public employee unions in the name of tightening Ohio’s budget. Romney said as much at an event in Virginia, as reported by NBC’s Mark Murray and theWashington Post’s Rachel Weiner.
The Romney campaign confirmed the account, and sent along the video which you can watch below. When a reporter asked about Romney’s response to Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s attacks on him over his non-support of SB 5, he went straight for it.
“Oh, I’m sorry if I created any confusion in that regard, I fully support Gov. Kasich’s—I think it’s called Question 2 in Ohio,”Romney said.“But what I was referring to was I know there were other ballot questions there in Ohio and I wasn’t taking a position on those. One of them for instance, relates to healthcare and mandates, I’ve said that that should be up to individual states. I, of course, took my state in one direction. They may want to go in a different direction. I don’t want to tell them what I think they ought to do in that regard, that’s up to them. So, it was with regards to that issue that I didn’t want to make a commitment. And I didn’t even know what their Question 1 is, if there is a Question 1. I don’t know what that one is.”
“But with regards to Question 2, which is the collective bargaining question, I am 110% behind Governor Kasich and in support of that question,”he said.
Watch the exchange here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sskA6by2AxY&feature=player_embedded
Anonymous
AFTERNOON OPEN THREAD IS UP!!!
Anonymous
Have no problem with Joyner’s appeal.
Anonymous
I don’t personally have a problem with it either, but it may be effective to be more tactful. He can get his point across without making it racial.
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