republican governor. so if this is a video released today, if the obama campaign is going to use his flip-flopping in the fall, wouldn t that be a problem, erin? i suspect that they will use it more i think the point is that the obama campaign is trying to run a choice race between the different visions that we re seeing from president obama and from mitt romney. tonight s speech, i ve seen the excerpts. he doesn t get into some of the nuances of policy. he s going to talk about his personal background. the flip-flopping charge may get addressed later this fall, but again the obama campaign is trying to say that mitt romney is going to take the nation in a different direction than the president has. now, he s going to get into specifics later. but isn t that a problem, michelle, that a lot of independent voters, not those
way to get their support. no, you don t. and there s certain things in the romney platform and what romney s been talking about that appeal to those voters on a substantive level. you don t have to do stuff like this. but the problem for romney is not white working class democrats. he s going to get his share of them. john mccain in pennsylvania, rev, four years ago carried 11 of the 12 southwestern democratic counties. lost the state by 11 points because he got clobbered in the philadelphia suburbs and the harrisburg suburbs. he got clobbered because he has nothing to say and nothing to appeal to those independent voters, moderate republicans, moderate democrat who is live in the suburbs. you cannot win a state like pennsylvania or a state like ohio in my judgment just appealing to white working class blue-collar voters. jonathan, it has been widely
we know rick santorum has talked about man-on-dog in the past. so he takes this issue very seriously. but you saw this coming. you wrote a column what was it, january, entitled mitt romney s al gore problem. did you think it would take the form of a dog? you know, it does in so many different ways. i liken it to, he looks like a person and he sometimes acts like a person, but every once in a while, you realize there s a glitch in the matrix and he s not like everybody else and he s a bit of an alien. we had that with gore. we have it going on with romney now. his son just mentioned it in an offhanded way. but whenever you see somebody who s not involved in politics, the first thing they want to talk about is, what s up with romney and this dog? you are a very attentive dog owner. i am. i go almost nowhere without her. what do you think dog management tells us about someone s ability to manage the executive branch of the united
would say the issues of character are important in this election. we need to look at all those issues and make a determination as to whether that s the kind of person you want to be president of the united states. joining me now, dana milbank. dana, issues of character, rick santorum answers with a straight face that the dog is a serious issue of character. we know rick santorum has talked about man-on-dog in the past. so he takes this issue very seriously. but you saw this coming. you wrote a column what was it, january, entitled mitt romney s al gore problem. did you think it would take the form of a dog? you know, it does in so many different ways. i liken it to, he looks like a person and he sometimes acts like a person, but every once in a while, you realize there s a glitch in the matrix and he s not like everybody else and he s a bit of an alien. we had that with gore. we have it going on with romney now. his son just mentioned it in an
badly. the problem is there s no good answer. if we were to release the returns and people would see how extraordinarily wealthy he is and how little he s paid in taxes, that s not necessarily a better answer than him equivocating and hemming and hawing here. he s in in al gore trap. he s so worried about saying the wrong things. he s calculating before he says any word that comes out of his mouth and it leads to this mush coming out. it makes the problem worse the it s like this vicious cycle. that enhances the idea that he s the plastic, fantastic candidate. this is the al gore problem. in trying to fix the problem and filter his words and not say something that will look like any flip-flop, he winds up sayisay