are you concerned, though, that this natural tightening is happening a lit tool quickly? no. this is going to be a close election regardless, and we re in the process and have been while the republican primary was unfolding and they were busy outright winging each other. as mitt romney begins to try to etch-a-sketch away his extreme positions he took during the primary, we re standing up the most dynamic grassroots presidential campaign in history. really thousands of offices across the country and making sure our campaign is powered by people. the polls are going to tighten. we re not focused on the polls. we re focused on making sure the dramatic contest between the two directions this country could go, president obama fighting for the middle class and working family, that if you make more than a million dollars that you don t pay a lower tax rate than your secretary, while mitt romney continues to go to bat for people who are already fabulously wealthy and make sure
you know, i m not too sure. obviously, i don t work for governor romney. but you worked for santorum and when he would make a slip-up they didn t wait. they would pounce on those types of things. when gingrich would make a slip-up, they don t wait. they respond. right. so speaking from your experience working for rick santorum and going and competing against governor romney, how quick are they on the gun? they re very quick. they have a pretty good team assembled, a nationwide team and a lot of organization ready to make those pounces and make someone pay for a comment like that. but, you know, i mean, we ll be moving closer and closer to this election until that the summer ends, we re probably going to be seeing a lot more of these types of overblown stories on comments like that here and there, because until we really focus in on major issue, it looks like we ll have a long, hot summer full of campaign gaffes and ads and money made off those gaffes, and we ll wait until t
but, look, mitt romney and rick santorum are going to try to get together in the next month or so, have a conversation. i do know for a fact an endorsement will be one of the topics discussed. but of course there s no guarantee that an endorsement comes out of that meeting. it s just a conversation they re going to have. rick santorum won 11 states. he won more counties across this country than all the other candidates combined. he has an obligation to the delegates and also to the people who voted for him to push forth his conservative agenda and try to have an influence on mitt romney if he eventually becomes the nominee to try and, you know, push that conservative message forward as a general election candidate. hogan, throughout this primary, the republican primary, that is, we saw so many slip-ups turn into campaign attack ads really hurting the candidates. are comments along those lines of what we heard from hilary rosen going to happen more creating snare traps for the candida
establishment is starting to fall in line and that should only help mitt romney in terms of the dialogue. let s show everybody where mitt romney is traveling today. charlotte, north carolina, today, the site of this summer s democratic convention. he ll deliver what he s calling the prebuttal to the president s acceptance speech. surrogates to the site of the president s speech in ohio today. the obama cam page team, the re-election team, we know it can be massive, the team that got him in the office in the first place, it was well oiled and fine-tuned. but what do you think about the romney campaign really being on the offensive right now and serving it to the obama re-election team? the strong place for the romney team, certainly a stronger place they ve been in throughout this primary. most interesting with that map is democrats laid out five different paths to victory. there was a western expansion, florida, and there was an ohio plan. so i think the fact that you see romney do
into substantive issues. appetite for it and restaurants serving it. thank you, hogan. alycia menendez, co-host of power play on sere yus xm radio, msnbc contributor susan del persio and erin mclight. thanks for your patience this morning. susan, your reaction right away to what hogan had to say about rick santorum and about the race and his thoughts and not coming out for mitt romney yet but that campaign literature shows up. that s how he felt a little while ago. perhaps that s why he hasn t endorsed him yet. didn t want to have that literature hitting at the same time, but i m guessing that s not the case. the issue with the santorum endorsement isn t what this endorsement itself needs. what the issue is going to be, how long does it take for rick santorum to do it, because that s what people will hang on to and make part of the story around mitt romney. so that s why he needs to have that endorsement sooner rather