traeson. that s an important contrast. john mccain, for all his crankiness during that campaign towards obama who he didn t enjoy running against, never the less is somebody that has principles that he is willing to speak out for and is not afraid for a crowd of right wing yahoos. a reporter asked him why didn t you answer her or say something to her about the president being tried for treason. i don t get all the questions i don t agree he should be tried. he doesn t correct those questioners. that s not his job. he is just trying to close the deal. come on. to understand the important
he was faced with a woman who said that president obama was guilty of treason. there is a microphone right behind you. we have a president that is operating outside the structure of our constitution. [ applause ] and i want to know i want to know, i want i do agree he should be tried for treason. she then went into a long thing that turned out to be a constitutional question and here is mitt romney s response. as i am sure you do, i happen to believe that the constitution was not just brilliant but probably inspired. i believe the same thing about the declaration of independence. he never says a word, not one word about this woman saying obama should be tried for traeson. that s an important contrast. john mccain, for all his crankiness during that campaign
have that kind of thing going on in a general election campaign, it s going to be a huge distraction, and a huge benefit to president obama. alisyn: so as the voice of conservatives at the moment, what did you hear last night that did impress you on the debate stage? well, i thought newt, when he wasn t on freddie, was quite good. i thought bachmann was very good. she s just really perfected this role as the prosecutor in chief, in these debates. don t want her after you. and i thought newt showed a little bit too much irritation with her for his own good. romney was very solid, kind of back on his game after that $10,000 bet moment in the prior debate, which was not his finest moment, and i think ron paul might have hurt himself. he certainly has devoted followers, a core of which are going to be with him no matter what, but i think he may have gone a little too far, showed too much crankiness on iran and the middle east, and if he s going to win in iowa he s really got to win over
part of that is you always campaign in poetry. but even so, i think they just had a real difficulty in messaging. it s striking how bill clinton has been doing a better job articulating the white house point of view than president obama has. do you think it will change? do you think the dynamic will change once he has an opponent and once he s out there and start to engage? that will certainly help president obama. but i do worry a little bit. you think back to 1968 when the democrats sense of crankiness helped elect richard nixon. 1980 with the same feeling towards jimmy carter. in 2000. the general sense of grumpiness that we felt towards al gore. i think we in the media also magnified al gore s
how today do you see these parallels of this horrific right-wing anchor, crankiness or worse, and what it was like down there, the city he went into in dallas? well, you know, i ve been looking at some youtube clips from 1962 and 1963, and the rhetoric then and the rhetoric now is virtually interchangeable. i saw a clip with a tell evangelist names billy james hargis, and it could be pat robertson or any tea partier today, and the hate is still around and the disaffection with politics in washington. and there s a real some of the clips from dallas at that time, there s one of adlai stevenson being bopped by a protester s sign, and ladybird johnson got spat upon by chamber of commerce ladies, and that was in dallas. that morning he said, we re