and mara liasson, national political correspondent of national public radio. mara you look at the polls and you saw paul ryan s performance. start with the interview. your thoughts? paul ryan is a fresh exciting face. the republican of the future. you can see why the party has been energized since romney put him on the ticket. he is responsible for a small bump. you call it really small, but a bump toward romney in the last few weeks. bret: which candidate do you trust to do a better job handling medicare? the thing that is interesting about that, democrats rejoiced when paul ryan was put on the ticket. they thought they had a juicy target because he wants to partially privatize medicare. they ran and attacked about it a lot. they ran ads. lo and behold it hasn t hurt the romney ticket. to neutralize the traditional historical advantage on the issue is an achievement.
we have never had two that have been the same. so, like with katrina we expected a wind event. we got a broken levee event. this time is a wind/water event. reporter: now at this point the national weather service predicts the system will stall or slow considerably once it hits land, which could translate to high winds and heavy rains for days and days. by the way, president obama earlier ordering federal aid to this region to assist with the local governments with isaac. bret? bret: casey stegall live in new orleans tonight. we ll keep the track of the storm every minute. thank you, casey. up next, the party is here in tampa. tampa. where are the romneys and what [ pilot ] now when you build an aircraft, you want to make sure it goes up and stays up. [ chirp ] with android apps, you get better quality control. so our test flights are less stressful. i ve got a lot of paperwork, and time is everything here. that s why i upgraded to the new sprint direct connect. [ chirp ] and the f
electoral votes makes it 271. the ohio goes literally ryan has to take the entire map from there on. he could, there may be one or two states that could go to obama and he would still make it. no, actually, there isn t. bret: you have to run the table. i have a different view of it. bret: not surprising. new hampshire and nevada are moving in to tossup status. in two weeks i bet we look at this map and not seven tossup states but eight or nine. we may have one state move out of convention. i believe, north carolina will move out of convention. but there is a way the get there. you don t win ohio, win colorado and wisconsin. or win, colorado, new hampshire. bret: it gets tougher. it gets tougher. but here is the deal. we are looking at this from governor romney s position. look at it from obama s position. he is playing defense everywhere. we see a state he won last time, gone.
where he came from. hasn t forgotten where he came from and his roots are. he s sufficiently grounded in the knowledge of the issues that he has made his. that he will be fine here. he is not having any, i don t think he is having panic attacks. he meant it. this man i think is the future of the republican party. the question is whether the future is now. bret: brit, as always, thank you. i thought your interview was great. thank you. bret: the reason things are so quiet here tonight, tropical storm isaac. it appears tampa avoided a direct hit but isaac is bearing down on an arizon area familiar with bad storms. it s headed for southeast louisiana and could be a category two hurricane by then. correspondent casey stegall is live tonight in new orleans. good evening, casey. reporter: good evening, bret. tonight, people in the big easy are bracing for isaac. state of emergency has been declared. not just here in louisiana but in neighboring mississippi an alabama as well. folks a
no. no. michigan a home place for romney. if you want to win the election keep this map as broad as you can, as long as you with as many states spread obama thin. make him fight in all the place. bret: always the last word. always. that s it. gentlemen, thank you very much. we re going to accelerate it. once a week. how about that? all right. bret: all right. thank you, guys. don t forget the ipad app. keep it here.