the defendant is going to have to defend his record and there s going to have to be a very strong case for why his policies are wrong for the country. and basically governor romney is going to have to introduce himself at the same time he has to make a tough case against the president. that s a tough thick to do. president obama is a good debater. mitt romney is a good debater. i don t see any one of them falling flat. that s the problem for the romney debate. chris kofinis, did i just hear you not trying to manage expectations? i m not good on expectations. the reality is they re both good debaters. is that true, john? do the debates favor one or the other? people know he s a very good debater but the problem he has is he still has to bring a record that i think bemost accounts is remarkably mediocre. i can tell you having run those
the romney campaign has the stink of death right now. i mean when you see polls in florida and ohio and you can argue about whether or not they re accurate or not. there are multiple ones coming out with high single-didn t leads, this is really bad. when you see polls showing you re not connecting with the middle class, that s really bad. when you have basically, again, a little less than six weeks to make your case, the romney campaign is about as terrible a position you can imagine. obviously you could imagine polls worse. but having said that, john, i m not sure he even has six weeks. early voting starts next tuesday in ohio, as well as nebraska. i think it s already under way in idaho, vermont, iowa. wyoming. how does that change the campaign strategy? first i think you have to point out in almost every single poll obama is under 50% or at
kafinas and john braybender. gentlemen, good to see you again. good morning. okay, john. we keep saying this but i m going to say it again. no republican has won the presidency without ohio. so what s mitt romney do now? well, thing that s right. i think he has to win not only ohio. i think e has to win probably virginia and florida as well. and i tlink s a couple of keys right now to mitt romney. you know, we saw in the primary. they said after the primary you can hit reset like an etch a sketch and change where you re going. think they re a little bit at that point where they ve got to get a little sharper message. i think number one, they ve got to get to know mitt romney more personally, not just as a ceo, but what kind of person he s like. numb beer two, they even got to put ideas out there that they re running on to get people excited about where they re going in the country, not just be a professional critic of the president.
debates. he knows basically how to deliver a message. john brabender, chris kofinis, thank you. thank you. also this morning, 14 are dead, 14 others wunlded after two major explosions in syria. both were car bombs set off at the syrian army headquarters. a third explosion went off near the prime ministry. the targets were syria s top military commanders. things are calmer in greece but it got eggly on the streets of athens earlier. they re protesting new austerity measures. police were throwing tear gas because some were throwing molotov cocktails and stones. just recently we learned new home sales prices are home but home prices are up, which is good news. sales in august overall were almost 28% up from a year ago. and nickel and diming leads to billions for the airlines.
so joining us tonight is john braybender who worked for rick santorum. who decided to bring miss personality, miss congeniality to start the republican convention? what do you think is going on here? i think it is great pick. first of all, you have a governor who ran in a democratic state of principles cutting spending and taxes and got elected and governing that way. second of all, he is a great speaker. he will go out there and make a great case why this president has been a disaster. what will he say about the guy that won the nomination? i think he will he has been with romney from day one. he has been out there supporting him and saying that we immediate somebody that knows thousand turn this economy around. but at the same time, you have to remember, this is a referendum on the sitting president and frankly i m happy that the romney people are willing to take the gloves off and start fighting back. have you noticed one thing, john. let s go back to david. have you not