an accident doesn t have to slow you down. with better car replacement available only with liberty mutual auto insurance, if your car s totaled, we give you the money for a car one model year newer. to learn more, visit us today. responsibility. what s your policy? is there a concern that the pressure from santorum and gingrich might force the governor to tax so far to the right it would hurt him with moderate voters in the re-election? well, i think he hit a reset button for the fall campaign. everything changes.
with serious deficits with certain voter groups because of positions he had to take in order to win the republican nomination fight. that is, deficits with women, deficits with hispanics. not lesser deficit but some deficit for a while with independents. the white house does not want to let people forget those positions he took because they recognize that he can rhetorically make the shift back toward the center. they want to say forget about what you re listening to him say right now. forget about what he looks like on the stump. remember the positions he took that in the course of this primary that put him outside the mainstream for the kind of voters in the middle of the electorate that are going to decide the election. it s simply that they want to remind, they want to make romney own the negatives of the republican party. that s really yeah. i thought it was inartful the way plouffe did it with romney, because you can t credibly say mitt romney is this. but the argument th
billion, and the republican would be maybe at parity, but certainly not have the financial advantage. that has i think over the course of the last couple of months has changed. now you see a bit on the democratic side concern that they are actually going to be at a disadvantage financially, and that is one thing that allows romney to play. to mark s point, he has very little margin for error. but after everything that mitt romney has been through, the fact that he is within either a little bit behind or only a little bit behind, maybe four, five, six points behind, if i were romney s people i would be thrilled given the meat grinder over the last six months. we talked about this a bit yesterday. and it is the feeling toward romney among the other candidates. which is a level of antip athy which is palpable. and santorum yesterday refused to say, you know, i endorse this guy. god only knows what newt gingrich is doing today.
a good place with this coming into the general election. i think it s going to be very tough to make an ideological case against him. on that score, could you see the beginnings of a campaign being framed up in his comments last night, where they are edging a bit away from ideology towards the competence argument, where the president of the united states is a nice guy, but he hasn t done the job for you, i can. i think when he stepped over the joke line and delivered it harshly, he is not a natural politician in the way that you saw the president, you know, as he was slow jamming the news. he s not going to be able to do that. he was a businessman making a business case yesterday. may as well have had a power point up there with him, you know, with economic slides. if he can make the business case, the one thread that runs through mitt romney s career, you know, whether it s at the olympics, whether it s at bain, whether it was when he was governor, is achievement and excellence an
yes. a minus. i just think, you know, with one of the questions is one of the fundamental questions about politics always is whether you re, you know, the performances you give, the speeches you give, how well you can how well they jibe with where you actually are on issues. and part of the problem i get the jujitsu thing on trying to talk about fireness. i think the president will as people will go back and point to some of the policies that romney has to had to embrace, those policies are pretty far out of step with where the middle of the eelectorate is. the rhetorical pivots are necessary and important, but there s only so far you can pivot away from the positions you have taken. and he s taken a lot of position that i think the president and his team think they can hang around his neck pretty effectively with their communication skills and the money they have over the course of the next six months. it will be hard for him to run away from those actual positions of subs