possibility of raising the qualifying age. that s right. and that caused a great deal of concern among democrats. it certainly did, and this week he was asked a question by barbara walters in an interview, and again he didn t slam that down as if that was something he would not consider. so the question to you, sir, is, is your congress in agreement on this or do you think the president would like to go with that and he needs your support? no. i don t think he will go with that, and he would need our support. i don t think he d get it. bottom line, i think what the president is being careful to try to do is not put boehner in an even more difficult position than he s in. so if he s negotiating in the public, it s going to put boehner in a much more difficult situation. so i don t take his categoric his unwillingness to be categoric on anything as an endorsement of anything. he did very well in the election, and he was vilified by mitt romney for, quote, cutting
he was no longer governor, the unemployment rate was at 4.7%. when you compare that to the current 8.2%, they say, that shows you mitt romney s economic stewardship versus president obama s. now, tamron, it is important to say, too, there are a lot of economists out there who believe that the presidency, governors, have sometimes really little to do with the overall unemployment rate. if everyone could have a magic wand, there would be full employment during every presidency, during every governorship. there are a lot of factors that play outside of fiscal policy on where the current unemployment rate is. mark murray with a little bit of what s if first read today. greatly appreciate it. thanks. in about a half hour mitt romney is scheduled to make a campaign appearance at businesses in ft. worth, texas. right now the state along with florida being closely watched for an aggressive effort to repof whr remove what they say are ineligible voters from the rolls. that s plagued by pr
and, therefore, there was progress. now, that whole obama campaign video and the response you re hearing is basically saying, well, if you guys aren t going to count the first year of mitt romney s governorship, then if we re holding the same standard, 2009, at a time when the economy was when jobs were being shed hundreds of thousands of jobs per month, shouldn t count for president obama either. if you count his last year or last year and a half or so, that ranks that shows up pretty well. so that s the thrust of the campaign video that they put out this morning. so the response from the romney team from andrea saul then is not dealing with the heart of the ad or the web ad which is are we comparing apples to apples or something very different here. her tweet, while it may have certainly had a punch with people who want to hear that, it does not deal with the web ad itself. well, they really haven t responded, you re right, to the double standard charge. what they point out i
really excited about their election and really into the question of who is going to be the next governor. and i know that people in washington and new york like to believe that elections are all about them and that nobody can really think about stuff beyond the beltway so to speak, but the truth of the matter is out here this election is about trade union rights, about how you do budgets, and, frankly, about people deciding whether they want to turn out a poster boy for the tea party. michael, let me bring you back in. you have also the fact that governor romney s not been to wisconsin standing side by side with walker. he was there for the primary campaigning for himself, but not for walker. so that point that reince priebus and others make seems to go up in the wind when you look at that point. but to the larger issue here, whether we believe that folks in the beltway or new york think it s all about them or not, we know tomorrow s headline realistically, michael, will include some
my opinion, governor romney. nbc capitol hill correspondent kelly o donnell. we see how it factors into the presidential race, but it s also interesting, senator nelson, who voted against this in 2010, i believe, has now changed his tune this time around. reporter: what he s saying, tamron, is he will not stand in the way of allowing this bill to go forward. he d like to see some amendments and changes, but the real math here is that democrats need to get 60 votes, and so far in talking with senators today, they don t seem to have it. one of the senior senators who has been a huge proponent of this tells me she s got 53. that would include all of the democrats and the two independents, but no republicans yet. so they re trying to make this a very big visual as well with lily ledbetter, if that name is familiar to you, earlier in the president s term, there was a big victory for democrats with