is between now and tomorrow. the president is voting in illinois tomorrow. so the iowa, colorado, california, nevada, florida, virginia, and then illinois trip that the president is on right now is a 48-hour trip. it does not even get him until the end of the week. on the other side of the aisle, mitt romney and his running mate, paul ryan, are taking it much slower than the democrats at this point. mr. romney had one event this afternoon in nevada. he has another event right now in iowa. and that s it for the whole day. paul ryan gave a speech in ohio today, and that one event was it for him. presumably, they are pacing themselves for something that comes later. in terms of the state of the race, both campaigns are trying to spin reporters now into saying that they are ahead. but if you ignore the spin, if you ignore what the campaigns are saying and you just look at the polls, the best that anybody can say about the race right now is that it is a tie, at least nationally. do you want
your health, if you need that exception because the way you got pregnant was through rape or was through incest. those are the issues they are fighting about. they are beyond fighting about whether women are allowed to make this decision. it is clear to them, you are not. the argument is really between the presidential nominee and the vice presidential nominee. mitt romney says if you are raped, he will take pity and the government won t force you to take that pregnancy to term, but paul ryan does not think that rape exempts you. those inside the republican party are actually swinging in paul ryan s decision, not mitt romney s position. they say rape is nothing that should afford you any special protection from a government who s going to assert this right to make this particular decision for you against your will. what do you say, then, to a young girl i m going to place it as he said it, when a young girl is raped by her father, let s say, and she is pregnant. i mean, how do you
neither of them is president in this circumstance. so how in this circumstance do we do side who wins the presidency? jonathan carl spun this out in print and we ve been look looking at it ever since. it is not an accident what would happen in the case of a 269 to 269 electoral college tie. this is not something we would have to make it up on the spot. the founders talked about what would be the right thing to do in a circumstances like this. and it turns out what they thought was a very strange thing. so according to the 12th amendment, it s the house of representatives who gets to choose who is the president. but, they do not vote on who s going to be president the way they normally vote on things in the house. in that circumstance, when they re making that specific decision, each state just gets one vote per state. so no matter how many members of congress there are from each state, no matter how big the
down. of course, looking at this from the other side, it would be very awkward if mr. romney did demand to have that ad taken down, since the policy stance on this issue that mr. mourdock has is the exact same policy stance held by the man mr. romney chose as his vice presidential running mate, paul ryan. and it is moments like these, it is days like this on the campaign trail when it is never more clear that this is not the next this is not the next national election after 2008. this is the next national election after 2010, which is the election where the republican party not only did great, importantly, in terms of understanding republican party politics, they ran five different candidates for the united states senate that year, who blew through what was previously, even the anti-abortion movement s rough consensus, that even if you did want to make abortion a criminal offense in america, you would at least not force that government decision on women who got pregnant through rape
so close that a single red dot in maine could make a difference for mitt romney. maybe this election will be historically close, one electoral vote close, epically close. so close that we have to dive way down into the nebraska and maine congressional district maps. so close that we have to memorize the innards and the sub-innards of the 12th amendment of the constitution to figure out who wins. the polls are close enough that campaigning for individual electoral votes is now happening. and there s a lot of money behind it. and the surprising news of what happens if there is a tie is all of a sudden very relevant to those of us who are paying close attention to this election. the news about the potential tie is coming up.