robert, i want to bring you in here just to switch gears a bit. i know you had a conversation with governor romney s wife. you talked to ann romney. you landed that interview on friday, talking specifically, i understand, about the debate and what it felt like for her before and after. what did she tell you? ann romney, for a long time, has take an lower profile on the campaign trail. we ve really seen her emerge as a real player in this campaign. she s been talking a lot about the personal side of her husband. for a long time, mitt romney avoid the personal in his speech. we just saw this past week after the debate, romney is going back and talking about his work as a mormon bishop, working within the community in the greater boston area. you re seeing a warmer side from romney. i want to ask you about that. the timing is interesting with regards to the warmer mitt romney. why now? why not a month or two ago? the romney campaign always felt the convention was the time to intro
they re at war. it s worth noting these are distant relatives of mitt romney. we talk about the mormon question, talked on the show so many times, this is the week that mitt romney is going to embrace his faith, you write in on buzz feed he s going to embrace religion in a bigger fashion, but perhaps not by mentioning mormonism but by appealing to the evangelical base. mitt romney needs to win 60% of the white vote, evangelicals make up a part of that. could he better utilize the mormon thing to his advantage is. i think we got a glimpse of that at the republican convention. where he had a series of testimonials from former members of his congregation talk about he was there with a child dying of cancer, at the bedside of that child, and various capacities as a mormon bishop, things he had done. a lot of observers agreed that was one of the only moments of the convention and campaign that humanized romney. but we didn t see any kind of, you know, calculated way to push
authority. one person close to romney says he recognizes his nomination marks a historic moment for his church and he wants the convention to reflect the faith that has shaped him throughout his life. joining us now from tampa, msnbc contributor and washington post columnist e.j. dionne and also from tampa, official ambassador to time magazine, michael scherer. e.j., i d like to start with you on this. in terms of the religion question, we talked ad nauseam about the humanization of mitt romney and a principle thing that might humanize him is his role in the mormon church. how much can he talk about mormonism at his speech tonight? and how much is there there s obviously a cost/benefit analysis going on here. how much do you think he will wrap his arms around his experience as a mormon bishop and the way the faith has shaped his life? well, one of the things we ve talked about ad nauseam because it s true is that romney s mormonism has been a huge barrier in explaining who h
apple cinnamon chex. i believe in my mormon faith and i live by it. my faith is the faith of my fathers. i will be true to them and to my beliefs. some believe that such a confession of my faith will sink my candidacy. if they re right, so be it, but i think they underestimate the american people. that was governor romney in 2007, one of the few times he s publicly spoken about his religion. for much of this year, romney has effectively steered clear of his mormon faith. but as the republican convention nears, his campaign appears to be ready to embrace it. next week, a member of the mormon church will deliver the invocation and romney s work as a mormon bishop will be part of the convention narrative. for a man who has done much to throw a veil over his own religious practice, it is a pivot point. throughout the campaign, romney has made a concerted effort to align himself with judeo-christian beliefs, not
looking at. and he obviously played into the stereotype of having to move far to the right on a lot of these wedge issues in the primary. are you expecting to see him come back to the middle 1234. his own staffer told us he was going to etch a sketch. we ve known romney has a history of flip-flopping. mormon bishop romney was pro-choice when he ran against ted kennedy who artfully and correctly called him multiple choice mitt. so this this is an issue of fairness. women deserve an issue day s pay for an equal day s work and when romney strategists deny that women are paid less than men, that tells you how out of touch they are. mitt romney needs to get back in touch with american women who are working until april of the following year to make what a man makes in one year. that s just wrong. and by investing in the american jobs act which puts money into stem oig, science, tech, engineering and math, where the pay gap is actually smaller by investing in small businesses, and by passin