reduce their annual adjustments in the consumer price index because they d like to reduce the amount of payments given to beneficiaries for programs like social security. in other words, every effort has been out there to try to influence that agency and it stood solid and honest and true to itself and thank god it was proven again true today with the job numbers. what do you make of the con spour si nuts who keep playing with the numbers and keep saying you can t trust any number, anything, including birth certificates? well, i mean, it s an increasingly disturbing trend of the republican party being a party not of facts and figures and science but sort of whims. this talk has been surrounding the fed ation well. remember rick perry talking about kneecapping ben bernanke during the primaries. very recent history, not but like ten days ago republicans were up in arms about polling that showed president obama ahead in swing states. the minute those polls changed, the minute the pew po
reliable and does haven t good polls. even though even though now all these polls are showing what you are showing the republicans put out today a list of the polls that show this race tightening and it s across the pollsters showing this race tightening in all the states you mention. despite here, here is what chuck todd said about you. we spent a lot more money polling than scott rasmussen does. he was right the last couple elections. he got it right at the end. you guys used the same pollsters we do. these guys are the gold standard. we spent so much money. i hate the idea their polling has to get compared to what is in some cases slop. megyn: slop. any thoughts on that, scott? i don t know chalk todd and i don t follow his work. but i m happy to have competition.
democratic party. if they re moving away from him towards romney, you re going to start seeing people self-identify to the megyn: really? they re that fickle? don t most people know what they are? no. democrats a lot of democrats know what they are, but we live in a country now where 33, 35% of the voters are in no party or independent. those people, if they re starting they look at a great performance or something they feel suddenly they believe is a respectable candidate and start to think about i m going to vote for him, then when they get the call from the pollster, they re likely to say i m a republican, and that s what not a lot. you only need five, six points to actually say that. a lot of independents will say, no, i m still an independent. megyn: how significant is that? there s a whole list of polls we could go through that show this race tightening in ohio, even in pennsylvania which, you know, i think we had all discussed how pennsylvania was gone. it was going to b
virginia and colorado, romney leads. data in ohio, private data shows the race tightening. the obama campaign is responding to it. this week, they dramatically increase the television bye in state of ohio. you have don t do that in a state that a couple of weeks ago saying comfortably put away. bret: look at virginia. we have talked about that state a lot. romney is there delivering the foreign policy speech today. it s in the tossup category. still on this map. is it sliding one way or another? there has been clearly been moving to romney in all the states. you are seeing that. the debate did make a difference for him. virginia is going down to wire. i don t think karl and i expect anything different. when you talk about polls and independents self-identify as republicans,
do you believe we are on the right path the we have increased government employees. they ran up a lot of government employees during the bush years and in montana we have decreased government employees by 4.2%. even though we have decreased government employees and increased employment in the private sector. most people think that is moving in the right direction. shannon: what do you say to the voters that are unconvinced. we show the race tightening where you are in north carolina, mr. romney has very small lead. but states, ohio, virginia, colorado and others, what would you say to convince voters who seem to be, this is narrowing gap at this point and may be coming off the convention that romney-ryan ticket has some momentum? it is going to be a competitive race. there is no question about it. i think people wanted to look at governor romney s record as governor. that is the only thing he has actually served as. we were both businessmen when we