a very inartful way for him to try and make an argument for small businesses. what it does is draw attention to everything that the romney campaign doesn t want to draw attention to which is things like tax loopholes which the obama campaign has made a very intense effort to try and draw a connection between romney s personal taxes and evading tax and using, taking advantage of tax loopholes. so he tried to manage to step into all of it and on the akin stuff, the fastest way to get people to start talking about todd akin is to tell them not to ask about todd akin. that s just a classic political mistake. it s interesting, too, he s ripping off from the obama playbook thinking we have no memories because first of all, a rape is a rape is a rape. remember that fiasco. obama had just said that. now you re borrowing from obama in terms of the private sector is doing fine. it s more it s the kind of political mendacity that is hea artful but scary in his belief
that we don t get it. i don t think anything is artful about it. i think part of the problem is there s this presumption by the candidate that if you can just be quiet about everything and not talk about records or policy, people will buy it through november. just don t talk about it, don t ask about it, don t ask, don t tell. remember, it was fehrnstrom who said the etch-a-sketch moment. you twist the little dials, things appear during the primary season, and it seems as though someone right now, as you said, they re doing a big reset right now, the romney campaign. someone is jumping up and down and erasing the etch-a-sketch thinking that after labor day when folks are finally focused on the presidential campaign, they will be looking at a blank screen. i don t think this this was at best endearingly clumsy. it was not doesn t it secretly i guess not to belabor this point, it s more than endearingly
all three of you are in this for the long haul. sit tight, i m going to bring in alex moe who is outside ryan s home. with a dark early good morning to you. doesn t look like a lot of activity there? do we know if mr. ryan is home and planning to travel to norfolk? we haven t seen movement in the house from just before midnight local time. we do believe the congressman and his family still in the house. i ve been here all day yesterday and haven t seen the congressman at all since yesterday afternoon when he got home from the memorial service from the victims of the oak creek shooting that happened in his district. the congressman was supposed to go on vacation leaving for colorado for a week with his family but obviously that seems like that will be canceled as we do expect him to head to virginia to be with governor romney for the event this
go ahead. so they talked about reducing early voting. because that wasn t helping the republican party win. they talked about making voter registration much more difficult for third party organizations. organizations like the legal women voters who have been doing this for many years. there were a lot of discussions of what could the republican party do led by the strategists to ensure that republicans win in 2012. it s very sad what s going on in the republican party. it s very sad that the republican party doesn t want to win votes by talking about what it stands for. it wants to ensure that some people can t get to the polls, can t register to vote. you know, the political strategists of the gop can t control what voters do in the voting booth, but they can certainly try and control them ever getting to the voting booth. and that s what s happened in florida.
meetings where it was discussed of how to make sure what happened in 2008 when president obama brought out the college age voters, the minority voters, never happened again. and, you know, the republican party believes that minority voters in general are not ever going to vote republican. so discussions centers around how do we make sure that what happened in 08 never happens again. and part of those discussions dealt with changing the election laws in florida. and how to ensure that the republican party doesn t have to deal with what it dealt with in 08. and some of those changes dealt with reducing early voting. because people know or statistics show that early voters are not generally leaning republican. well, let me stop you right there. we had the data. 54% of african-americans voted early in 2008. so you re right. the data is very clear that early voting was certainly used.