americans. governor romney has not said what the plan is for paying for the $5 trillion in tax cuts just like he won t talk about what his tax returns have been or with all due reis spect, governor, first of all, governor romney made is clear in the debate and he was actually able to speak directly to the american people that he is not going to lower the burdening on up youer income individuals. we know that upper income individuals rely more heavily on deductions and he will give the relief on the middle class and it will be deficit neutral. one of the best lines of the debate was i have five sons and you can tell the story i m used to hearing the story five times and having me believing it to be true but we know it is not true what they are saying about his tax plan. let s talk about the president s vision. let s talk about where his deductions are. chris: let s finish about that and then we will talk about the president s vision, senator. part of the problem is that i have a
resolve this. he is. chris: less than a minute left. early indications after the debate that romney got some kind of bump in the polls. i will ask you both briefly, 30 seconds each. governor, where does this race stand right now? i think we have three more debates coming up one of i have is the vice presidential campaign where paul ryan has been very specific about what he would do in a budget and that is a budget that would be bad for the economy, bad for job growth. it would increase taxes on 18 million people. and so we have a few more rounds to go in this fight. what we saw in the first one was a very energized performance. big bird meets the big lies and now governor romney is going to be challenged for the remaining 30 days to explain how it is that he pays for $5 trillion in tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires without the rest of us suffering the cost of the effects. the debate was a reset of the campaign and gave an opportunity for the american people to, first o
much all that they have coming out of this debate. i mean romney did something pretty extraordinary. basically liberated hillself from the modern party. he felt bound to it during the primaries and in the convention. presented himself as a moderate appealing businessman. not going to raise taxes on the middle class. doesn t have a $5 trillion tax cut and i think that was a huge, huge accomplishment. he didn t look like he was disconnected from ordinary people. now, i think the difficulty for the president i think it is a reasonable thing to try to do but the next debate is in a town hall format this will be he hard to attack somebody in front of a bunch of people asking questions. chris: i want to pick up on what mara mentioned, your wall street journal had a big article about it this weekend, the idea that obama is pivoting from the right to the season per on issues like tax cuts and immigration and bipartisanship. do you see him softening some of this is conservative positions.
the lowest point since he game into office. that s definitely a powerful thing. overcoming what happened in the debate is a much bigger problem for him. chris: there is not much disagreement in a town where everybody disagrees about everything there is not much disagreement that romney won the debate. take a look at the latest cover of the new yorker which is just out and shows romney debating an empty chair much as clint eastwood did at the republican convention but the obama camp is in overdrive trying to undercut romney s victory basically saying he lie with his positions is. how s that working? i don t think that is working very well. what i would say about this is this idea that romney won the debate because obama basically didn t show up, i don t buy that. the barack obama i heard on the debate stage was the barack obama i have been listening to now for four years. he sounded very much like himself. i don t think he was terribly bad. i think he has a very weak case
who knows. i m not sure romney is as vulnerable as the obama team think. is presumably hit him on the 47%. hit him on flip flops and so on. take all of these things that the obama camp has now noted were, quote, lies, and try to make some hay out of them. then ryan would have to spend time defending and so on. i don t think it the debate will make all that much difference. interesting to see which way biden goes. whether he goes after ryan or romney. vice presidential debates usually don t matter. there is a further difficulty now for biden. up until now there hasn t been any romneyism. didn t have his own agenda and didn t present a vision. he changed that because he looked commanding and like he righted his campaign in the debate. it will be harder to paint him as kind of a hand maiden of the house republican quote extreme agenda that paul ryan