president obama has made it clear. he s got an agenda and nothing is going to stand in his way. i will not negotiate around the debt ceiling. they will not collect a ransom in exchange for not crashing the american economy. ordinary folks, they do their jobs. the notion that our elected leadership can t do the same thing is mind boggling to him. it needs to stop. this is not a complicated concept. he s standing strong. and that s making it even harder for an already divided gop to regroup. take exhibit a. earlier today, tagg romney s name was floated as a possible gop senate candidate in massachusetts. he s since bowed out. guess he saw what happened to the last romney. . and then there s this. gop donors are turning to karl rove to help weed out far right candidates in upcoming races. really? isn t he the guy who blew $300
what you believe is best for the business. because i think that will figure in to their election decision. romney s right about one thing. there s nothing illegal about telling your employees who to vote for. the citizens united case opened that door. legal analysts say before citizens united, your employer could not force you to give money to a pac or show up at a political event. now they can. again, there is no federal law to stop your boss from using high-pressure tactics to score votes for their favorite candidate. this is the first presidential election since the citizens united case and lots of bosses are discovering this new political power in the workplace. we ve been telling you about them here on the ed show for weeks. david siegel, richard lacks of the koch probrothers admitted t sending letters to employees telling them to vote for romney. robert murray accused of forcing coal workers to attend this
adviser in the campaign. what if a senior adviser in the obama campaign made a comment like that? is the media doing a disservice right now to the public by not calling out? i mean, tone is a big part of this election. i mean, we have got we re supposed to have some kind of civility. i guess that has all left the building. but the fact is there is a pattern of disrespect. what if an obama adviser had said that about romney? what would the reaction have been? there would be there would be all the cat calls and the crocodile tears being cried by the far right. i mean, heck, they re upset about the moderator of a debate. what do you think they d say about this? my god, they would go ba bananas. they would literally lose their collective minds. if barack obama jr. had said this they d try to portray him as little wayne with a blow horn who has political pedigree who needs to be treated like he s little wayne without political pedigree,
the miners, well, they say they didn t even get paid for it. these examples are part of romney s bigger picture, bigger plan, bigger campaign plan. you heard him on the phone. now he s talking to conservatives. what do you think they re going to do? tell them to vote for obama? here s he s advising basically every boss he knows to tell their employees how to vote. it might be legal, but is it morally correct and is it right? let s bring in john nichols, washington correspondent for the nation magazine and author of the book uprising. great to have you with us. could this impact the election? is it that big? yes, absolutely. you have to see it as part of the master plan. why was mitt romney on that call? he s a busy man. he s doing a lot of stuff. why is this so important to go on a call with all sorts of bosses across the country and personally make that ask? because structurally we see television, we hear radio, we see that side of the campaign.
romney and women voters. stay tuned. coming right back. [ female announcer ] gross? i ll tell you what s really gross. used dishcloths. they can have a history that they drag around with them. for a cleaner way to clean try bounty extra soft. in this lab demo, one sheet of bounty extra soft leaves this surface 3 times cleaner than a dishcloth. it s super durable too. it s the cleaner way to clean.