loose relationship with the truth. these are the people he wants to bring into the voting pool because guess what? they need to increase their base. that s what this is about. by the way, stop messing around with this. it s state s rights to do the voting laws, and he wants to just go ahead and put everything under his big umbrella so he can mess it up some more. can t wait to see that. let s go to bob and then greg. there s such a thing as paying your debt to society, which is what incarceration is about and parole is about. after that, the slate is supposed to be clean. these laws were passed in the jim crow days. it s hundreds of years old. they re antiques, they re absolutely, as far as i m concerned, unconstitutional. i think it depends on the crime, is my point. i assume they did they not say they were not going to allow certain i don t think just violent is enough. kimberly s point is the states have a role. can we get greg s last word? clearly, he s turning a
former republican elected officials and some current ones. i mean, really, how many signals do you need? you ve written a lot about this. larry makes a good point. there is some hard-headedness of republicans, just the way they decided on these candidates, rather than going to a popular vote. they have sunk to zero on one strategy to counteract this, and that is good old fashioned voter suppression. yeah, i think you ve seen that. it s funny, mcdonnell is actually a mix of this. cuccinelli has been hard core on everything, including issues around voting access. mcdonnell actually seemed to suggest a different direction, and he talked about restoring some voting rights to former felons who are disproportionately african-american, and that s a voting pool some people think by estimates would probably be more democratic. and that really is on one issue the sort of the sort of irtext of this campaign, where mcdonnell has been a slightly more moderate republican,
of independents. that needs to be addressed thousand. they need to think about how they ll increase that voting pool.sand. they need to think about how they ll increase that voting pool. closed primaries are i think to the detriment of the gop. they should open that process. you ll see the likes of mike huckabee or sarah palin or rick santorum emerge as a favorite when my opinion is none of the above could be elected in a general election. so they have to focus on that process sooner than later, as well. okay. michael, karen, always a pleasure. thank you. office politics with eugene robinson, his take on how a weak republican party is bad for the country. in america today we re running out of a vital resource we need to compete on the global stage. what we need are people prepared for the careers of our new economy.
polls. most of the registered voter polls show the president ahead. but all turnout models we have, all the interest, enthusiasm of the campaign is favorly toward the republicans. what it means right now, mitt romney probably slight favorite as you re going forward. but the election is really going to be determined by what happens to the economy between now and november. if it gets worse, president obama loses. heather: what about the job approval numbers in terms of the job that president obama is doing? right now 26% strongly approve. 43% strongly disapprove. that intensity, that intense opposition to the president has been pretty consistent for the last couple of years. again, by all the measures that we see, rinse are a lot more fired up to participate in this. president obama in this election is playing the same role that george bush plate in 2008. he s supplying all the passion for both sides on the voting
can t enforce the laws to protect air that we breathe and food we eat. no more motherhood or apple pie if the g.o.p. is elected is what he s saying. sean: that is the strategy because he can t run on his record. how effective can that be? it can be effective. the wisdom of the people is greater than what barack obama is giving all of us credit for. he is insulting the intelligence, the collective intelligence of the voting pool in america. he has another thing coming if he thinks that strategy is going to work. sean: how does he go from the hope and change personality and you dealt with this up front an personal in 2008. think of the shift, which is so dramatic to how negative he is today. he is very, very negative. very costic. outright lying to the american people. he has been telling the american people we only have 2% of the world s oil. sometimes he will call it the world s oil reserve. he uses different terminology. that is a lie. even when he tells the truth about our