worsened by romney s own ill-advised birther joke on friday, if you could call it a joke. that remark earning rnc reince priebus a political spanking from my colleague, chris matthews. funny too that romney seems to think that he s the one being subjected to dishonest, vicious attacks. telling usa today, i do think that the president s campaign of personal vilification and demonization probably draws some people away from me. i see, it must be the president s fault. it couldn t possibly be that romney s own campaign of lies, such as the one where he says the president removed the work requirement for welfare, are insulting the electorate. absolutely not. indeed, according to usa today, romney defends the welfare ads as accurate, accusing obama of offering state waivers as a political calculation designed to shore up his base for the election. right, well, i guess romney s calculating that since he s got
put out new medicare ads today. when that s the topic dejure, doesn t conventional wis democrat suggest that s a win for the president? yes, and it s likely to be a win for the president in the end. but what republicans are trying to do is raise the price of that victory. people know that two things are true. one, medicare does have to be cut in the future because it s going to bankrupt the federal budget. republicans would cut it more than democrats. now, they say they could do that and still protect seniors just the way democrats say, we d cut defense but we wouldn t make americans less safe. this is an issue where people understand that democrats created medicare, and republicans are trying to neutralize it and make it less of a club that democrats can use. uphill fight for republicans to do that, though. it s sort of like the ads on welfare that the romney campaign is running. there is more factual basis for the republicans ads on medicare than on welfare, but the welfare ads ar
terms of the romney family. right. take a listen to mr. romney s son matt speaking in december. you know as soon as president obama releases his grades and birth certificate and a long list of things. now, joan, to be fair to matt, he did apologize subsequently. i think he said my bad. maybe he said more than that. do you think his father s going to follow his lead and apologize? it ll be interesting to see. no way. there s not going to be any apology. and listen, here s another thing to keep in mind. research has shown there s data out there saying these kind of ads like the welfare ads and other sort of comments that are playing to race actually do make headway with those folk who are a little bit more conservative racially speaking. so whether it s strategy or not, it still operates strategically and divisive politics. coming on the heels of these awful welfare ads, a, they re
the whole birther issue which is the whole question about race and the campaign, something that the romney m campaign has vigorously rejected, saying their welfare ads have nothing to do with race but this, as you point out, is going to give critics a big opening. there s two things about this that are true that makes what governor romney said for whatever reason unfortunate. one is, there are all these other issues. governor romney has used other language and his surrogates have talking about the president needs to be more american, things along those lines. there s the welfare ad which there s no doubt the democrats think is a racial dog whistle. so it s part of a package of things that is going to intensify the democrats claims that governor romney and his allies are engaged in a dog whistle campaign across the board to try to paint the president in terms that they re unwilling to confront directly. the other unfortunate thing, there are tens of millions of americans who don t th
the romney campaign feels that way in reverse. ohio is this challenge for them that frankly they never expected but it s why you see this targeting on welfare. this is all targeting white working class voters in ohio are not flocking to romney in the way they thought they would. you ve been doing a lot of analysis of that as well. yes. what it seems to me is becoming clear in this campaign is that both sides, the obama camp and the romney camp, are treating this as a base election, not a base plus election, and i think the welfare ads and the advocacy, the belligerence of romney on that and the aggressive push-back of the president is about those voters. romney needs to jack the percentage of that very, very high, especially men, in order to compete with the other demographic advantages the president has in ohio, florida, virginia, everywhere else. that appears to be one of the central dynamics of this race in the last two or three weeks.