i wrote about this today for salon.com called barack obama is winning. that s the name of my own story. it s becoming clear barack obama is leading this race and has been leading this race. this is important, because there are many people who are comparing 2012 to 2004 when president george w. bush overcame dangerous approval ratings and doubts about his leadership to hold onto the presidency. sort of a similar climate politically. the question is this, if barack obama wins a second term, what happens to be republican party? questions are raised about the way romney s campaign is run with some conservatives slamming the team. joins us now is susan, and susan, i want to put a bit of a windup on the first question because i ve been thinking about this a lot. there was a tweet this weekend from joe scarborough, who is basically making a case a real conservative were the republican nominee. the republicans would be way ahead. i think the conventional wisdom
else was doing. perhaps unfair attacks on them. i mean, it s good that mormonism is not central to the campaign. romney ran the campaign he wanted to run without being stopped by it the way jfk spoke to ebusiness pailianism and say it won t change. it has not been central to the presidential campaign. we re not ready for a mormon debate and we re not going to. it was central to the republican primary campaign. i would argue in 1968, 44 years ago, george romney had an easier path to the presidency through his mormonism than mitt romney faces. the republican party today versus 1968, about half is evangelical christians and a lot have very hostile views towards mormonism. they believe it s inxatable with their view of what christianity is. a long of evangelical christians have that view, and we have the spectacle in the republican
let s sanction a conversation on magic underwear. rubber stamp that right now. i agree it doesn t matter and it s six to dozen half a dozen sort of way it doesn t matter it won t stop mitt romney. people are interested in his faith, but at the beginning there was chatter about is this going to stop him the way obama s blackness is something he has to deal with. that has not been the case, and it s good to see people want to consider the candidate. they re interested, but they re not going to vote at least they don t tell us they won t vote for him because of that. it hasn t stopped him. obviously the reverend wright and the attacks on the president and on the potential vice president, sarah palin, were political attacks through the lens of religious. they created a narrative untrue, and they were quite a reach. it was not things that barack obama was saying. they were things reverend wright was saying. this is not a religion sarah palin was involved in any way perhaps ever. tha
you have in the republican primary very far right extreme rhetoric, self-deportations, absolutely no amnesty from the republican party. how will that issue play out within the republican party, do you think, in the next term? well, again, it depends on the results of this election, because if governor romney wins, then they re going to feel a little more confident. if not, i m hoping that they take a lesson, the dream act i was one of the republicans for the dream act. that s a good start to reaching out to the latino community. it s not just good government but good politics. that is something that could happen. we need to look towards people who want to govern, and when you do that, it means compromise and greater political outreach. no matter who wins, you have a demographic problems. there s fewer whites in every electorate since 1982. there s a rising number of hispanics in the country. ron brown points out to win this
is looking at the different routes to victory with the two main swing states in one column or the other, that being ohio and florida and how the other swing states may be able to there may be a path without one of their swing states for mitt romney. ohio, the depression over ohio in the romney camp is real and they re closely watching it and they have reason to be very concerned about it. ken, i think the story here is broader at least to me than just a polling bump for obama out of the convention. i think there s a bigger story here that really obama has been winning this race basically the whole way, since romney emerged from the republican primaries last spring. i don t know if we can see this, but i ll describe it. we have the polling trend that real clear politics puts together. they average together day to day every poll out there. it eliminates the noise with one outlier. going back to april, obama has clearly been ahead one, two, three, four points except for the start of t