you're not seeing a lot of mitt romney the candidate, mitt romney the man, you're also seeing mitt romney ads all the time. so are you, north carolina and nevada and florida and ohio and virginia. the eight states that are being targeted in the ad campaign, an ad campaign so big the campaign describes it as a carpet bombing. and this list of states, the states you see marked on the map right here, that is pretty much where the election is going to be fought from here on out. this map, you will notice, doesn't include all of the places we have been thinking about and talking about as swing states. the romney is not placing ads in michigan, wisconsin or pennsylvania. the super pacs have pulled their ads from michigan. romney is trailing in michigan by as much as seven points there. the pro romney pac money has dropped out of pennsylvania where romney is also behind in the polls. the romney campaign and pacs together, of course, have more money than god and mick jagger combined, so they could still decide to spend money wherever, whenever. this almost have infinite resources in terms of ad d

they did not talk all that much about mitt romney. chris christie waited more than 1,700 words into his speech before he even mentioned mitt romney. marco rubio's speech was 1,700 words long. it contained a grand total of two sentences about mitt romney, total. and that was the speech that was supposed to introduce mr. romney. mr. romney's big show in tampa was neat. it was mostly well produced, it was at times inspiring, particularly for people who already agree with mr. romney, but it was not very much about mr. romney at all. but what is maybe more surprising about how little we heard of mitt romney last week was how much we heard of a man named george w. bush. we made a big deal on this show about the fact that george w. bush was not going to the republican national convention. we noted it, everybody noted it. it seemed important. right? after leaving the country fighting two wars and in financial catastrophe, financial ruin four short years ago, mr. bush's party seemed not ready to embrace him or his legacy. and it is true that m

wade except by electing mitt romney, right? who will then pick supreme court judges who will do that. but they can't make it so hard to get an abortion that it might as well be illegal. they can make the right to access abortion a right in name only. after republicans won big majorities in 2010, they've enacted restrictions not seen. since roe vs. wade was decided in 1973. and as a result of this new wave of restrictions, we're seeing signs of a return to a reality in america that is looking more and more like the days before roe. "business week" published an interesting story this week out of arizona about a woman who is running a nonprofit program there to help poor women in arizona find ways to access abortions. discusses these new restrictions. you can no longer get an abortion outside tucson or phoenix in arizona. and even then you have to wait 24 hours after a forced ultrasound, which means many women are forced to travel hundreds of miles, and then pay to stay overnight in one of those two cities. pending another new abo

mitt romney into a relatable guy. at romney events they have been playing that video from the rnc but then they bumped that in favor of the crazy clint eastwood thing. this video about his family, it very nice. nobody saw it but they're using it at their events now and they have young mitt romney on a beach in france with his love letter to ann written in the sand. you can understand why mitt romney spent his draft eligible years writing love letters to ann in france. it might be worth a pound of questions about how he avoided serving during the war. they've even got him talking about health reform in that's again. conservatives are so scared of him losing as badly as he's losing, they are not even squawking about it as they did when he talked about romney care last month. they are trying to make people dislike their candidate less. and then thurston strikes again. >> he pulled me in, he tied up the boat for me, he rescued me just as he's going to rescue this great country. >> at the national level, fairly or not, vot

mitt romney campaign is never going to cut and run from mitt romney. but couldn't the superpacs at some point if the polls stay the way they are just decide mitt romney is running an unwinnable campaign, their money might be better spent in down-ballot campaigns? when the superpacs do their political triage there's an option to cut mitt romney loose. joining us now for "the interview," an evil dark money overlord named bill burton, a senior strategist for the pro-obama superpac, priorities usa action. bill, it's good to have you here. >> overlord is such a dirty word. >> it sounds better than it looks. it looks nice. then you say it out loud. >> i don't think it looks nice, either. >> did i get the basic point right there about, about the money -- money outside the campaigns, money you've been raising and spending. it's at a disadvantage. you have to pay more for your ad time? >> the campaigns pay a much cheaper rate than the superpacs are able to pay. on the republican side, karl rove and the koch brothers have hundreds of millions of dollars so can p

that is how mitt romney's ad quoted president obama. here's what president obama actually said. >> senator mccain's campaign actually said, and i quote, "if we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose." >> so the romney ad tried to make it sound like president obama said this thing that he was quoting someone else saying, and he was quoting it to say that he disagreed with that statement. i mean, there are lots of little lies in politics, little exaggerations, but that's really big, really bad lie. and it was their first ad against president obama. and so, naturally, mitt romney got skewered for this, for building his first general election ad on a really obviously blunt lie. what did the romney campaign do about the whopper in that ad? did they correct it or remove as mitt romney now says has always been his campaign policy? no, they didn't it. that ad is still up on his campaign web page. not only did the romney campaign did not remove or correct that ad, romney defended it just as it was getting all attention for being a l

mitt romney attacked obama's decision... said standing up to china was "bad for the nation and our workers." how can mitt romney take on the cheaters... when he's taking their side? look! she wears the scarlet markings! [ man ] out! your kind is not welcome here! nor your odd predilections! miracle whip is tangy and sweet, not odd. [ man ] it's evil! if you'd try it, you'd know. she speaketh the truth! [ crowd gasps ] [ woman ] reverend? ♪ can i have some? ♪ i was talking to my best friend. can i have some? i told her i wasn't feeling like myself... i had pain in my pelvic area... and bleeding that wasn't normal for me. she said i had to go to the doctor. turned out i had uterine cancer, a type of gynecologic cancer. i received treatment and we're confident i'll be fine. please listen to your body. if something doesn't feel right for two weeks or longer, see your doctor. get the inside knowledge about gynecologic cancers. knowing can make all the difference in the world. >>> the mitt romney for president campaign yesterd

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mitt romney is not a good candidate. but potentially even bigger problem is that the electorate does not seem to be buying what the republicans are offering. when romney picked ryan as vice president, i said to my wife, i think romney may have lost the election here. the reason i said that was because by picking paul ryan, it opened up that argument of the republican party as extreme and the democrats just pounced on that as you would expect them to do. and the country does not want those extreme aspects of the republican party, those extreme right wing policies. they do realize that's what got us into this trouble both overseas with the war in iraq and also with the economy. and they are not going for it anymore. the republic no longer believes that the way to help middle class and low-income families is to give more money to the rich. so i thought that mitt romney would pivot to the middle. he decided not to do that. >> i feel like the country republicans people in the middle and on the left want a republican party tha

one of the things he conveyed it was okay to do in mitt romney's name with mitt romney's money was to invest in a chinese oil company in 2011 and now mitt romney wants to launch himself as the guy tough on china? apparently. and specifically, he wants to be the tough on china guy while he's in ohio. mr. romney is launching this romney 5.0, i'm tough on china thing with a bus tour. a bus tour that his vice presidential nominee started today and he will start tomorrow in the great swing state of ohio, where the last six head to head polls show president obama winning that state. ohio is a perennial battleground. ad spending alone does not seem to be moving voters this year. the other key race is the senate race where $18 million in outside money has been dumped into the republican effort to defeat senator sherrod brown. it's unprecedented spending for ohio and unprecedented to have an incumbent outspent by this much money. but in ohio, the money does not seem to be working in that race. at least not the way it's supposed to. a new poll shows senator sherrod brown now leading his republi

mitt romney says that mitt romney is not qualified to be president. this has been a weird week, a lot of fast moving developments in the presidential campaign, but i don't think anybody could have predicted the week was going to end like this. you may remember back in july during mr. romney's big overseas trip to europe and the middle east, mr. romney sat down with abc news and spoke with them in part about his tax returns, talked with them about why we the people have not been allowed to see many of his tax returns, despite the fact he's been going around the country telling everybody a lot of things of what's in those returns, he said he's paid all of his taxes, we have to trust him, take his word on that but we're not going to be allowed to see the evidence. here what he told abc news at the time. >> i have paid all the taxes required by law. i don't pay more than are legally due. frankly, if i had paid more than are legally due, i don't think i'd be qualified to become president. >> if i had paid more than are legally due, i don't think i'd be qua

thank you, mitt romney. now you know why scott brown was racing back to try to be a senator for one more day in washington, d.c., instead of competing for his senate seat at home. where the latest poll says president obama is leading mitt romney by 28 points. democratic congressman barney frank of massachusetts joins us next for "the interview." stay with us. >>> professor warren claimed that she was a native american, a person of color. as you can see, she's not. that being said, she checked the box, and she had an opportunity actually to make a decision throughout her career when she applied to penn and harvard, she checked the box claiming she's a native american. and clearly she's not. that being said, i don't know, and neither do the viewers know whether, in fact, she got ahead as a result of that checking of the box. >> when i was growing up, these were the stories i knew about my heritage. i believed my mother and my father and my aunts and my uncles and i never asked anybody for any documentation. i

thank you, mitt romney. now you know why scott brown was racing back to try to be a senator for one more day in washington, d.c., instead of competing for his senate seat at home. where the latest poll says president obama is leading mitt romney by 28 points. democratic congressman barney frank of massachusetts joins us next for "the interview." stay with us. i didn't think it was anything. i had pain in my abdomen... it just wouldn't go away. i was spotting, but i had already gone through menopause. these symptoms may be nothing... but they could be early warning signs of a gynecologic cancer, such as cervical, ovarian, or uterine cancer. feeling bloated for no reason. that's what i remember. seeing my doctor probably saved my life. warning signs are not the same for everyone. if you think something's wrong... see your doctor. ask about gynecologic cancer. and get the inside knowledge. and those well grounded. for what's around this corner... and the next. there's cash flow options from pnc. solutions to he

thank you, mitt romney. now you know why scott brown was racing back to try to be a senator for one more day in washington, d.c., instead of competing for his senate seat at home. where the latest poll says president obama is leading mitt romney by 28 points. democratic congressman barney frank of massachusetts joins us next for "the interview." stay with us. [ horse neighs ] look! she wears the scarlet markings! [ man ] out! your kind is not welcome here! nor your odd predilections! miracle whip is tangy and sweet, not odd. [ man ] it's evil! if you'd try it, you'd know. she speaketh the truth! [ crowd gasps ] [ woman ] reverend? ♪ can i have some? ♪ to compete on the global stage. what we need are people prepared for the careers of our new economy. by 2025 we could have 20 million jobs without enough college graduates to fill them. that's why at devry university, we're teaming up with companies like cisco to help make sure everyone's ready with the know how we need for a new tomorrow. [ male announcer

but now republicans have a mitt romney problem. and a mitt romney problem is national. his problem holds true for every republican candidate in every race across the country in november, from dog catcher up to senator. every republican who's running for office shares a ballot and shares an "r" next to their name with mitt romney this year. and mitt romney, as you know, has spent the last couple of days to try to find a more elegant way to call 47% of the country, the working poor, and the young people, and the elderly in this country, trying to find a more elegant way to call them irresponsible and entitled, more elegant than he said it in his secretly recorded comments in a room full of $50,000 a plate donors, when he said that his campaign was not having trying to connect with the 47% of american who is dot annoy pay income taxes, and who he therefore sees as dependent and victims and not responsible citizens. and you can see the political effect of the mitt romney problem already, even 47 days from the election. as mr. romney has been dropping in the polls, so have b

that is what mitt romney's tax plan would do. it's also what republicans have pursued in the states since they took over the governorships in so many states in the 2010 elections. earlier this year, the republican tax reform bill in south carolina proposed raising taxes on the poorest families in that state and cutting taxes for people who are well off. because i guess republicans believe that south carolina poor people have too much money. in wisconsin, when the republicans took over there, what got the attention was the new law to strip union rights, which is now tied up in the courts. but the budget introduced in wisconsin would have cut taxes for everybody in the state except for poor people. the wisconsin republican budget would raise taxes on the poorest people in the state. because republicans there also think that poor people have too much money. in kansas where the republican takeover has gotten much less national attention than it ought to have, the republican governor signed a new bill into law. it takes poor people's

he's also an advisor to mitt romney. who according to the folks at politico serves as liaison between romney and movement conservatives. you remember john bolten as the ambassador to the u.n. remember him from the george bush years? he has a gig on fox news. you can see here he's explaining how the attack on the u.s. embassy how that was caused by the weakness and fecklessness of the obama administration. but john bolten is not just a fox news tv guy. he's also a romney campaign foreign policy advisor. so he gets to work for the romney campaign while he works on fox news. in fact, mr. bolten announced his endorsement of mitt romney during an appearance on fox news. the folks at media matters have been tracking the overlap of the analysts. a spokesperson said his joint role as a fox news contributor and advisor is totally okay and super ethical because mr. bolten is not paid by the campaign and he gives foreign policy advice to lots of people. the most amazing example making efficient use of air time is carl rove. he does

mitt romney abruptly shifts strategy. blogs bounce on mitt romney's stumbles. the washington post, the romney campaign is in trouble. it's not like the mitt romney campaign didn't look like it was in trouble before today but what's driving this overwhelmly vicious news cycle for them is now people who work on the campaign are talking to reporters most notably in that politico story. they are talking about each other and about mitt romney explaining who it is that they pl blame for the fact they are losing now. one saying. i also have this impression stewart must save his best stuff for meetings i'm not important enough to attend. the campaign is filled with people who spend their time avoiding him or resisting him. then there's the criticism of the candidate. they are baffled that a successful corporate leader has created a team with so few lines of authority or accountability. you expect a little of this from political professionals when their campaign is running behind but you do not expect the candidate himself to get attacked by his staffers who are still w

i cannot vote for mitt romney. i cannot vote for paul ryan. we have a senate race, i cannot vote for george allen because he, too, clings to these extreme social agendas that are over to the right. >> the reproductive health issue came to national -- in virginia came to national prominence around governor bob mcdonnell signing the law forcing women to have medically unnecessary ultrasounds even if it was against their doctor's orders. forcing them to pay for that privilege. when you are hearing people talk about presidential politics in the state of virginia, is it widely known that the vice presidential nominee on the republican ticket paul ryan proposed a forced ultrasound bill just like virginia's for the whole country? is that connection being made by people in the state? >> it is. i think voters are starting to focus and the republicans keep just delivering gifts to us democrats because they keep going to this extreme agenda and people are digging a little bit farther. they know that paul ryan has had a history of extreme agenda. that's a

president obama's beating mitt romney among virginia women by 14 points right now. and it was in this political environment that something happened in the state of virginia today. that is not necessarily being billed as relevant to the presidential race, but boy, howdy, is it relevant to the presidential race. virginia governor bob mcdonnell who spent a lifetime as an antiabortion activist and his attorney general who also spent a lifetime as an antiabortion activist, these two aggressively have engineered a meeting of the state's health board that happened today. they aggressively engineered that meeting toward a decision that could have the effect of shutting down most of the abortion clinics in virginia. last year, bob mcdonnell signed a new law calling for special regulations just for abortion clinics. targeted regulations designed to make it economically impossible to operate an abortion clinic in the state of virginia. it's the same thing the republicans did in mississippi this year. these are called trap laws. targeted regulations. these do not apply to any o

mitt romney's attack on the u.s. embassy as their own. and that's forever. joining us now is bob herbert, distinguished senior fellow at dimos advocacy center and contributor at policyshop.net. am i being unfair to mr. portman? >> not at all. that's outrageous. you know, the republican party has become a party without scruples. it's really amazing now. they'll just lie at a level in this campaign that i really haven't seen, you know, politicians have distorted the truth since time immemorial. i understand that, but kind of the lies that are coming out of this campaign are really amazing. and then the level of irresponsibility. i mean, this is a really -- this is a tragic situation. it is still unbelievably dangerous. and these comments coming out from mitt romney and others in the party are undermining the president at a time when the united states really needs to be putting its best minds together to defuse the situation if it's all all possible. >> i felt like there was an outbreak of scrupulousness, outbreak of sc

mitt romney hasn't served in any capacity that would give him experience. but he's been advised by a campaign that has a lot of old hands. that's why this seems surprising to me. i don't know whether to see this as an attempt at political boldness or aggression or whether this was something screwed up. whether this was a product of in inexperience day. what do you think? >> a couple of cross currents here. first of all, it came right after laura ingraham, rush limbaugh and others had criticized him for being too weak and not being aggressive enough. so i think they were looking for an opportunity. they certainly had to be defensive for having failed to mention afghanistan in their convention speech and they had been trying to defend themselves against that attack on foreign policy, so perhaps that weighed into it. but there's also something in the air here. a minute does not pass where either campaign, both campaigns, aren't putting out a press release on something or another. it's not just the social media. it's, you know, old fashioned press releases. and

in response to mitt romney this afternoon. mr. burns, in that place that he saw him there was being interviewed by the host of en masse and pc's andrea mitchell reports. it was so riveting it was like time stopped. thank you for being here. it has been a long day. >> such an interesting day because it was revealing. it was one of those moments where the character and policy were both revealed. >> let me ask you about the timing. as far as i understand it, you were trying to get confirmation on what happened in that in gauzy last night when this statement got e-mailed out. it is that unusual. what is important about that? >> i thought it was extraordinary. things have changed in a very strange way. we were trying to get confirmation. we were told we could not tell you whether or not the american diplomat was one of the people killed and that when we do know we are going to have to notify next of kin before we tell anybody. we would not broadcast that in any case. you were on the air, i was trying to get a report together. the next

they don't seem to really care about foreign policy in terms of the mitt romney campaign. they just don't want to be asked about it. because the republican party is essentially forfeited on this issue, because on this issue there are not two plausible sides fighting it out in the election, there's the democrats and sort of a right wing fee pooe nut gallery that pops up. foreign policy and the wars are being handled in our political system differently than any other thing being fought over in this election. you can see that in the polling. look at where the american public is 11 years after 9/11 on the major issues of foreign policy. the proportion of the american public that want troops out of afghanistan either by the time that president obama wants them out or sooner than that, when you combine those numbers, it's 82%. on iraq, the proportion of americans who say it was not worth it is two-thirds of the american public. the portion who say the iraq war was worth it is just one-third of the american public. that's the highest ever number that said the iraq war wasn't wort

do you agree with mitt romney? >> i think what he was saying among the other powers, china and russia, that russia stands a great threat. >> this is their answer. when mitt romney said number one geopolitical foe, he didn't mean number one, he meant this is worse than china. just came out number one. it wasn't number one out of all of the oh countries. just those two countries. this struggle over the russia question comes on top of another struggle. out of their whole convention, there seemed to be a few narratives that stuck. why was clint eastwood yelling at an empty chair? nobody from the romney campaign has fired for letting that happen. second narrative, there were a bunch of factually untrue things in the paul ryan vice presidential nomination speech and that was reenforced when he had to admit he said an untrue thing about how fast he once ran a marathon. the third narrative that has stuck is neither ryan or romney mentioned the fact that we have 80,000 troops at war right now when they gave their acceptance

it was a video to get us psyched about mitt romney. it was a good ten-minute introduction video for mitt romney that was really well done. really might make you like him even if you didn't like him already or haven't been paying attention and fell asleep for a second at the end of "rookie blue." they had this done, ten-minute film, but they did not air it during network coverage, so most people did not see it. it was done by the time the networks started covering the convention. they had scheduled it to run before the networks were switching over to convention coverage. for a specific reason. they did that in order to make room in the golden hour, in the network coverage hour for this instead. look. to be announced. their big surprise. a to be announced speaker. a surprise, wow, and then of course, they blew the surprise. word about who it was going to be leaked out a day early so there was no suspense at all about who the suspenseful speaker would be, but apparently they thought it was going to be so good, this speaker was going to be

this is what greeted mitt romney today as he campaigned. fight big banks, not big bird. 99% of cookies are eaten by 1% of monsters. make wall street pay, not "sesame street". members of an iowa citizens group dressed in sesame street costumes. they were at a romney event today to protest -- actually, more to just laugh at his suggestion that his plan to cut the deficit is to cut off funding for pbs. this has become a full-fledged thing in the campaign now. the obama campaign today releasing this 30-second ad specifically on the issue of big bird. it's a sarcastic ad hitting mitt romney for being tough enough to take on this yellow-feathered fellow. and president obama has now fully incorporated the big bird line into his stump speech. >> for all you moms and kids out there, you should have confidence that finally somebody is cracking down on big bird. elmo has been seen in a white suburban. he's driving for the border. oscar is hiding out in his trash can. we're cracking down on um. governor romney's plan is to let wall street run wild agai