recount provisions in the state of ohio. our models have it that close. romney s struggle in ohio was partly rooted in the 2008 new york times op-ed he wrote just weeks after obama won calling for managed bankruptcy but said the government should only guarantee private loans. quote, detroit needs a turnaround, not a check, he wrote. the piece was entitled let detroit go bankrupt. romney survived the primary gauntlet and let republican super pacs hammer the president on the air. the campaign spend a lot of time defining romney before romney was able to define obama. romney was criticized for taking a week off in july for campaigning about the obama s strategy and for bundling the trip to israel, europe and poland. he announced paul ryan as his running mate but that didn t produce the bump he needed. as the focus of the race turned
drents white. so no surprise the president brought up the auto bailout and criticism of an advertisement by mitt romney that has been widely discredited. let me play for you a little bit of what the president had to say. look. i understand that governor romney s had a tough time here in ohio because he was against saving the auto industry. you know, it s hard to run away from that position when you re on videotape saying let s let detroit go bankrupt. and people cheered again when the president said you don t have to scare voters to scare up some votes. he also got maybe the most sustained applause when he talked about women s rights and women s health. so this is a very excited crowd. i ll bet there was one, too, about 20 miles from here in cleveland where a surprise appearance was made by stevie wonder who showed up at an early polling place and said, i ll tell you what. you go in there and vote and i ll do a concert. i m guessing he had more than a few takers. mitt romney will b
articles saying he is not telling the truth about this. it has been a high-risk strategy. i don t know if ohio has gone from 3 to 6 as the polls seem to indicate. i think the risk he took in being dishonest bawas a bad ris for him to take. what is it that you are hearing personally on the ground in the midwest right now? well, you know, you talk to people and, you know, again, i think it is a question of who they think will stand up for them? they look at a guy like mitt romney. he is running around saying, hey, i m from michigan. i m a car guy. well, yeah, he is a car guy. his dad owned the car company. being a car guy means understanding what it is like to work in a factory. it means understanding what people who are looking at their jobs and wondering if they are really going to go overseas, what that feels like. i think that s one of the ironies here, is that by raising this, something so obviously
bob: i never heard that song. who did that? greg: billy joel. bob: good for billy joel. lightning round in politics. we started this and we like it. start with eric. eric: president obama did it again. went to the well. listen to him in ohio. i understand that governor romney has had a tough time in ohio because he was against saving the auto industry. hard to run away from that position when you are on videotape saying the words let detroit go bankrupt. i know, we re close to an election. but this isn t a game. eric: no, it s not a game. president obama, you are wrong. no, he s not on videotape. he wrote an op ed for new york times in 2008, the problem is he didn t write that headline up top. let detroit go bankrupt. the new york times wrote that. in fact, at the end of the
pretty good for the president. you know, i m glad bill brought that up because i was going to get to that in just a few minutes. ohio, governor romney hasn t led in a major poll in that state. right now you take an average of all the polls that look at the buckeye state, the president enjoys a lead there, some of those leads more substantial than others. is it at this point the buckeye state is it a wash for the governor? well, you know, i think he certainly had some trouble there gaining ground. he tried a new tactic over these last couple of days talking about the auto bailout, not a good look for him because of that op-ed that he wrote in 2008 titled let detroit go bankrupt. so when he even mentions the auto bailout it only turns the focus back to him in a have all of these local papers there really point to the fact that he has this ad out alleging jeep is transferring zwrobs china basically calling it a flat out lie. this hasn t been a good look to him. he moved to pennsylvani