sam, we ll get back to you on that. that was six months ago. last night, this was still an unanswered question. would mitt romney support fair pay for women? we know his running mate was against it. is he for it? mr. romney gave no answer about the policy at the debate. that s when he instead wandered off into the now-infamous binders anecdote. his campaign followed up last night. ed gillespie said, mitt romney was opposed to the lily ledbetter fair act at the time. but now they sent out another change, in the form of a correction, mr. gillespie saying, no, no, no, i was wrong, when i said he opposed the lily ledbetter act, he never weighed in on it. so the problem for mr. romney last night, it was for the purpose of avoiding a direct statement about that policy that he wandered into his anecdote about binders full of women. he thought that was safer territory than actually addressing the question. the problem for him today, even the awkwardly distracting
and how do you differentiate yourself from george w. bush? yes. great question. a question that nobody had any idea how romney was going to answer it. this is why town hall is such a great format. you get real people asking direct questions, that the campaigns do not want to talk about, and that the beltway press maybe hasn t been focused on, but they are questions that are really on regular people s minds. and to mr. romney s credit, he did not try to evade that question. he did try to answer this question by pointing out differences between himself and president bush. he said that the first difference between him and george w. bush is that he, mitt romney, would make us, he said, north america, actually. he said, he would make us energy independent. he, mitt romney, unlike george w. bush, would promise to get america totally independent from foreign sources of oil. we ve got to become independent from foreign sources of oil. mr. romney also distinguished himself from george w.
the race right now has been as hot as a burning stump for a long time. last night put kerosene on that. the race is still close, very close by anybody s estimation. the key, as we said before, california, virginia, ohio. governor romney, partly because he s bounced from the last debate, seems to have pulled up at least even, probably a little ahead in florida. virginia, almost dead even. but president obama clings to a whisper close lead in ohio. now, if you do the electoral college math, it s very hard to see how romney can win, if he doesn t win at least two, and he probably needs three, all three of those states, florida, virginia, and ohio. on the other hand, if president obama can just win ohio, he s probably going to win the election. one of the reasons that i think the vice presidential debate was very fun to watch and last night was very fun to watch, they were just good debates, is they covered a lot of other ground that hasn t really been trod in this campaign. and i think
turning medicare into a voucher. george bush embraced comprehensive immigration reform. he didn t call for self-deportation. george bush never suggested that we eliminate funding for planned parenthood. so, there are differences between governor romney and george bush, but they re not on economic policy. in some ways, he s gone to a more extreme place when it comes to social policy. and i think that s a mistake. any further discussion, gentleman? no. from there, they moved on. the george w. bush question, settled. for undecided voters, who very reasonably might be worrying about putting another republican in the white house, since the last guy was george w. bush, this is what was ringing in your years last night if you ve ever thought about that problem. and actually, in terms of the
criticism of the bush administration is that there was no critical feedback loop. and he kept referencing that when interviewers weren t bringing it up as a way of saying what he thought was wrong with the previous administration. and i think he can do it, he did it here. i don t think that his win last night, i cast it this way, that president obama won more than mitt romney lost. mitt romney had his moments, and didn t do all that badly. we ll see what the polls say. but i don t expect, romney got about a four to six-point bounce out of what the newspapers say the drubbing in denver. but heavy night at hofstra, i expect president obama to get a modest bounce out of this, maybe in the order of two points, two and a half points, and the polls won t play completely out, because, after all, we have the foreign policy debate coming up next monday night. so we ll have another set of polls at that time.