Controversial comments on rape and abortion debate yesterday, paul ryan offered his ideas for rewriting the social safety net and helping those who call into poverty. We want to hear from you about which issue is driving your vote leading into election day. Did you make up your mind months or years ago . Let us know by calling in on the republican line. On the democratic line on the independent line you can also catch up with us on all your social media sites on twitter, facebook, or email us at. A very good morning to you. I want to get right to some of those polls on the horserace leading up to election day. This from last night. Two National Polls show the president s race remains a dead heat. Mitt romney gaining ground in one survey about losing steam in another. National numbers president obama seems to be retaining a significant lead in pivotal ohio. Yesterday afternoon, a news poll found the candidates nearly tied among likely voters. The results were flat from a week prior when the same poll showed mr. Obama ahead of his challenger. Both results were within the polls margin of error. The story goes on to note if the president s campaign was unnerved by new numbers from abc news, they may take part from gallup which shows the mitt romney lead dwindling three. Mitt romney outpaces the president among likely voters 50 to 47 . I want to take you also to a map in the New York Times today showing the travels of the two campaigns over the past 48 hours. On tuesday and wednesday, they visited a combined 11 cities in six states covering more than 3,000 miles each. The president started in florida into ohio, nevada, denver, colorado, out to los angeles for an appearance on the tonight show last night. The president traveling again back in that crucial swing state of ohio. Mitt romneys camp also going to ohio, out to nevada in rena and also to colorado. We will be tracking all those movements today. We want to know which issue is driving your vote. We will start on the democratic line. Robert, what is driving your vote . Caller the republicans made the statement that they refuse to work with this president and they were going to see that he was going to be a onetime president. Because of that, i think we should send this president back to the white house to work with republicans. Otherwise we would be perpetuating a dysfunctional government. We should put him back in the white house and forced the republicans to work with this president. If we do not, we are perpetuating the prophecy of this president being a onetime president. Host ward 2 mitt romneys trips yesterday, here is the article from the washington times. Mitt romney campaigned in nevada wednesday and had another stop in iowa. He now clings to a lead with less than two weeks to go. That story of course has gotten lots of headlines in todays papers. Here is a few of them from the chicago tribune. The lead story the Washington Post headline and the Arizona Republic i want to read to you from the indianapolis star, the headline on that story the story goes on to note i want to take a few more calls from you about which issue is driving your vote but we will continue to cover these stories. Winchester, virginia, is next. Caller a Pretty Simple concept but one that does not seem to get much coverage. Who is going to be picking the next batch of Supreme Court justices . We need to keep the Supreme Court as balanced as possible whether you are a conservative or liberal. It does not matter. We get closest to having the Supreme Court doing the job it is intended to do when it is balanced. Not all the way to the right, not all the way to the left. Supreme Court Justices may be getting ready to retire. Ginsberg is the only one on the left. More than likely, mitt romney is getting my vote so we do not end up with a more unbalanced Supreme Court. Host thanks so much. One other headline on that Richard Mourdock story dominating the news. This is from the abc news. Com site. I want to bring you a little bit from that debate on tuesday so you can see his comments. I believe life begins at conception. The only exception i have is in that case for the life of the mother. I struggled with it myself but i came to realize life is a gift from god. Even with rape, it is something god intended to happen. Host we are taking your calls this morning on what issue is driving your vote. Anita is next on the republican line. Caller hey. My issues is our president obama. He said he was going to unite. All he has done was divide. In four years, we have heard blame. He has played the race card so much, and class warfare. He is trying to divide the people. I just dont trust him. He spends money like it was water, and were ind ebt. So, my vote goes to romney. Thank you for calling this morning. James, thank you for calling the washington journal. Caller thank you. The issue i see going on is mitt romney is trying to win the election just because the majority of people in the United States are white. This is what i want the white democrats to realize. If you do not support president obama, it is going to be hard for African Americans to come out and support another white democrat. The white democrats are not supporting statewide black politicians. That is the reason why no black democrats can get elected in the senate. Look at florida. You best come out and support president obama because it will be hard to get blakcs out of [indiscernible] host a comment from joe on twitter a headline from the Washington Post today one other story, this from usa today this morning. We want to hear what is driving your votes with just 12 days to go before the election. Charlie from virginia on the independence lin t line. Caller i will be supporting the libertarian candidate gary johnson. The only candidate who can turn this country around. He wants to stop intervening in all these wars and balance the budget now. Our government is broke. Yeah, everyone should check out gary johnson. He is a libertarian and running for president. Host from tennessee on the republican line, you are on the washington journal. Caller thank you for taking my call. Voting for someone because they are black is just as racist as voting for somebody because they are not black. How come you guys have not covered the leaked emails . God bless america and thank you so much for cspan. Host which emails are you talking about . The ones dealing with the benghazi attacks . We will get to that right now. Eric schmitt is on the phone right now from the New York Times. The headline from his story today eric schmitt, bring us up to date on what these emails are revealing. Guest these emails revealed 3 emails that were sent out in the state Department Operations center within the two hours or so after the attack on the Diplomatic Mission in benghazi started on september 11. The initial emails are the embassy reporting that this consulate was under attack. Describing that they were under attack them been the ambassador Chris Stevens who was later killed said was in a safe haven in the compound and later talks about how the shooting has stopped apparently. One of the most telling emails comes atwo hours after the attack, that the embassy was reporting that a local Militia Group which has some ties to al qaeda is reporting that it is claiming responsibility for the attack on facebook and twitter. The significance of this is that this should have shown that the white house and the rest of the administration knew much earlier than they said that this was a terrorist attack. Intelligence officials have told me that there was a whole bunch of information coming in, some of its contradictory and some of it confusing in the initial hours after the attack. To place more of emphasis on these and that particular e mail really would put too much weight on one single piece of evidence. It does it feed into the narrative that some republicans have been voicing in recent weeks, that the administration did not blame the attack for too long on what they called it a spontaneous demonstration on the and the sea when in fact there was growing evidence that was later recognized that this was a deliberate attack by militant groups. Host along with these emails, has there been any further explanation from officials on the shifting explanation in the days after that attack about who was a shiftwhy there in opinion from the white house . Guest their explanation has been in the initial hours and days after an event like this, you are going to get a lot of information coming in from various sources and it takes a while to assess this information and to come out with an explanation. Most of the criticism focuses on the u. S. Ambassador of the un susan rice. Even though the ambassador mentioned there were extremist elements involved and possibly al qaeda from north africa. The administration within several days eventually came out and said this was a terrorist attack. Not months or years in planning, but much more opportunistic probably triggered by demonstrations that the militants in libya heard. In cairo, they breached the walls of the embassy and perhaps it gave those in libya the trigger to gather their arms. Host have you seen any evidence of a coverup from the administration . Guest no. It is a very modeled message after coming out. I think they were overly cautious, understandably not knowing what was the case. Different spokesman saying slightly different things, it confused the message and they were not as clear as they could have been early on that this was a dynamic situation on the ground. Host last question for you. What is the latest on tracking down the folks who carried out this attack . Guest the two nations announced they have one suspect in custody the tunisians announced they have one suspect in custody but the main investigation is being carried out by the fbi who has only been able to get on the ground briefly for a short trip. Security has prevented them from getting in there sooner. I think the investigation has not been moving forward. There have been a lot of obstacles in its way. I think american officials are frustrated they have no suspects in custody. Host thank you so much for joining us this morning on the washington journal. We will go now to marry and from ohio on the democratic line. Caller i am 47 of the people mitt romney was talking about. I worked and i paid into Social Security and medicare and now he wants to mess around with a customit . Flops around and sticks his foot in his mouth. I am voting for obama. I think he is doing the best he can do. I think the republicans are a bunch of racists in my opinion. That is all i have to say. Host a comment on cspans Facebook Page this morning lets go to the republican line. Nancy is waiting from austin, texas. Caller i find this conversation so depressing. I vote on somebody based on their adherence to the constitution. We are all now like gimme, gimme, and who can give me the most. Our government has bankrupted us. We are 16 trillion in debt. Both of them did it. We have 30,000 drones that have airspaced to fly in our of. We have a president with a kill list. No trial, no nothing. Pick you up and send you to gitmo forever. No trials, no lawyer, no nothing. Is this still america, people close to you are worried that you cannot get a government paid for abortion . Have we lost our minds . That is my comment. Host a common from bill king on twitter comment from bill came on twitter i want to also talk to you about the vicepresident ial nominee paul ryans speech yesterday on poverty issues. He expresss empathy is the headline from the New York Times. I went to give you a bit of that speech now. Governments approach has been spend a lot of money on top down antipoverty programs. The mindset is a nation should measure compassion by the size of federal government and how much money it spends. The problem is starting in the 1960s, this approach created and perpetuated a debilitating culture of dependency wrecking families and communities. This was so obvious that when a major Welfare Program was reform, the law was passed by the Republican Congress and signed by a democratic president. We saw welfare enrollments dropped dramatically as millions of our citizens gained new lives of independent. Child poverty rates fell 20 in four years. Fewer welfare checks going out. If it meant more money for states to spend on child care so more moms could go to work and support themselves. Welfare to work worked because it encouraged the best in people. It made major strides toward getting the government out of the business of fostering dependency. Here is the problem. Welfare reform mindset has not been applied with equal vigor across the spectrum of our programs. In most of these programs, especially in recent years, were still trying to measure compassion by how much government spends. Not by how many people we help escape from poverty. Host cq qeekly last week had a good chart dealing with the poverty issue, noting that the share of americans living in poverty has ranged from 10 and 15 . In 2011, the poverty rate went down for the first time in five years. The number of people in poverty sits at about 46. 2 million in 2011. The poverty rate was about 15 . We ask you this morning on which issue is driving your vote heading into the election. John writes in on twitter also, Independence Day writes in on twitter a will now go to kansas city, missouri, on the independent line. Caller hi. Thank you for cspan. A lot of issues are driving my vote. Social issues are driving my vote. I have a problem with mitt romney going back and forth. I think it is a war on women. I do not think it should be know where that a man has a right to tell a woman what she can do with her body. What have women ever done to men so bad that they start democrat and us so bad and poorly over the issues of abortion . I have a daughter and she is married. She has two kids. They planned their kids. They do not want any more kids. If you take Birth Control away from her, she is going to have more kids than she wants to have been been the republicans all they think about is getting the children here and after they get here we do not care nothing about them once they get here. It is a shame we are going to take away your health care and your medicaid. We just want them to be born when they are born. This is ridiculous. I am a woman and i feel strongly about this. When i heard what that man said, this is the democrats party. They have an agenda. Their agenda is repealing obamacare, getting rid of roe v. Wade. It is their agenda. It is not about jobs. Host this viewer writes in on twitter lets go to the republican line. David is from indiana out there where the Richard Mourdock campaign is taking place. Caller my vote is driving my vote due to obamacare and the risk distribution of wealth. I do not think someone should have to get in there and redistribute wealth. He dont care about the country. He cares about social values. If he is so concerned about obamacare, why did he exempts senators from that . Let him read this to be his wealth. There are a lot of people out of work let him read distribute wealth. Te hite his host of this from the Financial Times on bank of america. Bank of america rejected the claims of that suit. Bank of america has stepped up and acted responsibly. Again, we have been asking what is driving your vote this morning. We will go now to pensacola, florida. What is driving your vote . Caller voter suppression. I have listened to i dont know how many people now, and i agree with a lot of people that the women issues the guy that talked about abortion and god, that is just obtuse. I have never seen a more obtuse party in my life. I had four children then big three of whom are daughters. One i have one who lives on the street today. No food, nothing. Than you say people are victims . In the world. The only country that supports mitt romney is pakistan. There is a reason for that. They want more war, and they want to draw in more people to that koolaid from bush. Let me tell you something. You have to walk through Airport Security to get to him. He is in the civic center, saying he is going to come in and throw his people in there and give some jobs. Host a few emails that have come in on this question of what is driving your vote. Barb writes in one more email from jerry in iowa this morning one last call on this issue of what is driving your vote. Will go to New Hampshire on the independent line. Frank, you are on the washington journal. Caller hello. I believe we have one chance to we could fix all the problems in this country right now if the two sides could come together with some compromise. I believe we have been way too liberal for a decade or even longer. We have to change some laws regarding entitlements spending on the other side of things, we have to enforce fair business practice in this country. People are just in it to earn that buck. They are being forced into a situation where we are not into doing things for the sake of being the best we can be at it. We are just there to make that buck and take advantage of anyone we can. We went to a fair system when we were growing, and now we are fighting over natural resources. I think the people who have the power are reckless right now. We are not solving the issues. I think were going back to the middle ages where they want to take it all back. I think there should be some respect to sovereignty in this country. You cannot just let people come in here without a green card. If they do not have the education or the culture to be able to mix with us here, it does not work. We put laws into place for them and it is not fair to everybody. Host up next, chris will join Krist Novoselic will join us to discuss fairvote. But first, Abby Livingston from roll call joins us. Thank you so much for joining us from the roll call studio. What is the latest on the fallout from the indiana race . Guest not much has happened this morning but there is republicans have weighed in and the party is split on how