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Subscribe to RSSAs President Obama and Mitt Romney campaigned heavily in the battleground state of Ohio on Thursday, new polls show neck-and-neck race in Colorado with both candidates tied at 48 percent; meanwhile in Nevada, the president still holds a slight advantage. NBC's Chuck Todd reports.
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has appropriated for himself one of President Barack Obama's most potent lines of attack throughout this election.
If there is a candidate who represents the status quo and whose plans for the next four years are hazy, it's Obama, as Romney tells it.
It's the same charge the Obama campaign has used against Romney -- with great effect -- for most of 2012. But in a stroke of irony, the Republican nominee has turned the attack back toward the president, with a degree of success.
"This election is a choice between the status quo," Romney said during a major speech on Friday in Iowa, "or choosing real change."
Governor Mitt Romney addressed a crowd of supporters in Ames, Iowa, touting himself as a candidate of change and promising to "bring that kind of change, real change to our country."
The former Massachusetts governor has stumped for most of this week by calling himself the candidate of "big change," claiming for himself the mantle of "change" that Obama had first powerfully represented in 2008.
Moreover, Romney has begun ridiculing Obama's plans for a second term as thin and vague at best.
"You see the President’s campaign is slipping, the president’s campaign is slipping because he can't find an agenda. He's been looking for it -- there's only 12 days left," Romney said at a rally Thursday in Ohio. "He hasn't had a chance to defend it or to describe it to the American people in our debates and so the American people now have to recognize that given the big challenges and the big election we have it's time for a big change."
NBC's Chuck Todd and David Gregory weigh in on the candidates' closing arguments as the presidential race comes down to the wire. Their messages: Mitt Romney promises change while President Obama argues for trust.
If Romney's offensive seems familiar, that might be due to its similarities to many of Obama's own attacks on the Republican nominee.
The president, for instance, has sought throughout the campaign to link Romney to former President George W. Bush, arguing that little has changed in Romney's proposals from the last Republican to inhabit the White House.
"We can’t afford to go backwards to the same policies that got us into this mess; we’ve got to go forward with the policies that are getting us out of this mess," Obama said yesterday at a rally in Virginia.
Charlie Neibergall / AP
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney delivers his speech on the economy during a campaign stop at Kinzler Construction Services, Friday, Oct. 26, 2012, in Ames, Iowa.
And Obama mocked Romney's jobs plans as nonsensical and insubstantial, much as Romney has begun to do of Obama's second-term agenda.
"I’ve got a plan that will actually create jobs, not just talk about creating jobs -- a plan that will actually create middle-class security, not just use the words but not deliver on the promise," Obama said at the same rally in Richmond. "Unlike my opponent, I’m actually proud to talk about what’s in my plan, because the arithmetic works."
But Romney has been able to turn these criticisms back against Obama precisely because voters suggest that they are seeking change, even if Obama is re-elected. Sixty-two percent of registered voters, for instance, said in this week's NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that Obama should make "major changes" in a potential second term.
Obama's campaign also produced a new, glossy pamphlet -- which packages many of Obama's existing jobs proposals, which have met defeat on Capitol Hill -- in a glossy pamphlet. Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan ridiculed it as a "comic book" during a rally Thursday in Virginia.
"President Obama really hasn’t given us a vision for a second term agenda. Just a couple of days ago he came up with a slick new brochure, with less than two weeks left to say, 'Oh I do actually have an agenda,'" he said. "It is ... a slick re-packaging of more of the same."
That Obama hasn't laid out much of a comprehensive second term agenda -- combined with the overall thirst for "change" among many voters -- has only aided Romney and Ryan's ability to sidestep many of the questions about their own plans that had dogged the Republican ticket for much of the election. When asked about the difficult arithmetic or politics underlying Romney's proposals, Republicans are arguing in the closing days of the election that Obama has hardly offered better.
In an interview on Friday with radio host Michael Smerconish, the president dismissed Romney's claim to "big change" -- by again voicing his familiar criticism of Romney.
"What Gov. Romney's offering is a return to policies that have failed us in the past," Obama said. "He's now talking about them as 'big changes.' They're not big changes; they're a repeat, a relapse, of things that haven't worked for American families for over a decade now."
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This now in: Romney has morphed into Obama.... " invasion of the body snatchers" wasnt so far fetched after all huh?
how long did it take you to think up and get the courage to post that stupid comment? Do yourself and everyone else a favor and go away.
Romney will cause changes. Just don't expect any of them to be good.
just like Obama. hope and change turned into F YOU average person.
Obama isn't good, but Romney is worse.
and put it in the Morman as$ ??
Romney the copy cat. Everything Obama says is wrong, so I'll just repeat it like a lazy mimic. Always wanting to take credit for the hard work of others, first trying to make a living off of Daddy's glory, now trying to steal Obama's. Poor little weasel boy!
Thank God that America is finally able to recognize the Presidental experience and leadership in Mitt Romney, as compared to the present fraud in chief. He can go on The View, Letterman, Rolling Stone, and MTV all he wants. Come election day the final unraveling Of Obama's social experiment ends when 'WE THE PEOPLE" vote for our countries future. Nor the unions future, not government employees, not special interests like the NAACP or GLBT, but ALL Americans. The pandering Presidency ends!!!
Folks.. in a few more weeks it will be all over. Romney will be in the oval office and Nobama will be out trying to get back into Acorn or one of it's newly named affiliates. Nobama will be again trying to herd the freeloaders back into some sort of demonstration to get him some cushy government job. All the Csars that Nobama hired will be ousted which will put loads of money back into the pot. Maybe the stinking ex-Csars will hire Nobama as their leader and try to force the USA to give them a job so they can try again to sink the USA. But, one thing is certain...Romney will see to it that people in the government who think like and advised Nobama will soon be ousted also. Those are the ones connected to the Muslim Brothergood, the Communist, Marxist and Fascist entities that Nobama surrounded himself with for advice on how to bring the USA to it's knees. Good times will be here shortly IF enough LEGAL Americans get into the voting booths. YES!! Romney and Ryan will bring America Back to it's senses!!!
to BillJ318's point above, though, and the honest truth from the Romney campaign, 47% of the population wants their handout and they're getting it now. That's hard to fight.
Yup, with Romney it will be real change. Instead of a downtrodden middle class there will be no middle class. The poor will be pretty much forgotten or destroyed altogether. And the rich will be riding higher than ever, displaying their wealth and spitting in our faces while they build elevators for their wives' many Cadillacs.
And for all you ordinary average citizen idiots out there who thinks Romney knows about or cares about your problems, if you haven't seen by now he hasn't a clue and could care less anyway, you deserve whatever will happen to you when he and the Republicans gain full control of the country.
I know you're idiots because you've already forgotten that it was Republicans that drove this country down into the ground where we are now.
After Romney loses in ten days, what are the odds that he'll be keeping his taxes clean for 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015 in order to pursue the Republican nomination yet again in 2016?
Chris Christie must be chomping at the bit (Well, when isn't he?).
Romney is ridiculous and continually grossly dishonest as he proves in this when the only actual "change" he offers is a return to "more of the same" Bush-Cheney style in once again catering to "the money" and offering the majority only subterfuge as he takes the people for granted and once more costs them greatly. Strickly disgusting and only propaganda for the naive.
Romney and his flunkies are STILL claiming Obama did not call the Embassy attack terrorism until two week later even though there is plenty of evidence he said it the very day after -- 9/12.
HOW can you keep playing along with lie after lie after lie?
As long as fox news keeps ranting and raving about it. romney's whole candidacy is a lie.
MSNBCMFE..I find it ironic the leading news paper in Salt Lake city,a Mormon enclave,backed Obama not Willard.
Bill,
The Salt Lake City Tribune also backed Obama over McCain in 2008, I believe. They lean center-left and appeal to the small but growing non-Mormon population in SLC.
This time around they summed it all up by stating simply, "Too many Mitt's."
Why can't Obama answer the question?
Obama lied, 4 Americans died!!!
He can't answer the questions, it would be like sudden death. He is to big a coward to confront the situation.
We need answers Mr. President!
What did you know?
When did you know it?
We know that you guys watch too much FOX and we knew that a long time ago.
No you are lying and the reason four people died is terrorism by terrorists.
.. YOU WANT TO BLAME OBAMA FOR WHAT HAPPENED IN THE MIDDLE EAST? Not to discount the American loss of those four men killed ... May God bless them and their families ....
THIS IS WHAT BUSH DID or DIDN'T DO ON AMERICAN SOIL ....
What Bush Knew Before Sept.11
"We were trying to figure out what they (al Qaeda) would do. We never had specifics about time, place, MO (method of operation)."
U.S. intelligence official, commenting anonymously.
President Bush was told in the months before the Sept. 11 attacks that Osama bin Laden's terrorist network might hijack U.S. passenger planes - information which prompted the administration to issue an alert to federal agencies - but not the American public.
CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin says the warning was in a document called the President's Daily Brief, which is considered to be the single most important document that the U.S. intelligence community turns out. The document did not, however, mention the possibility of planes being flown
into buildings.
An agent in the FBI's Arizona office did, however, speculate about that, writing in his case notes about Zacarias Moussaoui that Moussaoui seemed like the type of person who was capable of flying an aircraft into the World Trade Center.
It was the observation of an agent taking notes as he thought about his case - an observation whose significance simply did not register at the time.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer says that while President Bush was told last summer that bin Laden's al Qaeda network might hijack planes, he did not receive information suggesting that airplanes might be used as suicide bombs, as they were on Sept. 11.
Fleischer emphasizes that "until the attack took place, I think it's fair to say that no one envisioned that as a possibility."
The revelation about the president's security briefing comes as House and Senate Intelligence Committee investigators prepare for public hearings beginning next month on whether an intelligence community which spends $30 billion a year should have been able to provide a more specific warning in advance of Sept. 11.
The New York Times reports that an FBI agent in Arizona warned his superiors last summer that bin Laden might be sending students to U.S. flight schools.
Investigators have since Sept. 11 suspected bin Laden's al Qaeda network of masterminding the terror attacks on America, which killed more than 3,000 people.
Republicans don't want to see the bigger picture .... the middle east has been at war since forever ... the attacks on the embassy happened in the middle east .... Bush was for-warned too ... and did nothing and they attacked us AMERICAN SOIL .... HUGE DIFFERENCE .....
MIDDLE EAST - 4 KILLED
AMERICAN SOIL - 3000 KILLED .... YES REPUBLICANS EXPLAIN THAT ONE .....
MAY GOD BLESS AMERICA .... AND AMERICA VOTE FOR OBAMA 2012
Romney is a human chameleon. He changes his stripes to match his audience.
The shocking part is how many Americans are buying it. Unfortunately, many people seem to prefer being told lies they want to hear over the less than perfect truth.
Nice !!!
Sorry willard,.. but this is going to leave a mark...
"In a blow to Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, Utah's largest newspaper today slammed his candidacy and endorsed President Obama instead."'
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/utah-newspaper-endorsement-slams-romney/story?id=17519264#.UItLtnlSRdA
The "Trib" is owned by MediaNews Group, who's CEO is a staunch Liberal, William Dean Singleton, a HUGE Obama supporter. . He is the chairman of the board of directors of the Associated Press, on which he has sat since 1999. He is also the founder, vice chairman and chief executive officer of MediaNews Group, the fourth-largest newspaper company in the United States in terms of circulation, with 53 daily papers totaling 2.7 million subscriptions daily and 3 million on Sunday. Additionally, he has been publisher of a number of MediaNews' dailies, including the Denver Post, the Salt Lake Tribune and the Detroit News.
Singleton was a pioneer in "clustering"—developing groups of newspapers that centralized a variety of functions, including production, ad sales, business operations and, in some cases, editorial. An example of this was the Alameda Newspaper Group in suburban San Francisco, where in the mid-1990s, a central newsroom in Pleasanton, California, did all the copy editing, layout and page makeup for five daily papers. Upon acquiring the diverse group of papers, Singleton consolidated several news sections (such as sports and features) to one local office away in order to streamline work.
Did you not know? Singleton is no Mormon. It is a biased paper.
If you were talking about the BUSH adminstration failures, you would have something! But your talking about a huge success in a President Obama! Romey, your not a President!
What will all you mootches do when President Romney gets sworn in? I am going to laugh my ass off. The Brown Clown is going down.
When NBC is even giving Romney props, you know Hussein is sweating bullets.
It is unbelievable that people on this site can support a man for president that has lied about the killing of not just the four Americans in Benghazi but a border patrol agent killed by guns in the Fast and Furious debacle and you're cool with that! All just to support your political ideal. Absolutely sickening. I wonder if it was someone in your family that was killed if you would feel the same because right now the murders aren't close to you so they're meaningless. You're all pathetic!
Did you ask Bush the same questions after 9/11?
Talk about presidential dereliction of duty.
If you can't see that Fox lies and you are lied to by liars why come on here. We know who killed thousands of Iraqs and maimed and killed our troops with his trumped up war in Iraq. We know who are right now the people surrounding Romney. The same war mongers around Bush. I know that President Obama has killed no one and would never harm anyone other than the terrorists wanting to harm Americans. That is all you have lame stream repuks.
WOW....Fox News keeps goinhg over the same Libya stuff over and over again so thats all you Guys have?
How about some positive things your Canadidate Romney or Ryan have done...or ANY GOP elected Official in the last 12 years...C'Mon
Are you that Hypnotized?????
Emotions are running high and no matter who wins, one side will be angry and hurt. I hope that whomever wins the presidency this time around is by a decisive victory and not something that gets drug out with recounts etc. There are so many foolish things said on line on both sides. Hate to break it to you, but all politicians lie. Accept it and stop spouting the party lines. I think it is past time for a third (reasonable) party. I am sick of all the rhetoric on both sides.
On Obama's his first full day, he froze White House salaries.
http://on.msnbc.com/ewJUIx
Romney is Liar?
Obama - promised %5.5 un-employment. He lied.
Obama - promised to cut the deficit in half. He lied.
Obama - promised a green economy with five million green jobs. He lied.
Obama- promised to Unite us. We are more divided than any time since the civil war. He lied.
Obama - promised Obama would not raise taxes on the middle class. Obamacare has over $500 Billion of new taxes hidden with in it's 2700 pages. He lied.
Obama - said he did would not touch Medicare. He robbed over $700 Billion including funding for nurses and Hospice patients. He lied.
Obama - stood up in front us at the DNC and proclaimed that Al - Queda is all but defeated. They becoming more stronger and bolder than ever. He lied.
Obama - Stood up in front of us at the UN and said the attack at our embassy in Libya was a protest. It was clearly an Al-Queda terrorist attack from the start. He lied.
Lies, Lies, Lies, ENOUGH!
Nah, there's plenty of room for more. YOU prove that.
From the picture it looks like the A N G R Y B L A C K G U Y is coming out in Obama. I suggest he calm down a bit, wining is not everything.
R O M N E Y 2012 He's going to win.
If Romney wins I predict in 1 yr everybody that voted for him will turn on him and accuse him of lying to everybody just like Odumbo
Comments like mine are the truth.
You know, I had to leave my home two years ago to find a good paying job. Had to move to another state to get another job comparable to what I had and keep my family going. Not the same for the rest of my family.
My "hero in his own mind" brother in law, meanwhile, has been unemployed for over a year now, living off his wife's wages. Good wages, I might add, or they couldn't make it work. Let's see her lose her contraception, shall we? You know who'll be screaming blue bloody murder the loudest? Her husband.
I am also taking care of my father right now. 76 years old. He's has SS and retirement but it's not enough. He needed to live with me. He stays home and he didn't want to clean or cook. That's changed, let me tell you. He cleans now and cooks. And he's piped down with all his opinions about women that he's had all his life.
#393.1 - Fri Oct 26, 2012 10:45 PM EDT
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Comments like mine are the truth.
You know, I had to leave my home two years ago to find a good paying job. Had to move to another state to get another job comparable to what I had and keep my family going. Not the same for the rest of my family.
My "hero in his own mind" brother in law, meanwhile, has been unemployed for over a year now, living off his wife's wages. Good wages, I might add, or they couldn't make it work. Let's see her lose her contraception, shall we? You know who'll be screaming blue bloody murder the loudest? Her husband.
I am also taking care of my father right now. 76 years old. He's has SS and retirement but it's not enough. He needed to live with me. He stays home and he didn't want to clean or cook. That's changed, let me tell you. He cleans now and cooks. And he's piped down with all his opinions about women that he's had all his life.
I'm just saying, guys, your women are your best friends. Sell them out and we'll put a gag in our own mouth when they come for you. Also, get off your butts and get to work.
Within Obama's first week, he signed an Executive Order ordering an audit
of government contracts, and combating waste and abuse.
http://1.usa.gov/dUvbu5
Chrysler sure cut Willard off at the knees when they immediately fired back at Willard's comment about them moving the Jeep manufacturing plants to China. Willard,Willard,Willard,bad boy and your a Mormon.The church must be proud of you.