Romney-Ryan has a slight lead in Florida, according to two fresh polls. The Romney campaign hopes to support the Sunshine State letting Ryan go speak at a vast retirement community with his eight-generation mother:
How stern is Romney’s campaign about taking the offensive in the battle over Medicare? As part of the campaign this weekend, Paul Ryan, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, will be sent to a retirement community in Florida. Ryan will headline a campaign event at 10 a.m. Saturday at The Villages, a sprawling retirement community frequented by GOP candidates, including Romney in this year’s primary battle… Ryan will be joined at the event by his mother, 80-year-old Betty Douglas.
As I suggested this week, showing Ryan’s mom is one of the most effective tools Republicans have to counter Democratic disinformation about the GOP reform plan to save Medicare. If they manage to successfully neutralize the ongoing demagogy of the left, they will have more space to strike offensive blows. To that end, sending Ryan and his mother on the campaign trail is a brilliant move. I hope the ads won’t fall far behind and will reach a larger audience. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney presented the differences between his plan and today’s president’s proposals for Medicare, using a four-quadrant white board to illustrate his point. MSNBC ridiculed Romney for this performance, but I think it’s just classic nerdy consultant Mitt doing his thing:
For their part, the seniors certainly seem terrified of Paul Ryan. John McCormack reports from the trail:
“Hey Paul!” – an elderly woman shouted as Ryan placed his order with the cashier. “Good luck! Kick ass!The nice Erma from Howland, Ohio, later told me she wasn’t worried about Ryan and Romney ending Medicare. “I don’t believe it,” she said. “Because Obama has a bigger plan to rob Medicare of $617 billion.” “We better worry about Obamacare than Ryan,” added Erma, a self-described conservative from Howell, Ohio. Erma wasn’t the only conservative senior at the Original Hot Dog Shoppe showing the party’s faithful embraced the Medicare message pushed this week by the Romney-Ryan campaign “Oh, don’t believe in any of that stuff,” Eleanor Costantino, a senior at Warren when I asked her if she was worried. Romney-Ryan Takes Back Obamacare ‘It’s All Just a Bunch of Lies!’He’s going to save Medicare” chimed in Eleanor’s friend Karen Combs of Cortland, Ohio. “There’s $700 billion going out of Medicare under Obamacare, and seniors should be even more scared.”
The Medicare debate may backfire on The One, but this election will still come down to jobs, economy and debt. The latest Gallup poll shows Obama in huge trouble on all three issues, with his disapproval on each of them dating back to the 1950s and 1960s:
Forward.