Politics
Election 2012: Obama numbers rising – boosted by latest housing reports
All the surveys were taken before the flap erupted over Romney’s “47 percent” remarks.
Taken together, they showed a highly competitive race as Obama and Romney pursue the 270 electoral votes needed for victory, although with the president in a stronger position than before the two political conventions and with the economy still the dominant issue.
“This is our election to lose,” maintained Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. “There’s a reason no president has ever been elected with economic numbers like this. If Obama wins, he’ll be rewriting political history.”
For now, Romney is working to reframe the video controversy into a philosophical difference between himself and Obama — to his own advantage.
“Instead of creating a web of dependency, I will pursue policies that grow our economy and lift Americans out of poverty,” he wrote in an article in USA Today that omitted any reference to the furor.
At his fundraiser in Atlanta, however, he referred for a second day in a row to a video of Obama, made in 1998. An Illinois state senator at the time, Obama said he believed in income redistribution, “at least to a certain level to make sure everybody’s got a shot.”
Romney added that the country “does not work by a government saying, become dependent on government, become dependent upon redistribution. That will kill the American entrepreneurship that’s lifted our economy over the years.”
