Obama outraises Romney as he woos undecided voters (via AFP)
In a surprise show of strength, US President Barack Obama raised $114 million for his re-election bid last month, beating Mitt Romney's monthly haul for the first time since April. Campaign officials said 1.1 million Americans contributed to Obama's operation during the month to make up the total,…
A woman in Spartanburg, South Carolina was arrested on Sunday after she allegedly pointed a gun at Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC).
A police report obtained by Politico indicated that Gowdy had been in his church parking lot waiting for his daughter when Gloria Yvonne Brackett approached him with a gun.
The 52-year-old woman claimed Gowdy had been "following" her, but he insisted that he wasn't following her, according to authorities. Brackett began to chase the South Carolina Republican on foot after he put his car in reverse to drive away.
After fleeing to the local police department, Gowdy was escorted back to the church by police officers, where he picked up his daughter.
WYFF reported that Brackett was charged with unlawfully carrying a firearm and pointing and presenting a firearm. She is being held at the Spartanburg County Detention Center. A bond hearing is scheduled for 2 p.m.
Officers are expected to release more details during a City Hall news conference at 11 a.m. ET.
Republican White House challenger Mitt Romney said in an interview broadcast Sunday that a Federal Reserve boost to the economy would do little to create US jobs in the short term.
"I don't think that easing monetary policy is going to make a significant difference in the job market right now," Romney told NBC's "Meet the Press."
"I think what the nation needs is a change in fiscal policy. A different structure to our economic positions. And if we take the right course I believe you're going to see this economy come roaring ba
Government data Friday showing that the economy created only 96,000 jobs last month stoked speculation that the Fed would this week strengthen its commitment to near-zero interest rates or approve a third round of quantitative easing (QE) bond purchases.
Romney has been hammering Obama over the Labor Department figures which also showed that the unemployment rate dipped to 8.1 percent, largely due to people becoming disenchanted and giving up looking for work.
TAMPA, Florida — Walt Ellis, who spent the waning days of summer registering voters in Florida, issued a crucial reminder to each new person he signed up: "Don't forget to show up on voting day -- and bring your driver's license."
In past years, it might have been enough for Ellis, a staunch supporter of US President Barack Obama, to focus his efforts on getting voters registered and out to the polls on Election Day.
But Florida, like a number of Republican-governed states across the United States in recent months, has introduced tough new voter ID rules and other regulations that opponents say could hinder Democrats' turnout on election day November 6.
"I just try to educate people about what the rules are, so they know in advance that they need an ID with a picture and an expiration date," said Ellis, 40, who owns a business installing home entertainment systems in Washington.
He drove 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) to Florida, a key swing state critical to win the White House, for the volunteer effort.
With less than two months to go before the election -- and with so few undecided voters in the battle between Obama and Republican hopeful Mitt Romney -- experts say the vote will turn largely on who can get more of their core supporters out to the polls.
But civil rights activists warn that new voting restrictions across the US, mostly in states with Republican legislatures or governors, could significantly suppress turnout.
The Brennan Center for Justice, a non-partisan group at the New York University School of Law, says five million Americans could be affected by the new restrictions on voting, which were adopted or are under consideration in more than 30 US states this year.
The leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People this week slammed voter ID laws as a cynical attempt by conservatives to blunt the growing electoral might of minorities and young people -- groups that turned out in record numbers to help elect Obama in 2008.
"We have seen more states pass laws in the past year pushing more voters out of the ballot box than at any point in the last 100 years," NAACP director Ben Jealous told a radio interviewer in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Those who support voter ID laws, however, say they are needed to safeguard the integrity of the voting process.
"We have millions of people voting... across this country. Those millions of legal voters deserve to have their votes protected," said Pennsylvania State Representative Daryl Metcalfe in a recent media interview.
"Every legally cast vote should be protected from being undermined by the forces of corruption, and individuals have a responsibility under the new law to secure the ID they will need," he said last month.
Voter ID laws are particularly controversial because some say they hearken back to earlier attempts by some state governments to restrict ballot access, especially for African American voters in the decades before the civil rights movement.
US Attorney General Eric Holder in July likened the voter ID law in Texas to "poll taxes" put in place in the South after the end of slavery, laws which for decades created an economic barrier that prevented black Americans there from voting.
The Justice Department "will not allow political pretexts to disenfranchise American citizens of their most precious right," Holder vowed.
Some of the measures have been rolled back by the courts. Earlier this year, a judge found Wisconsin's strict new photo ID law to be unconstitutional, a ruling now under appeal. A federal court struck down a measure in Texas last month.
But a Pennsylvania judge has upheld that state's new voter ID requirement, despite a challenge from plaintiffs who said it disenfranchises minority and poor voters.
Fourteen-year-old Walter Ellis, who accompanied his dad on the voter registration trip to Florida, said he was surprised at the lack of public awareness about the new law in the state.
"It's good to see what we have done about informing people and getting people to see that this matters, but I think we still need to do a lot," he said.
His father, meanwhile, said that with the uncertain legal landscape and the closeness of the polls, he'll drive back to Florida a couple more times before November for more efforts to recruit and inform voters about the identification requirements.
"The more we do our part, the better we can help preserve people's protections and rights that are in danger of being wiped out," the elder Ellis said.
Mitt Romney: 'My heritage and my faith have made me the person I am'
In the minds of many voters, two things about Mitt and Ann Romney have set them apart from most Americans: their wealth and their Mormon faith. Both issues – personal and in some ways deeply private – have seemed at least a distraction from their main campaign message, which is to focus on the…
President Barack Obama reputedly loves nothing more than a good old campaign trail hug -- but he may have got more than he bargained for Sunday.
Obama was lifted at least a foot in the air in an intense bear hug by hulking pizza shop owner Scott Van Duzer, during a bus tour of Florida.
"Look at that!" the president said once the 250-pound, 6-foot-3 (113-kilogram, 1.90-meter) registered Republican had deposited him back on terra firma.
"Man are you a powerlifter or what?
"Scott, let me tell you, you are like the biggest pizza shop owner I've ever seen," Obama said.
"If I eat your pizza will I look like that?"
Van Duzer, owner of Big Apple Pizza and Pasta, later told reporters he had voted for Obama in 2008 and planned to do so again in November, despite being registered with the president's rival Republican Party.
"I don't vote party line, I vote who I feel comfortable with, and I do feel extremely comfortable with him," Van Duzer said, adding he had been "just overcome with excitement," and hoisted the president aloft.
Obama said he had stopped his black armored bus at the pizza shop as Van Duzer had mobilized a huge community blood donors operation, receiving commendations from the White House and the US surgeon general.
"Here's an example of somebody who is doing well but he's also giving back," he said. "What we know is that the guy's just got a big heart along with big pecs."
Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki mentioned only on Saturday that Obama, who dives into restaurants and diners along the routes of his bus tours, loves interacting with voters.
"The only thing the president likes more than a bus tour is a hug," she said.
White House senior adviser David Plouffe on Sunday chastised Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan for backing away from his earlier support of defense cuts, saying the Wisconsin congressman "was running away from them with the kind of pace he ran in that fictitional marathon."
Although Ryan voted for a deal that would have triggered significant cuts to defense, he has recently criticized the sequestration plan.
During an interview on Sunday, CBS host Chief White House Correspondent Norah O'Donnell asked Ryan why he was "criticizing the president for those same defense cuts you’re voting for and called a victory."
"I have to correct on you this, Norah. I voted for a mechanism that says the sequester will occur if we don’t cut $1.2 trillion in government," Ryan explained.
"Right, a trillion dollars in defense spending, and you voted for it!" O'Donnell pointed out.
"No, Norah," Ryan replied. "I voted for the Budget Control Act."
"That included defense spending!" O'Donnell pressed.
"Norah, you’re mistaken," Ryan insisted.
After hearing that he had refused to even admit he had supported defense cuts, Plouffe drew a comparison to Ryan's recent false claim that he had run a marathon in less than three hours.
"Interesting to hear Congressman Ryan," Plouffe told O'Donnell. "You asked him questions. He voted for the sequester. He voted for the Budget Control Act. He was running away from them with the pace that he ran in the fictitional marathon that you asked him about."
"Getting our fiscal house in order, dealing with the sequester is very simple. We need compromise," he added. "President Obama is the one person in Washington who is very committed to compromise."
Watch this video from CBS's Face the Nation, broadcast Sept. 9, 2012.
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman says that the Republican Party has adopted extreme anti-immigrant positions to appeal to their base, "which is, by and large, elderly white people arguing with empty chairs."
During a Sunday panel segment on ABC News, Krugman pointed out that Clint Eastwood's bizarre conversation with an empty chair at the Republican National Convention last month was illustrative of the party's base.
"Arizona is a third Hispanic," conservative columnist George Will noted. "The Republican Party spent 20 debates in the primary competing to see who could build the longest, thickest, tallest, most lethally-electrified fence. And Hispanics said, 'I detect some hostility here.' And it's going to take a long time to undo that."
Krugman agreed that the GOP's move to the extreme right during the primary had hurt their standing with minority voters.
"The Republican Party is where it is because that's where the base is," Krugman agreed. "You watch that whole primary process, Republican candidates had to appeal to their base, which is, by and large, elderly white people arguing with empty chairs."
Tea party favorite Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) also lamented that the Republican Party had completely given up on winning certain parts of the country.
"So what I keep telling them is, maybe we need some libertarian-type Republicans who might be popular in those areas," he explained. "Maybe a less aggressive, more socially tolerant, but still fiscally conservative policy that that may be more libertarian might do better in California, might do better in Oregon, Washington, New England."
"Our problem in the presidential election is we've given up 150 electoral votes before we get started."
Watch this video from ABC's This Week, broadcast Sept. 9, 2012.
The Republican White House ticket sought to neuter the perceived foreign policy edge of the Obama electoral campaign on Sunday, attacking the president's record whilst bragging of their own experience overseas.
The current administration was guilty of failing to halt Iran's nuclear ambitions, Mitt Romney claimed during an interview with NBC's Face the Nation. Meanwhile, in a separate TV appearance, his running mate, Paul Ryan, was attempting to make the claim that he is better versed in foreign policy matters than Obama was four years ago, by virtue of Ryan's longer public service record in Washington.
It represented a two-pronged approach to countering what is seen to be a Democratic advantage going into this year's election. Obama's campaign team have made much of the president's decision to pull troops out of Iraq and embark on military drawdown in Afghanistan, as well as highlight the assassination of Osama bin Laden.
Meanwhile, Romney has made a somewhat clumsy opening gambit as a potential overseas ambassador for the US.
In his first foreign trip as a White House candidate he offended one of America's closest allies, the UK, by criticising efforts to prepare for the Olympic Games and drew fierce criticism for suggesting while in Israel that the Palestinians' relative poverty was due to cultural differences.
Compounding the view that Obama has an edge in terms of perceived handling of foreign policy, the Republican hopeful opened himself up to mockery in his recent convention speech in Tampa by suggesting that Russia remained the US's "number one geo-political foe".
Vice-president Joe Biden has said the comment showed Romney was "stuck in a Cold War mindset".
But speaking on CBS's Face the Nation, Ryan defended his running mate's comments.
"I think what he was saying was among the other powers, China and Russia, that Russia stands a great threat," he said, adding: "Iran is our biggest foreign policy threat today".
The Republican vice-presidential pick also sough to push his own foreign policy credentials, boasting that he had more experience than Obama had in the run up to 2008's election.
Challenged on what made him better qualified, considering then-senator Obama had sat on the Senate foreign relations committee, Ryan cited his 14 years in Congress.
He added: "I've voted to send men and women to war. I've been to Iraq and Afghanistan. I've met with our troops to get their perspectives. I've been to the funerals, I've talked to the widows, I've talked to the wives, the moms and the dads. That's something. That matters."
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is blasting a decision made by his own vice presidential nominee, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), to support cuts to defense spending.
"I want to maintain defense spending at the current level of the GDP," Romney told NBC's David Gregory in an interview that aired on Sunday. "I don’t want to keep bringing it down as the president’s doing. This sequestration idea of the White House, which is cutting our defense, I think is an extraordinary miscalculation in the wrong direction."
"Republican leaders agreed to that deal to extend the debt ceiling," Gregory pointed out.
"And that’s a big mistake," Romney insisted. "I thought it was a mistake on the part of the White House to propose it. I think it was a mistake for Republicans to go along with it."
Although Ryan has since criticized the bill that would trigger automatic cuts to the military budget, he was one of 174 Republicans who voted for sequestration.
"You can’t throw $700 billion at a government agency and not expect waste to occur," the Wisconsin Republican said in January 2011.
Watch this video from NBC's Meet the Press, broadcast Sept. 9, 2012.
(h/t: Think Progress)
WASHINGTON — Republican White House challenger Mitt Romney said in an interview broadcast Sunday that a Federal Reserve boost to the economy would do little to create US jobs in the short term.
"I don't think that easing monetary policy is going to make a significant difference in the job market right now," Romney told NBC's "Meet the Press."
"I think what the nation needs is a change in fiscal policy. A different structure to our economic positions. And if we take the right course I believe you're going to see this economy come roaring ba
Government data Friday showing that the economy created only 96,000 jobs last month stoked speculation that the Fed would this week strengthen its commitment to near-zero interest rates or approve a third round of quantitative easing (QE) bond purchases.
Romney has been hammering Obama over the Labor Department figures which also showed that the unemployment rate dipped to 8.1 percent, largely due to people becoming disenchanted and giving up looking for work.
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama hinted on Sunday that Americans can expect budget cuts if he is re-elected in November, telling an interviewer that some spending programs "are worthy" but unaffordable.
Seeking to counter Republican criticism that his administration has increased the national debt to $16 trillion, Obama said a balanced budget was the first step toward tackling fiscal woes and that would mean cutbacks.
"There are some programs that are worthy, but we just can't afford right now. And I'm willing to do more on that front," Obama said in an excerpt from a CBS News interview, noting that $1 trillion in cuts have already been made.
"And there's still waste, there's still programs that don't work."
With less than 60 days before the November 6 vote, Obama is leading opinion polls in crucial swing states. But his Republican opponent Mitt Romney is seeking a turn around given poor job numbers released last week.
The Republicans attacked Obama last week for adding more than $5 trillion to the national debt since he took office in 2009.
The figure stood at $10.6 trillion when he entered the White House, but by implementing an economic stimulus plan aimed at heading off a depression the figure has soared -- negating the president's pledge to halve it by 2012.
But Obama criticized Romney in the interview aired Sunday for refusing to take what he called a "balanced approach" that cuts spending while raising taxes on the richest Americans.
"If we go back to the tax rates for folks making more than $250,000 a year, back to the rates that we had under Bill Clinton, we can close the deficit, stabilize the economy, keep taxes on middle class families low, provide the certainty that I think all of us would be looking for," Obama pledged.
He said the problem with Romney's plan "is the math, or the arithmetic, as President (Bill) Clinton said, doesn't add up," in a reference to the latter's barnstorming speech at the Democratic National Convention.
Clinton said that the Republicans' plan to cut $5 trillion in taxes will mean "they'll hurt the middle class and the poor" in order to cut taxes for the rich.
Or else, he continued, "they'll just do what they've been doing for more than 30 years now -- they'll go in and cut taxes way more than they cut spending ... and they'll just explode the debt and weaken the economy."
Obama has argued that his Republican predecessor George W. Bush deepened the national debt by imposing sweeping tax cuts and launching wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The public bailouts of US financial institutions in the wake of the global economic meltdown, also under Bush's tenure, caused the debt to spiral further.
During her Republican National Convention speech last month, Ann Romney suggested that she and her husband had once been so poor that they "ate a lot of pasta and Tuna fish" and their "dining room table was a fold down ironing board."
In an interview that aired Sunday on NBC, Ann Romney distanced herself from that version of history.
"Mitt and I do recognize that we have not had a financial struggle in our lives," the Republican presidential nominee's wife explained. "But I want people to believe in their hearts that we know what it is like to struggle. And our struggles have not been financial, but they have been with health and with difficulties in different things in life."
"One of the things that I, again, like to remind people is that multiple sclerosis has been my teacher," she added. "It has been at times a cruel teacher, but it has also been a great gift to my life because what it has done, it has taught me to be more compassionate in caring for others that are suffering. And I know people are suffering right now. And for people to think that we don't have empathy just because we're not suffering like they're suffering is ridiculous."
But in her convention speech, Ann Romney had talked about the tough times after the young couple had gotten married and moved into a "basement apartment."
"We walked to class together, shared the housekeeping, ate a lot of pasta and Tuna fish," she recalled. "Our desk was a door propped up on saw horses, our dining room table was a fold down ironing board in the kitchen. But those were the best days."
A fact check by The Atlantic's Elspeth Reeve determined that Ann Romney's convention story did not match up with her previous claims.
"Neither one of us had a job, because Mitt had enough of an investment from stock that we could sell off a little at a time," she had told The Boston Globe when her husband was running for Senate in 2004.
Watch this video from NBC's Meet the Press, broadcast Sept. 9, 2012.
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