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By record-high margin, debate watchers say Romney did better PRINCETON, NJ -- Registered voters' preferences for president are evenly split in the first three days of Gallup tracking since last Wednesday's presidential debate. In the three days prior to the debate, Barack Obama had a five-percentage-point edge among registered voters. Gallup typically reports voter presidential preferences in seven-day rolling averages; the latest such average as of Saturday interviewing shows Obama with an average three-point edge, 49% to 46%, among registered voters. This Sept. 30-Oct. 6 field period includes three days before the Oct. 3 debate, the night of the debate...

Public opinion polls are moving things in Mitt Romney's direction, with one expert suggesting that Romney 'has peeled off some of Mr. Obama’s softer support in addition to gaining ground among undecided voters.' A Rasmussen national survey out at week’s end shows a shift from Obama 49-47 to Romney 49-47. “This is a small shift that’s significant in a close race,” pollster Scott Rasmussen told the New York Post. “Both candidates have a stable base, and the race is close. Barring something that happens in the real world, it’s likely to remain close.” “Bounces are called bounces because they don’t...

In the roundtable discussion on This Week, Peggy Noonan’s analysis of last week’s debate lead to a heated exchange between Paul Krugman and Mary Matalin. “We will look back on it as a historic moment in this election,” Noonan said of the debate. “It upended things. This is what it it upended: Barack Obama was supposed to be the sort of moderate, centrist fellow who looked at Mitt Romney, this extreme strange fellow. By the time that debate was over, Mitt Romney seemed a completely moderate, centrist figure who showed up as mitt Romney the governor, not as Mitt Romney...

[TODAY] PORT ST. LUCIE, FL (WFLX) - Fresh off of a busy week of campaigning, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney prepares to make a stop along the Treasure Coast for a rally in Port St. Lucie on Sunday. The "Victory Rally with Mitt Romney, Port St. Lucie" event is put campaign crews into overdrive on Saturday as workers fought against the clock to prepare Tradition Square for crowds. "I'm wondering if there's going to be enough room?" said Cindy Mulleady, a Tradition resident. "I think we're going to have a much bigger turnout." The Romney campaign on Saturday said with...

DENVER— Mitt Romney prevailed over President Barack Obama in their first debate on Wednesday — with Obama not able to present a forceful defense of his tenure in office or why he deserved a second term. Romney put Obama off his game. .....The best gut punch from Romney: That Obama had misplaced priorities his first years in office and put all his efforts into getting Obamacare passed — instead of jobs. Obama never delivered a strong summary of what he did for job creation. He had a story to tell. He never told it. Obama — who had been advised...

Senator Scott Brown has tried to distance himself from Governor Mitt Romney during this election, but Brown could get an important boost from Romney’s debate performance Wednesday night. Romney’s dismal poll numbers in Massachusetts have been Brown’s biggest hurdle, so anything that makes Romney even slightly more competitive in the state could help Brown in a tight election against Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren. Most observers have crowned Romney the victor of Wednesday’s debate, though it’s uncertain what impact that will ultimately have on the presidential election..... Warren on Wednesday night worked to align herself with Obama, sending frequent tweets cheering...

DENVER (AP) — The manager of a Denver Chipotle restaurant has become an Internet celebrity thanks to the wide-eyed pose he struck alongside Mitt Romney when the Republican presidential candidate stopped by for lunch. Marty Arps, 20, posed for a group photo with Romney and Chipotle employees Tuesday afternoon. Arps is seen making a wide-eyed expression while pointing at Romney. ...Romney seemed unaware of Arps' pose and the mood was jovial, said AP photographer Charles Dharapak, who snapped the picture. "It didn't seem awkward. Everyone was having a good time," Dharapak said. .....Arps told The Daily he doesn't know yet...

DENVER -- Maybe it was the pre-debate game of Jenga that loosened up Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Whatever it was, the GOP's hope for ousting President Obama in November was on his game Wednesday night at the first presidential debate, lobbing blow after blow at his Democratic opponent on taxes, health care and his subsidies for failed solar energy firms. Romney acted very much like the impassioned candidate for which his party has been pining throughout the campaign and he achieved an aim few expected him to reach: He kept the president on the defensive, looking irritated throughout the...

This was a debate for the green-eyeshade crowd. If you tuned in Wednesday night to see President Barack Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney offer inspiring visions for the future, you heard more numbers than you did paeans to America. The bottom line on engagement with an American public not five weeks from Election Day: Romney was alert, energized and confident. Obama slumped his shoulders, smiled mostly to himself, and for some reason kept staring down. He was that guy at the meeting who's surreptitiously checking his email. The exciting 2008 candidate of hope and change? Gone. Even the larger-than-life American...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyaNm3zHMRY&feature=player_embedded

In an interview Monday night with Denver TV station KDVR, Romney said, "As an option you could say everybody's going to get up to a $17,000 deduction. And you could use your charitable deduction, your home mortgage deduction, or others — your health care deduction, and you can fill that bucket, if you will, that $17,000 bucket that way. And higher income people might have a lower number." A Romney adviser said changes in other areas — a taxpayer's personal exemption and the deduction or credit for health care — would also be taken into account if deductions were limited...

Vice President Joe Biden said the middle class "has been buried the last four yeas" at a campaign event in Charlotte, North Carolina: "This is deadly earnest, man. This is deadly earnest," Biden said. "How they can justify--how they can justify--raising taxes when the middle class has been buried the last four years... How in Lord's name..." Of course, Barack Obama has been president the last four years, and Biden has been vice president.

The other day I received my weekly missive from WallStreetJournal columnist and former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan,in which she informed me and the world that "the Romney campaign has to get turned around." She added helpfully,"This week I called it incompetent,but only because I was being polite. I really meant 'rolling calamity.'" The media loved this column and repeated it widely. Their goal is to depress the Republican vote. Noonan's goal,apparently,is to get attention. Noonan got a lot of it in October 2008, when she wrote the following giddy nonsense about Barack Obama: He has within him the possibility to...

I don't know Ann Romney. I don't know Lee Cary, from the American Thinker, either, but I should like to buy them both dinner to thank them for making an important point yesterday, and it needs to be emphasized. Asked about some of the more counterproductive criticisms made by Republicans, Mrs. Romney replied, "Stop it. This is hard. You want to try it? Get in the ring." My thoughts exactly. Constructive criticism is one thing, but handing ammunition to the opposition is uncalled for. Part of the problem is that I really like some of the people making these remarks,...

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has had a trying week, what with the surfacing of a video in which he appears to dismiss 47 percent of Americans as government freeloaders. So he was probably looking forward to being among friends at a high-dollar fundraiser in Hillsborough Friday evening. But in the solidly Democratic Bay Area that meant he first had to experience an enthusiastic greeting from about two dozen protesters as his motorcade drove through the wealthy neighborhood where the event was held. Some of those protesters carried signs reminding him of the video, in which Romney appears to denigrate...

......"The real issue, which Romney can and must frame to the American electorate,is that President Obama is intentionally driving us off a fiscal cliff while chasing the liberal utopia of a government-centered entitlement society and income redistribution (from the turnabout-is-fair-play files,a newly found recording of Obama from 1998, same as he's always been...)Compare the two men yourself:Two video clipsWhen I hear Romney's words at this event, my reaction is "Say more of this stuff in public,Mitt. It's a strong and correct message (other than the use of a number as high as 47 percent) and it will resonate with many...

With all the focus on what Mitt Romney said about Obama voters and dependents, during a secretly video-taped fundraising event, it is surprising to learn that the Republican presidential nominee had the right idea about foreign policy as well as domestic issues.There is this three minute and 22 second video clip of Romney talking about peace between the Israeli and Palestinians that is a model of clarity.Romney says essentially that there is little for the US to do about creating a new Palestinian state because the security problems that would be created for Israel as a result would be too...

Mitt Romney should have at least as much money as Barack Obama for the closing 48 days of the presidential campaign. Polls show him neck and neck with the president in most of the key battleground states, including Florida. And voters overwhelmingly see the country heading in the wrong direction, while unemployment remains north of 8 percent. To hear many Republicans quietly grumble and pundits imply, however, the election is all but over and Romney blew it..... [snip of smorgasbord of anti-Romney reporting] .....Romney has not backed off his remarks, except to say he could have phrased them better. "We...

Despite all the hand-wringing about Mitt Romney’s campaign (see, e.g., here, here, and here), Romney is slightly ahead of President Barack Obama in Colorado, a key battleground state, according to the latest Rasmussen poll. The article on Rasmussen’s website is incorrectly dated August 7, 2012. The poll was carried out yesterday and the results were published today. Six percent of survey respondents were undecided. Typically in a race against an incumbent, undecided voters break toward the challenger. The Rasmussen poll follows a Denver post poll last week showing Obama 1 point ahead of Romney. Colorado has 9 electoral votes.

This year’s election is going to define the future of our freedom, perhaps more than any other in our history. For gun owners, there are a number of areas crucial to the survival of our Second Amendment rights. That’s why I took the time to visit with Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee, to find out precisely where he stands on the issues of concern to gun owners.Chris W. Cox: First, let me start with the most basic question of all. In the 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller, and in the 2010 case McDonald v. City of Chicago,...