>> good morning. i'm chris jansing . another political firestorm is growing, forcing mitt romney and his supporters to explain comments from indiana senate candidate richard mourdock . again, it's about women and abortion, comments that brought a stronger view from president obama . let me remind you first exactly what mourdock said.
>> i struggled with it myself for a long time, but i came to realize life is that gift from god, and i think even when life begins in the horrible situation of rape that it is something that god intended to happen.
>> so in the aftermath the president mentioned the fight for women 's health just last hour at a rally in florida and here he was last night on "the tonight show ."
>> rape is rape. it is a crime. and so these distinctions about rape don't make too much sense to me. don't make any sense to me.
>> in a press conference yesterday mourdock did not apologize for what he said, but said his words were misinterpreted.
>> so many people mistook, twisted, came to misunderstand the points that i was trying to make.
>> but the obama campaign wants to remind voters that with this new video that mitt romney supports richard mourdock and, in fact, he even cut a tv ad in support of him. i want to bring in ann cornblut, politics editor for "the washington post ," perry bacon is the political editor for the grillo. good morning.
>> good morning.
>> the romney campaign released this statement yesterday when all of this was gloe blowing up, quote, governor romney disagrees with richard mourdock and mr. mourdock's comments do not reflect governor romney 's views. we disagree on the policy regarding exceptions for rape and incest, but still support him. now they have not, however, pulled this ad.
>> this fall i'm supporting richard mourdock for senate. as state treasurer richard worked with governor daniels to balance the budget. there's so much at stake, i hope you'll join me in supporting richard mourdock for u.s. senate .
>> and the campaign says they have not asked him to pull the ad. is that a mixed message?
>> potentially, although i think some of what we saw yesterday was reporting that it would have drawn more attention to the campaign and to their differences if they asked him to withdraw the ad and then he refused to do so. so i think their hope is that they've made their statement and they'll try to move on especially because this is not a state that romney himself is contesting. it looks like it will go to him regardless.
>> republicans are asking richard mourdock to apologize. kelly was supposed to do a fund-raising event with him, now she's not. let me just play a little bit about what some of those folks are saying.
>> what he said was kind of crazy, but having said that, this election for president is not about that.
>> it depends on what he does. if he apologizes and says he misspoke and he was wrong and he asks people to forgive him then obviously, i would be the first -- you know, as i said i'm not sure how big the mistakes i have made. you know, in the years i made a few.
>> but mccain is not withdrawing his support yet. so perry , is this going to impact the support for president bringing up the conversations that republicans want to put to rest.
>> any time we're talking about abortion and notomy is a bad day for mitt romney . the position mourdock says that abortion should never be allow side opposed by 90% of americans . almost every american supports abortion and 90% of them in some cases, at least. so it's on the extremely conservative side and highlights an issue where romney is not with the majority of americans are because most americans are for abortion rights particularly in an election where women are the swing vote right now and they're the vote where both parties are focused on and talking about abortion is not the best way to appeal to women for romney .
>> just talking about how the news conference with richard mourdock went down. let me play a clip because he kept getting asked follow-up questions by members of the press.
>> do you believe that if the presidency -- god's intend -- that's what i heard you say, so i guess i thought you meant that god intended a pregnancy.
>> i believe god controls the universe. i don't think that i don't think biology controls it. i think god controls the universe.
>> in the context of the campaign there is a new a.p. poll that says beckly mitt romney has closed the gender gap with women 47-47, although female likely voters, 55% say obama would make the right decisions on women 's issues compared to 41% for mitt romney , but does this have the potential to impact women and we know one of the key swing groups now and those small group of undecided voters are unmarried women .
>> i mean, i think the potential is there and his underlying position that he opposes abortion rights in all cases except for the life of the mother is not a terribly inconsistent position, obviously the wording that came out during the debate was problematic for him and two wrongs don't make a right and we've heard other republicans have different iterations of this policy, then i'm not sure there were that many women waiting to make their decision on the distinction between republicans who oppose legalized abortion in cases of rape and incest and those who just oppose it the rest of the time so i'm not sure there will be that big impact and given that romney has seemed to do better among women and i know there are different numbers out there and some suggesting that obama 's still holding his own and the a.p. poll that he's not. i think there are other issues and fundamentally the economy that are really at stake here, and that's what we keep hearing women say, and women who are undecided and women leaning toward romney and it is too hard to say they'll come back from the indiana race.
>> i want to say good morning to charlie rangel . do you think he's come far enough or do you think he should pull his support for richard mourdock .
>> i can't imagine if i was supporting somebody that they came up with this bizarre thought that someone was the victim of the rape felt compelled and restricted by law to have that child, i would have to really think of who am i endorsing? it's outrageous to be associated with someone that feels this -- this weird about something and when mourdock says that he's wrestled with the question. how do you wrestle with a question with what a woman has to go through. first a rape which is horrendous enough which i don't see how a man can imagine the pain, but for her husband or for her father to say that you have to give birth to a child as a result of it and the federal government saying that if you don't, you're committing a crime it's too bizarre for any person especially someone running for president to be in any way connected with that person.
>> do you think, congressman, in the larger context, obviously, voters there will take a look at this, but in the larger context of renewing this conversation about what democrats have called the war on women about the question of who gets to control reproductive rights . does this have the potential by bringing that back into the daily conversation, to have an impact in these closing days of the campaign?
>> of course, i'm not a woman and i'm not arrogant enough to know what a woman would be thinking about this, but i would assume that they would look at this person, the president and says what are your views about me? what are your concerns about me, about my daughter and about women , generally and how do you explain it me your association to this person whose obvious religious beliefs have caused a democr demented thought and i don't think anyone can say they're for women and be associated with this kind of thought.
>> different polls show different things with the women . this new a.p. poll shows it dead even although the president in that poll was closing the gap with wen and there have been several polls if not dead even that the poll -- that the gap is getting smaller, that mitt romney has been gaining some support among women . what do you think is going on there? is it the economic issue? is the president starting to lose the economic argument?
>> i don't know why, if you look at what the president's connection is especially leadbetter where the candidate for president his disassociated himself in terms of wages that women should have especially when you talk about preconditions with insurance companies doing that. when you talk about the plight that women have had as well as minorities and to see the fairness and the concepts of which the obama program is going through, i can see why there was this overwhelming gap. i, as a man, feel embarrassed say i cannot see how possibly a woman can endorse him on the mourdock issue that he can't find the words to be eloquent enough to disassociate himself from this type of person because no person's religion is strong enough to tell them that they're going to super impose their ideas on the entire population, and i cannot do anything, but feel the outrage that i would have if i endorsed the candidate and they were spreading this type of insane idea of the pain that a woman and a child, perhaps, would have to go through as a result of me federalizing a law, criminalizing them for being a victim.
>> congressman carharlie rangel, it's great to have you here in the studio.
>> thank you for having me. you have richard mourdock and before that was todd aiken and here was joe scarborough 's take on this this morning.
>> he's not alone. you have other republicans out there saying the craziest and you're saying, what goes through their mind? do they go, you know what i want to be when i grow up? the next todd aiken . they're morons!
>> perry , you know when you again, look at this in the larger context of the narrative that's been going on, does -- do you think that this is something that is worthy of conversation or are we talking about the wrong things altogether?
>> this is certainly worthy of conversation and one of the things is todd aiken has geffen away one republican senate seat and now mourdock can officially lose ago senate seat they were counting on. that alone is important. also as we noted, obama needs to win women by ten points and he'll win the election overall and he needs to have an advantage among women voters and it moves and we have 1 million indecided voters and if it moves 1,000, 10,000 people and it is such a close election .
>> speaking of people that are out there, one of the things that joe and mika were talking about and this bust of an announcement from donald trump who said you give $ 1 million to the president who released his college transcript and here was the president on leno last night.
>> this all dates back to when we were growing up together in kenya.
>> we had constant run-ins on the soccer field . he wasn't very good.
>> yea.
>> perfect way to handle it? just a little bit of humor?
>> and the president has sort of perfected the art of needling donald trump . this isn't the first time, every time -- during the birth certificate flaps, he had funny jokes at the white house correspondents dinner , so it's just more from the president on that. it was pretty funny.
>> it is. ann cornblut, perry bacon, good to see boeing of you. thank you.
NST Online Business Times : latest
