We’ve built a pretty spiffy interactive that lets you see how the GOP candidates’ Wikipedia entries were edited during the course of the primary.
Mitt Romney gets personal in Wisconsin:
Romney went on to talk at length about his work as a volunteer Mormon lay pastor for his church in Boston. He spoke about how it had helped him to connect with people who hadn’t come from the same kind of fortunate background he had.
“That gave me the occasion to work with people on a very personal basis that were dealing with unemployment, with marital difficulties, with health difficulties of their own and with their kids,” the candidate explained. “Most Americans, by the way, are carrying a burden of some kind. We don’t see it. We see someone on the street, they smile and say hello, but behind them they are carrying kind of a bag of rocks. It may be their own health difficulties. It may be concern about a job. It may be inability to pay for the home or the college they were hoping to pay for for a child.”
“When you get a chance to know people on a very personal basis, whether you’re serving as a pastor or as a counselor or in other kinds of roles, you understand that every kind of person you see is facing some challenges,” Romney continued. “And one of the reasons I’m running for president of the United States is I want to help people, I want to lighten those burdens.”
Romney’s response was the kind of answer his campaign staff has been encouraging him to undertake on the trail for months — a reply that not only acknowledged a voter’s question but also pivoted to reveal something personal about his own life. The former Massachusetts governor has long been dogged on the trail by criticism that he’s too stiff and formal to connect with voters, and aides have worried that Romney’s awkwardness won’t just hurt him in the Republican primary but also as a general election candidate against President Obama.
But as he has traveled throughout Wisconsin seeking votes ahead of Tuesday’s primary, Romney has tinkered with his usual banter with voters, dropping anecdotes about his wife, Ann, or their five sons into random questions that aren’t always family centered in hopes of humanizing his candidacy.
—Holly Bailey
Louisiana Primary: A preview
The race for the GOP presidential nomination is all about Louisiana this weekend.
The Pelican State’s primary on Saturday gives:
- Mitt Romney another chance to win in the Deep South and show that he can connect with socially conservative voters — something he was unable to do in Alabama in Mississippi.
- Rick Santorum, who is looking strong in Louisiana, a chance to show that he still has traction as the anti-Romney candidate.
- Newt Gingrich a chance to show his campaign is alive and kicking.
- Ron Paul a chance to show up and campaign.
Delegates at stake: Louisiana has 46 delegates to the Republican National Convention, but only 20 are at stake in the primary.
All four GOP hopefuls will be in Louisiana on Friday. On Saturday, Santorum will be in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and Gingrich will head to Pennsylvania, too.
"Romney no longer wants to be perceived as the weak frontrunner who cannot win the hearts and souls of the voters at the core of his own party—his campaign is pushing Romney as the experienced and prepared contender ready to defeat President Obama, particularly when it comes to righting the American economy."
Are you without television? Please join our livestream of results. Yes, we are attaching candidate heads with velcro to the states they have won.
"This primary season has been characterized by the absence of familiar friends. Where is the ‘momentum’ of yesteryear? When did voter preferences start shifting so suddenly, so violently, that a double-digit lead is gone within a matter of days?
But there’s one reliable old friend that’s been with us from the start: a widespread incomprehension about how to count. What’s more, there’s every reason to think that this cluelessness will shadow the political conversation once the general election begins.
"
"If Mitt Romney loses tonight’s Michigan primary by one vote, I can describe the culprit. She is late-middle-aged, dark-haired, reluctant to have her name used in print, and votes at Lewton Elementary School in an affluent neighborhood of the state capital. ‘When I went to vote for Romney,’ she explained, ‘I got so confused that I voted “Uncommitted.” I guess I could have changed it. But I didn’t care that much.’"
Romney is tweaking his stump speech to show his sensitive side:
As he has struggled to hang on to the mantle of the frontrunner in the Republican presidential race, Romney has tweaked his stump speech in subtle ways to counter the perception that he’s too robotic and stiff—or maybe even too rich to care about average people. He has begun diverting from his usual stump speech, which was heavy on his explanations of his love and faith in America, to talk about the people he has met during his second presidential run.
“I’ve had the opportunity over the last several months to go across the country and meet people in this great land of ours, and these have been challenging times,” Romney said at a stop in Colorado Springs. “I was getting my hair cut in a place in New Hampshire, and the barber, in his seventies, had expected to retire but couldn’t afford to.”
In Elko, Nev., Romney spoke of how “heartsick” he was to have recently met a group of seniors “who thought they would retire but are working minimum wage jobs to keep food on the table.”
In Reno, Romney spoke of a couple he met who “used to think about where they were going to send their kid to college,” adding, “Now they are wondering if they can put food on the table until their next paycheck comes in.”
Romney’s minimum wage proposal: “All it does is give the base another reason to be unenthusiastic about him.”
Mitt Romney’s position on the minimum wage has some on the right sounding the alarm about his candidacy—and it could expose a dangerous fault line between Romney and some of the Republican Party’s most reliable backers.
Romney said last week that he supports regular increases in the minimum wage to keep pace with inflation, a position he took as a candidate for president in 2008. Six years before that, as a candidate for Massachusetts governor, Romney supported linking automatic increases in the state’s minimum wage to inflation. “I haven’t changed my thoughts on that,” he told reporters.
Indexing the minimum wage to inflation is a goal of many labor-backed groups and liberal Democrats, who say it would help millions of working people. In recent years, Republicans, backed by their allies in the business community, have opposed such efforts, arguing that raising the minimum wage would reduce employment. Some on the right have come out against the very concept of a minimum wage.
Romney’s comments have caused concern among conservatives inside and outside the party.
“It goes to show he’s still very defensive about his own wealth,” Steve Forbes, the publishing magnate who made his own bids for the presidency in 1996 and 2000, told Yahoo News. “All it does is give the base another reason to be unenthusiastic about him.”
It’s time for the fourth contest of the GOP primary!
Some reading as you wait for the results:
- NPR asks, When did the primary become a Slimary?
- We’ve got a Florida native (and novelist!) on why he is bored with the primary.
- Politico has the 9 counties to watch in tonight’s returns.
- Finally, all these results getting you itchy to build cool things? WYNC’s John Keefe walks you through how to build your own results map.
