Dick Morris: Romney Doesn’t Necessarily Need Ohio To Win Election

October 29, 2012 3:02 pm

This is a rush transcript from “On the Record”:

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, FOX NEWS HOST: Right now, wavering in Wisconsin, President Obama losing his lock on cheese country. A new poll shows the president and Governor Romney tied in Wisconsin. Is this a sign voters in the Midwest are shifting support to Governor Romney?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUSH LIMBAUGH, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: Wisconsin — this is important now. Wisconsin 49 (INAUDIBLE) Rasmussen — 49-49. And you go back to 2008, Obama carried Wisconsin 56 to 42.

Something big is happening in Wisconsin! And there’s stuff happening in Oregon and there’s stuff happening in Iowa and there’s stuff happening in Ohio. And there’s stuff happening in North Carolina. There is stuff happening all over the place, and the Obama regime is looking smaller and smaller and smaller as they react to it!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We’ve created 5.2 million jobs over 32 months. What is Mitt Romney’s plan? He has no plan. That’s what the American people should be focused on.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a huge election. We can’t afford four more years of this, and we have a big choice in front of us. We can go on with these broken promises not just on the economy but on the deficit, on Social Security and Medicare…

And the president’s bigger promise to unite us instead of dividing us — well, we can go to Governor Romney, who has a history of working together with the other party in Massachusetts and a history of job creation.

JOSEPH BIDEN, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Mitt Romney has shown he’s very good at sending jobs away from America. But Governor, I got news for you. A president’s job is to create jobs in America for Americans, with Americans, bringing jobs home to Americans! That is a president’s job! You’re not running for CEO of Bain!

MITT ROMNEY, GOP PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: The president’s campaign slogan is this, “Forward.” But the 23 million Americans struggling to find a good job these last four years feel a lot more like backward.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The fact of the matter is that Governor Romney’s economic policies are reverting back to the same policies that I inherited that led us to the slowest job growth in 50 years, record deficits, and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

ROMNEY: Despite all that he inherited, President Obama did not repair our economy! He did not save Medicare and Social Security! He did not tame the spending and borrowing! He did not reach across the aisle to bring us together. What he inherited wasn’t the only problem. What he did with what he inherited made the problem worse!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAN SUSTEREN: Wisconsin is in play, the latest Rasmussen poll showing Governor Romney closing the gap. He is now tied with President Obama, each of them with 49 percent of Wisconsin’s likely voters. The national polls painting an even grimmer picture for the president, this Rasmussen poll showing Governor Romney ahead by 3, the governor with 50 percent of the vote and President Obama trailing with 47 percent.

Dick Morris, author of the book “Here Come the Black Helicopters,” joins us. Good evening, Dick.

DICK MORRIS, “HERE COME THE BLACK HELICOPTERS” AUTHOR/FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Good. You know, I heard a great joke yesterday. If Obama is reelected, imagine the mess he’ll inherit!

VAN SUSTEREN: OK. Well, I’m sure that the Obama campaign won’t like that, but the Romney camp will probably enjoy that a bit.

MORRIS: Right.

VAN SUSTEREN: I’m curious. Looking at these polls tonight, Wisconsin in — four years ago, President Obama stormed the state by 14 points. There does seem to be a rather seismic shift in that state.

MORRIS: Yes. There is. Wisconsin has become a Republican state by virtue of the incredibly intense organizational efforts there of Governor Scott Walker’s people, Americans for Prosperity and various other political groups that have really mobilized the free market forces in the state. They have been through a recall election, a senate recall, a judicial election, and of course, the original election in 2010, and they’ve won them all. And I think Wisconsin is going to go for Romney.

But let me just put this in a context, Greta, because I don’t think anyone has the overview. There are 179 electoral votes in states John McCain carried. Then there’s Indiana and North Carolina, where he just barely carried, and they’re undoubtedly going to go Republican. That’s 25 votes between them. That brings you up to 204.

Then you have 51 votes in swing states that have at this point probably swung to Romney — Florida 29 votes, where he’s 4 or 5 ahead, Virginia 13, where he’s 5 or 6 ahead, and Colorado 10, where he’s 4 ahead. So that brings him up to 255.

He’s got to get to 270, so he’s 15 short. Then you have a market basket of eight states that cast 98 electoral votes, where the polls basically now are tied. New Hampshire 4 votes, Romney’s 2 ahead. Pennsylvania 20 votes, Romney’s 2 ahead. Ohio 18 votes, they’re tied. Iowa 6 votes, they’re tied. Wisconsin 10 votes, they’re tied. Michigan 15 votes, Romney’s 1 behind. Minnesota 16 votes., Romney’s 3 behind. Nevada 9 votes, Romney’s 2 behind.

But in all of those states, Obama is under 50. And since we’re going to get three quarters or four fifths of the undecided vote for Romney, I think Romney has a good chance to win all those states. But he is certainly going to win at least one, so he’s going to get at least the 15 votes.

This business that everybody should hang on what happens in Ohio is ridiculous. He could lose Ohio and carry either Pennsylvania or Minnesota or Michigan and Wisconsin or New Hampshire and Iowa and win the election. And it’s ridiculous to say that everything hinges on Ohio. Ohio is proving more intractable and more even, dead even.

But I believe that if you look at the polls in Iowa, they have many too many Democrats and too few Republicans, and proper polls in Iowa would show Romney 1 or 2 points ahead. But frankly, my view, Greta, is that Romney is going to win this election by more than 5 points and that he’s going to get north of 320 electoral votes.

VAN SUSTEREN: Well, let me ask you about a couple of these individual states. For instance, let’s start first with Pennsylvania. Let’s assume that he loses Pennsylvania and Ohio. Byron York told me — he was quoting someone else said that Pennsylvania is sort of fool’s gold, that Republicans sometimes think they can win it, but they never can win it.

Do you truly believe that at this point, Governor Romney can win Pennsylvania?

MORRIS: Of course he can. Republicans don’t never win it. In 2010, they elected five new Republican congressmen, a Republican senator, a Republican governor and Republican majorities in both houses of the legislature. What more has a state got to do?

So I think he will win Pennsylvania, and I think he will win Wisconsin and I think he has a very good chance of winning in Michigan. Of course, all of this presupposes that the other side doesn’t steal it, which is something we need to work on.

VAN SUSTEREN: OK, ground game. Its level of its importance between now and November 6th is what?

MORRIS: Very important. The Republicans lost four Senate seats in 2010 because they didn’t have a good ground game and the Democrats and the unions outworked them. Now I think the Republicans have gotten the message and are working like crazy on the ground, making millions of phone calls and home visits. It’s incredible. I go out every day and I’m amazed by what they’re doing.

But you know, I learned yesterday, or two days ago, Greta, that the United Nations has decided to send inspectors to monitor our elections to make sure that they’re honestly conducted, and the guy at the U.N. who’s running that is from Slovenia, which was a communist country until 20 years ago. And Perry in Texas has refused to let these inspectors in. This is the kind of stuff I talk about in “Black Helicopters,” this global government that the U.N. wants to tell us, the oldest democracy in the world…

VAN SUSTEREN: But…

MORRIS: … how to do our elections.

VAN SUSTEREN: Yes, I was just going to say — I — you know, I have to agree with you, I mean, that we are the oldest democracy in the world and the idea of these international monitors — I mean, like, frankly, I hope we have an aggressive Justice Department looking at these polls.

MORRIS: Yes.