“Watching his father, George, eat an entire batch of home-made ice cream that was accidentally sweetened with salt, so that it wouldn’t go to waste, had a huge impact on Mitt. Waste is simply not tolerated.”

— Laurie Romney, quoted by the Colorado Statesman, describing her
father-in-law’s frugality.

Susquehanna pollster Jim Lee acknowledged on a conference call for Pennsylvania Republicans that President Obama’s campaign did a good job defining Mitt Romney over the summer.

[Read more…]

Noam Scheiber: “The conventional wisdom on Obama’s recent surge is that it’s due largely to Mitt Romney’s 47% disaster, and there’s clearly something to this. If nothing else, it’s given Team Obama grist for absolutely devastating ads. But it’s worth pointing out another dynamic that’s been overlooked here: The escalating disaster that is Paul Ryan.”

“At the time of his selection, a number of pundits argued Ryan’s strategic benefits, suggesting he would boost Romney by energizing conservatives, or by allowing Romney to run as the candidate of big ideas, or that he would at least be the party’s best defender of the Medicare plan Romney was going to have to defend whether he wanted to or not. This seemed like a stretch at the time–after all, Ryan’s Medicare plan proved to be a massive liability the one time voters weighed in on it. But who could say for sure? Fast forward a month-and-a-half and the numbers look pretty persuasive.”

Here are the latest polls from the battleground states, updated as needed through the day:

Michigan: Obama 50%, Romney 46% (Gravis Marketing)

New Hampshire: Obama 50%, Romney 45% (American Research Group)

Pennsylvania: Obama 49%, Romney 42% (Morning Call/Muhlenberg College)

Virginia: Obama 49%, Romney 47% (American Research Group)

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), chairman of the GOP Senate campaign effort, told the Louisville Courier-Journal he didn’t think Rep. Todd Akin (R) could win in Missouri adding they have “no plans” to invest money in the Senate race.

Said Cornyn: “I just think that this is not a winnable race. We have to make tough calculations based on limited resources and where to allocate it, where it will have the best likelihood of electing a Republican senator.”

Earlier this week, the NRSC issued a statement suggesting it might reverse course and support Alkin.

Republicans no longer think they’re going to retake the Senate, according to the latest National Journal Political Insiders Poll, “a stunning drop in optimism for a party that began 2012 confident it would regain control of the chamber.”

Just 4% of GOP insiders rate their chances as “high,” a free fall in confidence from February when 66% of Republicans were bullish they’d win the four seats necessary to take control.

Rick Klein: “He’s got ’em just where he wants ’em… or something like that. We’re about a week away from the Mitt Romney comeback – or at least the Mitt Romney comeback story. The race is bound to tighten again, and the first debate is the best opportunity to drive that tightening, from the challenger’s perspective. Just as conventional wisdom is that President Obama is currently leading the race, conventional wisdom also says that Romney will bounce back. The race can’t be over yet because it’s not over yet, and Romney is primed to be the beneficiary of that dynamic.”

Jonathan Chait: “In what you might regard as an unhealthy sign for Mitt Romney’s campaign prospects, conservatives have turned to debating the question of who is to blame for nominating this man in the first place. Arch-conservatives Erick Erickson and Ben Domenech blame the moderate establishment for foisting Romney upon the base; relative moderates Ross Douthat and Daniel Larison blame the conservatives. Oddly, nobody seems interested in claiming credit for Romney’s nomination.”

“The case for Romney, such as it is, falls to his anonymous advisers, who tell Politico that he is a brilliant and wonderful man but sadly bad at politics… Being terrible at running for office sounds like a pretty serious drawback for a presidential nominee!”

“I mean, this is somebody who kind of makes Michele Bachmann look like a hippie.”

— Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), on Morning Joe, saying challenger Todd Akin (R) is to the far right of the Republican Party.

Both campaigns are attempting to lower expectations for next week’s debates, but First Read says “here’s the only expectation you need to know: Romney needs a game-changer, while Obama needs a split decision. That’s what happens when one person is behind and the other is ahead.”

Charlie Cook: “If the presidential race stays on its current course for another week or 10 days, Romney faces the very real prospect that Republican donors, super PACs, and other parts of the GOP support structure will begin to shift resources away from helping him and toward a last-ditch effort to win a Senate majority–which once seemed very likely–and to protect the party’s House majority.”

Charles Krauthammer: “His unwillingness to go big, to go for the larger argument, is simply astonishing. For six months, he’s been matching Obama small ball for small ball… When you’re behind, however, safe is fatal.”

Dallas Morning News: “For all the talk about whether Mitt Romney should distance himself from George W. Bush — and the policies of the last GOP White House — a new survey shows that the former president actually has better favorability ratings than the Republican nominee.”

The most recent Bloomberg poll shows Bush with a 46% to 49% favorable rating as compared to Romney’s 43% to 50%.

Rep. Todd Akin (R) said Sen. Claire McCaskill’s (D) demeanor during their debate last week was not as “ladylike” as it was when she faced off with Sen. Jim Talent (R) in 2006, the Kansas City Star reports.

Said Akin: “I think we have a very clear path to victory, and apparently Claire McCaskill thinks we do, too, because she was very aggressive at the debate, which was quite different than it was when she ran against Jim Talent. She had a confidence and was much more ladylike (in 2006), but in the debate on Friday she came out swinging, and I think that’s because she feels threatened.”

The RNC “has abruptly cut ties to a consulting firm hired for get-out-the-vote efforts in seven presidential election swing states after Florida prosecutors launched an investigation into possible fraud in voter registration forms,” the Los Angeles Times reports.

“Working through state parties, the RNC has sent more than $3.1 million this year to Strategic Allied Consulting, a company formed in June by Nathan Sproul, an Arizona voting consultant. Sproul has operated other firms that have been accused in past elections of improprieties designed to help Republican candidates, including dumping registration forms filled out by Democrats, but none of those allegations led to any criminal charges.”