Notes and quotes on this presidential election

Some quotes from NPR yesterday, from a conversation of reporter Robert Siegel with E.J. Dionne, journalist and political commentator, and conservative commentator, journalist and writer--also Republican--David Brooks:

First, David Brooks on Mitt Romney: "His campaign is now in a sort of a state of crisis, I would say. The Republican elites are in somewhat panic.

You're seeing - the whole electoral map has sort of shifted. Some polls don't show it. The Gallup poll, to be fair, shows the race still tied, but basically, if you look at the whole electoral map, you have Obama up by five points in the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, maybe five in a bunch of others, eight in some others. And then you're beginning to see the states, the key states - Ohio, significant Obama leads, all the swing states, with the possible exception North Carolina, all shifting Democratic.

And so, I don't know how bad it's hurt him, but the electoral map is shifting in the Democratic direction."

More from Mr. Brooks: "I think it's mostly Romney, frankly. I think the country would like to vote against President Obama if they had a plausible alternative. But Romney is the only candidate in modern political history where his unfavorables are higher than his favorables. John McCain, Al Gore, people who lost, had double-digit advantage in favorable.

So people just don't like Romney. And the core problem is he's insincere. It's an insincere campaign. He's a non-ideological person in an ideological age and he's pretending to be something he's not."

Link to original interview: http://www.npr.org/2012/09/21/161581380/week-in-politics-the-47-percent-senate-races

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brooks_(journalist)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._J._Dionne