Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: Colorado Massacre

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Gail Collins:

My favorite American heroes are the ones who went for the long slog, even when their cause appeared to be hopeless to the point of ridiculous. Civil rights activists in the 1950s. Generations' worth of suffragists who trudged around the country collecting signatures on petitions to give women the right to vote.

Also, anybody who works on gun control.

It's too soon for many of the pundits to wrap their heads around this (just as it is for many of us). Meanwhile...

WaPo fact checker Glenn Kessler waves a white flag over Bain:

So we are at an impasse. Because of the ambiguity, there is considerable room for interpretation of known facts. Going forward, unless new evidence emerges, on a case-by-case basis we may withhold the awarding of Pinocchios when the claim rests mostly on the question of when Romney stopped managing Bain Capital.

That's one less fact checker for Romney to hide behind.

NPR:

"Nobody really cares when he left. That's not what's relevant. And that's not what's gaining traction," says Frank Luntz, a Republican messaging guru.

"What is having somewhat of an impact, and I've seen it myself in the research I've done in Ohio," he says, "is a doubt, whether he connects to those who are economically challenged, who have already decided the Obama administration hasn't delivered for them over the last 3 1/2 years, but now aren't certain whether Mitt Romney will deliver for them over the next four years."

Maria Cardona:

Obama won 67% of the Latino vote in 2008. A few months ago, I would have said it would be a big challenge for him to repeat those numbers, especially given some disappointment among Latinos about the president's not being able to deliver on immigration reform, as well as his record on deportations. But he is now on track to gain the same amount, if not more, of the Latino vote.

This week, Latino Decisions released a poll that gives Obama 70% of the Latino vote to Romney's 22%, the highest support the president has enjoyed from the Latino community to date. If those numbers hold, it will be very hard for Romney to win the election.

Chicago Tribune:

Former President George W. Bush will not attend the Republican convention next month, his office said on Friday, skipping Mitt Romney's expected coronation as the party's White House nominee.

Bush supports Romney and believes he would be a great president, "but he's still enjoying his time off the political stage and respectfully declined the invitation to go to Tampa," spokesman Freddy Ford said in an email first reported by Politico.

Guess he didn't want to remind people of how close his advisors and Romney are.

HuffPost:

Massachusetts Tea Party activists are not happy with their state's Republican establishment.

At a meeting for the Leicester/Holden/Paxton/Rutland Tea Party group, grassroots leaders accused the Massachusetts GOP of being "too moderate" and "too elite," according to a report from GoLocalWorcester.

The state's GOP leaders are a bunch of "country club Republicans," said Jim McGrath, co-chairman of the LPRH Tea Party. Amongst other concerns, McGrath expressed concern that they hadn't done enough for state representative races.

NY Times editorial:

As Sheriff Joe Arpaio went on trial in Arizona this week for discriminating against Latinos and for usurping federal authority with his sweeping roundups of undocumented immigrants, a coalition of individuals and groups brought a related action in another federal court. The action asks the court to block enforcement of Section 2(B) of S.B. 1070, the notorious Arizona law that compels all law enforcement agencies in the state to copy and carry out the Arpaio model of harassment and humiliation.