>>> mitt romney is in park city utah, where he's meeting with top fundraisers at a retreat. attending are former governor tim pawlenty , rob portman , paul ryan and governor bobby jindal . also at the retreat, two dark horse vp candidates, jeb bush and former secretary of state condoleezza rice . a rousing reception for president obama at a rally in tampa. he went after mitt romney 's history at bain capital .
>> today it was reported in the " washington post " that the companies his firm owned were pioneers in the outsourcing of american jobs to places like china and india. pioneers. let me tell you, tampa, we do not need an outsourcing pioneer in the oval office . we need a president who will fight for american jobs and fight for american manufacturers.
>> joining me now, national political reporter for the " washington post " amy gardner and steve velma. thanks for joining me.
>> good morning.
>> amy, the president picking up on the pioneer of outsourcing line from your paper. give us a sense of that article and put it in context there.
>> there's a couple of interesting points, this is a story that ran yesterday written by my colleague, tom hamburger and examined in very close detail bain capital 's record working with companies that outsourced jobs oversees. bain capital , of course the private equity company that mitt romney worked for and led for the better part of 15 years. what's interesting about this article i think is actually two things. one is that the -- the governor romney on the campaign trail today is talking about ending outsourcing and that being a problem with our economy and doubting his business experience in the private sector as a reason -- as a central reason why the american people should choose him to lead the economy back to pros spert to end outsourcing. the other point is that president obama has been talking aboutending outsourcing on the campaign trail. this was a perfect moment for him to seize upon politically as he did as we saw yesterday in florida .
>> steve , let's talk about the location the president was in florida at that rally in full campaign mode. in a swing state which has the latest poll showing the president up four points there in florida , which is a ten-point swing since last month. i'm curious what you think is behind the bump and might it be the president's immigration message?
>> absolutely. the immigration message and the vote in florida are critical. he's up four points overall but he's up 16 points, i think 53-37 among hispanic voters in florida . that's about the margin a democrat should expect to get. what he needs to do is hold that and increase it and energize that vote. what happened here this last week with that vote is he was in a little bit of trouble with hispanic voters because he had not delivered on his 2008 promise for overall immigration reform . they knew it. this would have been a much tougher audience if he had gone in saying i didn't deliver. instead he changed the subject last week when he noungsed the decision to stop deporting 800,000 young illegal immigrants . they were enthusiastic about that. that allows him to then turn the whole pressure on to mitt romney on whether he'll sustain that new direction.
>> i'm curious, amy, what do you know about the concern in the romney camp with the latest numbers? florida is a must win, right?
>> florida is a very important state. the other issue here is that governor romney and his advisers know full well they have a challenge with latino voters. and so you saw governor romney 's response to president obama 's announcement regarding immigration policy . and it was a stark evolution. it was a very powerful dramatic evolution from what he was saying on the republican primary trail when he was perhaps the most conservative and hard line anti-immigration -- anti- illegal immigration candidate in the field. last week when president obama made his announcement, romney 's answer was just to sort of criticize the president for not getting a bill through congress and just taking executive action . he didn't actually criticize the substance of what president obama had done, which is interesting.
>> hey, steve , the optics of this event with the fundraisers in utah for mr. romney , does this play into the framing of him as a candidate for the well off? there he is in deer valley , is there any way to avoid that?
>> oh, i think there is, alex. the best way is to open it up to us, the news media. turn it into a policy seminar. sit there with the contributors, most of whom are business people and bring in the best policy people you've got and spend four hours talking about your tax policy and your economic policy . and basically bore us to death. but turn it into an infomercial about his own program, instead of this mysterious behind the scenes thing where we're all suspicious there's some secret handshake , secret bargain to help people. open it up, let us in.
>> all right, don't think it's going to happen this weekend but i guess you can hope. all right, good to see you both. we appreciate it.