Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has come under sharp attacks from his opponents on the left, after a video leaked this week in which Romney referred to 47 percent of Americans as "victims," who are dependent of the government.

It’s simple, but true. We vote for people we like. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has run on the platform that he’s a businessman, who will run the country like a boss runs a company. But do people like the idea of a boss as president?

This election season, the campaign rhetoric appears to be overwhelmingly dominated by back-and-forth name-calling and character assaults.  Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, takes a closer look at what's being said.

Earlier this week, a top Romney advisor told MSNBC that his candidate still did not think of the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate penalty as a tax. Yesterday, Romney said during an interview with CBS News that he must accept the court's ruling that it is a tax. Why did the Romney campaign change their tune?

The presidential race is getting nastier and nastier and it’s all on video: both the Obama and Romney campaigns have released new ads in the last few days. At the center of the race is the Affordable Care Act, and as a result, the Supreme Court may become an unlikely potential victim of partisan politics. 

Politico reported last week that the Obama campaign employs over 150 social media experts who reach deep into data available through social media profiles and craft ads targeted at specific types of potential voters. Some experts claim advertising tailored to voters will determine the outcome of the campaigns. But there’s also the possibility that more specific advertising efforts will only increase the cynicism or apathy of some potential voters.

Presidential campaign slogans: we’ve come to know them, love them, loathe them, and in some cases, completely forget them. Some slogans, like Warren G. Harding’s "Cox and Cocktails," sound perplexing in hindsight. And then there’s President Obama’s new slogan, simply “Forward.” Kathleen Hall Jamieson specializes in political language and rhetoric.

In this conversation with Kathleen Hall Jamieson, professor of communications and director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, we hear how Democrats plan to rehabilitate the word "ObamaCare" through coordinated public relations campaigns online and off.  

It’s Super Tuesday, and Ohio is among the most pivotal states in the race. In order to gain an edge, the two frontrunners — Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum — secured hundreds of thousands of dollars in ads which began airing last weekend in Ohio. Are the ads working?

With the Michigan primary almost two weeks away, Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum are waging war against each other through televised attacks ads. On Wednesday, Rick Santorum responded to a Super PAC funded Romney ad that claimed he was a "big spender" by depicting Romney as "Rombo." A Mitt Romney look-a-like, "Rombo," is seen shooting mud with a machine gun at cardboard pop-ups of Rick Santorum.

As a result of the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case, rules regarding corporate and union campaign spending were significantly eased. Super PAC ads are more strongly-worded and less accurate, largely because the third party groups funding them are harder to track down than something funded directly by a candidate's campaign. Though they are not limited to one party by nature, their role in the Republican race has been striking: ads run by pro-Mitt Romney Super PAC "Restore Our Future" are widely credited with reversing Newt Gingrich's lead in Iowa.

Newt Gingrich was for health care mandates before he was against them. Rick Perry was for allowing abortions in cases of rape and incest before he was not. And Mitt Romney has changed his positions on climate change, health care, abortion, and gay rights, just to name a few. In 2004, the caricature of John Kerry as a "flip-flopper" partly cost him the presidential election. Although flip-flopping is almost universally portrayed as negative, these changes of heart sometimes reveal an evolution of ideals and maturity. "When the facts change, I change my mind," John Maynard Keyes once said. "What do you do, sir?"

"From the creator of 'I'm Running For Office for Pete's Sake' comes the story of two men trapped in the same body — Mitt versus Mitt." It sounds like a movie trailer, but it's really the latest political ad from the Democratic National Committee. The DNC is reportedly spending $22,000 to run the ad this week. Among the GOP presidential candidates, Rick Perry has already spent $2.8 million on advertising, Ron Paul has spent $2.1 million, Mitt Romney has spent $134,000, and Herman Cain has spent $78,900. But what kind of poll numbers does one TV spot really buy?

President Barack Obama addressed a joint session of Congress and television viewers across the country last night, presenting a $447 billion package of tax cuts and new government spending meant to increase jobs in America. Obama urged Congress to "pass this jobs plan right away." After the speech, House speaker John Boehner said "The proposals the president outlined tonight merit consideration." Will Obama's plan pass through Congress and, more importantly, will it work?

The markets started off jittery yesterday and throughout the morning they just kept dropping. Later in the afternoon President Obama made an attempt to reassure Americans. During a statement at the White House he said, "Markets will rise and fall, but this is the United States of America. No matter what some agency may say, we've always been and always be a triple A country."

President Obama stood before the nation and pleaded with Congress to come to an agreement as soon as possible, in a prime-time speech to the American public last night. "We can't allow the American people to become collateral damage to Washington's political warfare," he said. House Speaker John Boehner immediately followed Obama's speech with his response, agreeing that the debate needs to be resolved, but urging Obama to sign on to the Republican proposal to raise the debt limit.

Presidents throughout history have had to deliver speeches in the wake of tragedy to comfort the nation. Ronald Reagan did so after the Challenger explosion; Bill Clinton after the Oklahoma City bombing and Columbine shootings; and George W. Bush after 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the Virginia Tech shootings. President Obama is set to deliver his own speech tonight in Arizona to try and comfort a nation following the shooting of twenty people, that left six dead. How will President Obama approach the events, and their political impliations, from the scene of the tragedy?

President Obama addressed the country last night, marking the official end of U.S. combat operations in Iraq. Balancing his own former opposition to the war with congratulating the troops required Obama, a gifted orator, to thread several rhetorical needles, but a larger question remains: do people care what Obama had to say about Iraq?

With the help of Kathleen Hall Jamieson, professor of communications and director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, we take a look at President Obama's Oval Office speech from last night. Jamieson analyzes the president's rhetoric, looking at whether it was effective in communicating his control over the Gulf oil crisis and setting up the changes in the country's energy policy.

From the Gulf region to the Beltway, everyone has an opinion on President Obama's eighteen minute long speech about the BP oil spill last night, including Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. That story and this morning's headlines.