WORDS OF WISDOM FROM GEORGE WILL AND COKIE ROBERTS

The Republican campaign strategy can best be described as snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory

On Sunday’s ABC This Week, George Stephanopoulos interviewed Republican vice presidential nominee. During the interview Ryan responded to Friday’s job report as proof that we have not recovered from the recession because of Obama’s failed policies.

Following the Ryan interview, a panel that included New York Times Columnist Paul Krugman, ABC News' Cokie Roberts, ABC News' George Will, Newark, New Jersey Mayor Cory Booker, and Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky discussed the vice presidential candidate’s remarks. George Will and Cokie Roberts expressed the opinion that the Republicans have made a serious mistake in their campaign strategy which will probably cost them the election.

Here are some excerpts of the comments made by George Will and Cokie Roberts:

George Will: The two numbers he stressed deserve stressing again: 368,000 people dropped out of the job market, which means that for every job created, four people quit looking for jobs. What this means is if the workforce participation rate today were what it was in June 2009 when recovery began, we would have an unemployment rate of 11.2 percent. If you add in the involuntarily unemployed, you’re approaching 19 percent.

Which is why I should think from here on in on the basis of these numbers, the Romney campaign slogan should be the title of Paul Krugman’s book which is “End This Depression Now” because these are depression level numbers. And, if the Republican Party cannot win in this environment, it has to get out of politics and find another business.

………. I think what the Republicans are counting on is undecideds to break, as they usually do, against the incumbent. But how many undecideds are there?

Cokie Roberts: Well, actually, it's interesting to see in comparing the 2008 exits with the 2012 average ABS polls. The groups of people who have gone off Barack Obama, moderates, Midwesterners, people 18-29, people with less than $50,000, they haven't gone on to Romney and that is exactly what -- they're still getting what McCain got. He's getting what McCain got there.

Those are the groups of people he has to get. But look, I think in fact that the jobs numbers don't mean anything in this election. I think, everybody's factored that in already. We know that story is there. And what the Democrats are trying to do, and I think probably will succeed at doing, is putting together blocs of voters. And so, you know, you have women and minorities, gays -- this convention, over and over and over again the speeches that were not on the air, were talking about gay rights, minority rights, immigration the DREAM Act, all of that.

And I think that the Republicans have made a tremendous mistake here. In 1992, when it was the economy, stupid. The minority vote was 12 percent. In 2008, it was 26 percent. It's expected to be 28 percent in this election. And if that's true, Obama, you know can get 80 percent of the nonwhite vote he can win with only 38 percent of the white vote.

Will: In this sprint to November 6th, the Republicans are going to talk economics; the Democrats are going to think demographics.

Roberts: Right. Exactly right.

Will: For the reason you talked about. In particularly Hispanics. In North Carolina, where the Democrats convened, there are 830,000 Hispanics in a state that was won with 14,000 votes last time. It used to be this was a matter of the gateway states of California and Texas, still about 47 percent live there, but it's all over the country now, including in all those states –

Roberts: And this is where Republicans have made a major mistake. I did a story in the 1980s, a naturalizing ceremony in California. Hispanics and Asians came out and signed up with the Republican Party. Why? I kept asking them. Because the Republicans are winners. They are the people who -- they represent the people who make it. We came to this country to make it.

Proposition 187 comes up, which was against illegal immigrants, but people heard it as immigrants. Hispanics went 180 off of the Republican Party. And now that's happening nationwide, and I believe that the Republicans have made a mistake with immigration, and now with voting rights, that will last for a generation with Hispanics, at least, the way civil rights has -- has with blacks.

Will: The Democratic wager is that they can get Hispanics to turn out. Arizona is a third Hispanic. The turnout there is only 12 percent Hispanic. But the Republicans have 20 debates in the primary competing to see who could pledge to build the longest, thickest, tallest, most lethally electrified fence, and Hispanics said, I detect some hostility here……And it's going to take a long time to undo that.