On 60 Minutes, Romney and Ryan Showcase Cozy Relationship, Hazy Tax Plan

On Sunday night Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan sat down for their first joint TV interview with 60 Minutes and took the opportunity to highlight their newfound friendship. Romney praised Ryan's (questionable) knack for bipartisanship several times, and looked on with approval as his charismatic running mate attacked President Obama for his "fundamental lack of leadership." The duo are apparently so in step that they've started wearing matching outfits, and even share the same policy on disclosing financial information. When asked how many years of tax returns he released to the campaign, Ryan said it was "a very exhaustive vetting process," yet also a "confidential vetting process." Thus, he'll only be sharing two years of returns with the American people, just like his new boss.

The two were less clear on how a Romney-Ryan administration would affect Americans' taxes. Bob Schieffer didn't really ask any hard-hitting questions (and as Politico notes, that may be why Romney gave him another big exclusive), but he did have an interesting exchange with Romney about whether he believes in tax cuts for the rich:

As Jonathan Chait has discussed several times, a recent study by the Brookings Institution and the Tax Policy Center concluded that Romney's tax plan would require a tax increase for the middle class, while the richest Americans would pay lower rates and a lower share of the tax burden. At this point in the interview, Ryan jumped in to elaborate on Romney's plan:

If Ryan wants to take away Romney's tax shelters, maybe they aren't on the same page after all.

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The Ryan Pick: Why Romney Changed to Obama’s Game

The only place you'll find happier people today is at the White House.

Yesterday afternoon, as I was making my way into the White House for an interview, I ran into David Axelrod trundling along on his way out. We chatted idly for a few minutes about the political topic du jour: Who was Mitt Romney going to pick as his running mate? I told Axelrod that I was still convinced, as I had been for months, that Rob Portman would be the guy (ahem), and sagely explained why it wouldn’t be Tim Pawlenty (phew) and just couldn’t be Paul Ryan (doh!). Axelrod studiously maintained a poker face throughout our discussion. But I couldn’t help but detect a gleeful flicker in his eyes when we talked about the fervor on the right for the congressman from Wisconsin.

With Mitt Romney’s announcement this morning that he had tapped Ryan, the very same flicker is enlivening the eyes of everyone residing at the Obama for America HQ in Chicago and in the warrens of the White House, coupled with grins wide enough to span the distance between the two. But as giddy as Democrats are about the pick, so are Republicans and in particular conservative stalwarts. The underlying cause of the joy on both sides is the same, and it also happens to be the reason why the country should love the selection too: It raises the stakes and starkly clarifies the choice that voters will face in November — in one fell and dramatic swoop transforming a campaign that was teetering on the edge of being about nothing (of substance, that is) into a contest about Very Big Things indeed.

That the right is thrilled comes as no surprise, of course, given the despondency sinking in among hard-core conservatives (and, really, most Republicans) over the state of the Romney campaign during this long hot summer. Themeless, timid, error-prone, and on the defensive over Bain, taxes, and the dreadful foreign trip, the Romney campaign has seen their guy’s position in the race steadily erode, with three new polls showing him behind by seven to nine points and Obama at or near 50 percent (CNN 52-45 percent, Fox 49-40 percent, Reuters/Ipsos 49-42 percent). While the GOP political class has loudly and justifiably lamented Team Romney's poor performance on defense against Team O’s attacks, conservatives have been more troubled by its abject failures of offense: its inability or unwillingness to lay out a bold and clear agenda to contrast with that of the president.

In choosing Ryan, Romney, in effect, both acknowledged and granted the validity of that latter set of criticisms. As my colleague Jonathan Chait and others have written, Ryan has become the de facto ideological and intellectual leader of the contemporary GOP. His agenda of turning Medicare into a voucher program, bloc-granting and taking the meat axe to Medicaid, drastically cutting spending on virtually every other government program (except defense, natch), and, yes, privatizing Social Security has been called many things, from courageous and bold (by countless conservatives) to “thinly veiled Social Darwinism” (by Obama) and “right-wing social engineering” (by Newt Gingrich). What you cannot call it is vague or vacuous or mealy-mouthed — all words that have been attached to the man at the top of the ticket.

So this was not a safe or conventional pick — not a pick motivated by winning a state (as Portman would have partly been regarding Ohio or Marco Rubio would have partly been regarding Florida). This was a pick about ideas, about policies, about core convictions. But it was also a pick driven by political weakness. All along, Team Romney’s bedrock strategy has been to make the 2012 election a clean referendum on Obama’s economic management and leadership, an election about unemployment, growth, and wages. In elevating Ryan, what Team Romney has done is execute a sharp U-turn, embracing the theory that 2012 will not be a pure referendum but a choice election, and one in which the two sides’ contrasting approaches to the deficit, debt, entitlements, and taxes will take center stage. And while this is surely not a Hail Mary pass on the order of John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin, it is almost as much, as some Romneyites admit, an attempt to (pardon the expression) change the game.

All of which helps explain why the Obamans are grinning madly. It’s not simply that they, too, see the pick as an admission by Team Romney that its strategy was failing. Or that Ryan doesn’t clearly pass the test of being (and, crucially, looking) ready to be president. Or that his utter lack of private-sector bona fides undercuts, however mildly, Romney’s attacks on Obama for lacking same. It’s that Chicago and the White House perceive this as a broader capitulation regarding the core dynamic of the race: an acceptance of the “choice election” framing, which is exactly the frame that the incumbent and his people have embraced and attempted to propagate from the start.

And just why have they done that? Because they knew full well that if the race were purely a referendum on Obama, they would likely lose — but if bright lines could be drawn on values and visions regarding fiscal choices, that was the kind of election they could win. This was why Chicago was planning to hang the Ryan budget around Romney’s neck regardless of whether the congressman was on the ticket or not. Obama’s data jockeys have been polling and focus-grouping on this for months, and they are over the moon about what they have found. And while that data is guarded by lock, key, and Uzi-toting thugs (kidding — sorta), anyone interested in the topic should take a look at the work that Stan Greenberg and his team at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner did recently on the Ryan agenda and its electoral implications for Democracy Corps. To put it mildly, their conclusion is fairly bracing:

The crucial question, to be sure, will be what the small sliver of undecided voters conclude when the dueling cases of each side are put to them. But however the chips fall and the cookies crumble in the coming Ryan-centric fracas on the hustings, at the conventions, and on the debate stages this fall — side note: Biden versus Ryan, holy moly, get your ringside tickets now! — it’s hard not to argue that Mitt Romney has done the country a major favor. No more hide-and-seek. No more guessing games. No more theorizing about what President Willard would do if he found himself behind the biggest desk of all. With Romney and Ryan now joined at the hip, the choice and the stakes of 2012 are as clear as day. As a man with no knack for memorable phrases once memorably said: Bring 'em on.

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Mitt Romney Picks Slightly Boring But Handsome White Guy Paul Ryan

The addition of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan to the Republican presidential ticket, "the sole locus of the conservative movement’s longings," as Jonathan Chait noted on Friday, is a lock. Mitt Romney will reveal Ryan as his vice-presidential pick in front of the U.S.S. Wisconsin in Norfolk, Virginia, this morning.

The pick will tilt the dynamic of a presidential race that has already developed contrary to expectations. The Obama campaign has succeeded thus far in knocking Romney off his focus on the economy with a series of attacks on Mitt's record at Bain Capital and his refusal to release more than two years of tax returns. The Ryan selection will now put his budget plan into the heart of the race, which includes full repeal of Obamacare, tax cuts, and huge reductions to government programs for the poor.

Earlier in the summer, before the steady onslaught from the Obama campaign began taking its toll on Romney's poll numbers, the consensus was that Republicans needed an "incredibly boring white guy" like Tim Pawlenty or Rob Portman, someone who wouldn't distract from the central message that the economic recovery was being mismanaged by Obama. Ryan, as Chait noted earlier this year, is anything but boring, depicted as "America’s neighborhood accountant, a man devoted to the task of restoring our fiscal health," while in fact "nobody has done more in recent years to prevent the passage of a bipartisan debt agreement."

Ryan's selection may actually provide some rare bipartisan joy, although for different reasons. Republicans have their ideological standard-bearer on the ticket, and a chance to shift the campaign back towards policy and away from Romney's vulnerable personal history. Democrats, meanwhile, get to highlight the Republican economic wish list, like cutting taxes for the rich and turning Medicare into a voucher program.

The Romney campaign's selection of Ryan and its desire to change the framing of the election was foreshadowed on Friday, when Romney called for "agreement between both campaigns that we were only going to talk about issues" instead of "attacks based upon business or family or taxes or things of that nature." Politico's Maggie Haberman noted that it's "surprising ... hearing a candidate say, essentially, 'stop hitting me.'"

The body blows from the Obama campaign are unlikely to ease up with Ryan on the ticket. But starting Saturday, Romney will have a new heavyweight in the fight.

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Mitt Romney Introduced Paul Ryan in Front of a Battleship for Some Reason

"Hello Mr. President, er, Paul."

Virginia governor Bob McDonnell was never shy about his desire to be Mitt Romney's running mate, so it was kind of sad, this morning, to see him forced up onstage to give the introduction at Paul Ryan's unveiling. Also, nobody watching or in attendance wanted to hear from Bob McDonnell in the least.

The setting was a stage situated directly in front of the U.S.S. Wisconsin, a decommissioned battleship now serving out retirement as a museum in Norfolk, Virginia. Why do this in front of a battleship? Unclear. If there were ever a campaign less focused on war and foreign policy, it is the Romney-Ryan ticket in 2012. 

When McDonnell's tragic intro was complete, Romney emerged from the Wisconsin to some patriotic fanfare, which happened to be the soundtrack from Air Force One. Romney spent much of his short speech boasting of Ryan's character, sometimes in comically overwrought language. "Paul also combines firm principles with a practical concern for getting things done," Romney said at one point. "He has never been content to simply curse the darkness; he would rather light candles." I hope you dance, Paul Ryan.

Today represents something of a fresh start for Romney's struggling campaign, and he has every reason to be excited. However, he was perhaps a little too excited for his own good by the time he introduced Ryan. "Join me," Romney announced, "in welcoming the next president of the United States, Paul Ryan!"

The music swelled again, the crowd cheered, and Ryan emerged onstage, joining Romney in a session of smiling and lazy, indiscriminate waving. Romney went to his seat, but upon being informed by Ann of his error, returned to the microphone just as Ryan was set to begin his speech. "Every now and then I’m known to make a mistake,” Romney said, sheepishly. “I did not make a mistake with this guy. But I can tell you this, he’s going to be the next Vice-President of the United States." If it makes him feel any better, Barack Obama, bizarrely, made the same mistake when introducing Joe Biden in 2008.

Not the most auspicious start, but Ryan went on to rile up the crowd with a solidly delivered speech about the need to "make difficult decisions," something Romney has studiously avoided in his campaign so far, but won't be able to now that his candidacy is tied, for better or worse, to the controversial Ryan budget plan.

Ryan ended his speech with a shout-out to the GOP ticket's new self-coined nickname. "I’m excited for what lies ahead and I’m thrilled to be a part of America’s Comeback Team." Will this be the start of a comeback for the Romney campaign as well? Stay tuned!

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Did Mitt Romney Finally Win Over Rupert Murdoch?

Conservative billionaire Rupert Murdoch has never been super enthusiastic about Mitt Romney — a sentiment he has been very happy to express on Twitter, where he has pined for Rick Santorum and shared his doubts about the quality of Romney's staff. His feelings seemed to warm a bit last month, when he praised Romney for upping his campaign's personal attacks on President Obama. And today, in the wake of the announcement of Paul Ryan as Romney's running mate, Murdoch seemed genuinely pleased with the Republican candidate. "Thank God!" he tweeted. "Now we might have a real election on the great issues of the day. Paul Ryan almost perfect choice." Almost perfect. We're sure you'll get there one day, Mitt. 

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Jon Huntsman Sr. Claims He’s Not Harry Reid’s Source, But Since You Mention It, He Really Thinks Mitt Romney Should Release His Taxes

Jon Huntsman Sr. listens to secrets.

While the buzz right now is that Jon Huntsman Sr. might be the Republican Bain investor who ratted out Mitt Romney to Harry Reid, the man himself now insists that ... he's not. Huntsman told the Plum Line's Greg Sargent that he has "absolutely no knowledge of Bain or Mitt Romney’s tax returns." But while he's on the subject, Mitt Romney is a deceptive monster and he hates the American people:

We do not think Huntsman wishes Romney well.

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Family Went Into Business With Romney, Emerged Unscathed

Some Romney business deals don't resemble the last five minutes of The Apprentice.

If you've been watching pro-Obama campaign ads, you might be under the impression that Mitt Romney's primary occupation at Bain Capital was indirectly ruining the lives of middle-class Americans. However, the New York Times has managed to find an average couple who were actually better off following their interaction with Romney. 

The paper reports that in the eighties, Romney invested in Texas real estate and wound up renting a home to Timothy and Betty Stamps. After the housing market collapsed in the nineties, Romney decided to unload the homes. The Stamps were offered a chance to buy the house they'd been living in for five years, but they couldn't get a mortgage. “Then I got this phone call, personally, from Mr. Romney, asking if we really wanted to buy the house,” says Timothy Stamps. “I said, yes we did. And he said he would loan us the money. He really helped us when we needed it.”

The couple is still making mortgage payments to Romney and have nothing negative to say about him. The lesson here is clear:  If you can give a first-hand account of a generous Romney business deal, now is the time to come forward. There might be a New York Times cover story in it for you.

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Mitt Romney: Not a Murderer

The Priorities USA ad accusing Mitt Romney of pretty much killing a woman seems to have crossed a threshold of sorts that has prompted unusual levels of media indignation and even a cutting Onion parody of an Obama ad accusing Mitt Romney of having killed JonBenét Ramsey. Two of the most brilliant political commentators in America, Michael Kinsley and Jonathan Cohn, both have defenses of the ad. They’re both right in a certain narrow sense. Much of the media criticism has centered on the way the ad condenses the timeline, in which Bain closed a plant, a man lost his insurance, and then a few years later his wife lost insurance, and then she fell ill and died. As Kinsley notes, that she still had insurance when he lost his is beside the point — the Bain layoff was a necessary step in their progression from a couple with two spouses offering insurance to a couple with neither getting it.

The problem with the ad, rather, is that it relies on an argument Obama obviously doesn’t believe: that a business owner engaging in layoffs is morally responsible for what happens to his employees afterward. If we take the premise of the ad seriously, it is utterly immoral to lay anybody off. Indeed, Obama has proposed laying off federal employees. Terrible things will probably happen to some of those people. You could make an anti-Obama ad telling the story of one of them. Not really fair, is it?

Jonathan argues that the ad works as a critique of Romney’s social policies. That would be a good defense if the argument in the ad is that Romney’s plan is for people who can’t get employer-provided health insurance to risk financial ruin and suffer preventable pain and death. But the ad isn’t making an argument about Romney’s plan to repeal health-care reform and replace it with nothing. It’s making an argument for his role in business. The argument isn’t false. Some people believe that a business owner has a social responsibility not to lay off his employees. But there’s just no evidence Obama is one of those people.

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Romney Anti-Tax-Wonk Jihad Continues

Why won't these numbers add up? Must ... fire ... accountant ...

I continue to relentlessly argue on this blog, and occasionally to passersby while shaking them by the lapels, that the Tax Policy Center’s study of Mitt Romney’s proposal is one of the major developments of the campaign. Republicans always favor regressive tax cuts, but they’re always, always very careful to obscure the tradeoffs such policies require.

Romney screwed up. He tried to obscure the details by refusing to divulge large chunks of his plan, but he left enough of the parameters defined for tax wonks to prove that it would raise taxes on the middle class. The Tax Policy Center employed a simple methodology. It took Romney’s stated goals — a 20 percent rate cut, closing unspecified tax deductions to account for the lost revenue, and not raising taxes on investment income — and found that it would be mathematically necessary to raise taxes on the middle class.

One indication of the importance of this finding is that conservatives have continued to wildly lash out at the study.

Today the Wall Street Journal editorial page takes its turn. In a 1,500-word editorial filled with dark insinuations of partisanship by the study’s authors, interspersed with fulminations against class warfare, I was able to detect three actual arguments. First, the Journal triumphantly notes that the TPC study does not describe a detailed Romney plan:

Right. That’s not a secret. Romney has refused to describe how his plan would work, so the authors bent over backwards to try to make the numbers work in the most favorable possible way, and couldn’t. That’s the methodology of the study. That’s some great sleuthing there, Wall Street Journal editorial page.

Second, the editorial points out that the study assumes Romney would not reduce the tax deduction for municipal bond income. The study’s authors told me that they did this in keeping with Romney’s stated goal of lowering taxes on investment and saving. Since this very point appears in Jennifer Rubin's equally unhinged attack on the study, one might surmise that perhaps Romney is willing to reduce this tax deduction. If Romney did decide to do so, it would not produce enough revenue to materially affect the study’s conclusion. The Journal produces no other examples of tax deductions Romney could conceivably reduce that the study has not considered.

Finally, the Journal proceeds to insist that of course it’s possible to cut tax rates for the rich and have the rich pay more in taxes:

Underlying this argument is the Journal’s favored voodoo-economics belief that tax cuts for the rich always increase revenue. I won’t get diverted into a debate with this theological and obviously wrong belief — note that it omits the 2001 Bush tax cuts, which closely resemble Romney’s plan and which were followed by an unexpectedly large drop in revenue — but will merely point out that this does not address the point at all. The 1964, 1981, and 2003 tax cuts were deficit-financed. They were not revenue-neutral tax reforms, as Romney claims his plan would be.

Romney could just advocate a straight tax-rate cut and stop pretending he’ll make up for the revenue, and rely on the supply-side argument that this will somehow result in higher revenue. But he’s not doing that, as of now. He is claiming he can cut tax rates by 20 percent without reducing tax preferences for investment income and still leave tax rates on the rich the same, by reducing their deductions. Obviously none of those other tax cuts prove that this is possible because none of them attempted the same thing.

The 1986 tax reform did lower rates while raising the tax burden paid by the rich. It did that by ending the capital gains tax preference — something Romney opposes.

All the examples cited by the Journal prove is that, if you remove one of Romney’s parameters, then the other promises can be kept. He could follow the 1964, 1981, and 2003 tax cuts by abandoning his promise to keep it revenue-neutral. He could follow 1986 if he abandons the part about not raising taxes on capital gains. But he can’t do all the things he’s promised. And so Romney finds himself in a very bad position.

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Mitt Romney Basically Killed a Woman

That seems to be the message of this new TV ad from Obama-aligned super-PAC Priorities USA Action. 

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

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Tonight's Mitt Romney Fund-raiser Was the Most Successful in Iowa History

Ticket sales for a 280-person event held at a West Des Moines country club amounted to $2 million — a state record, according to Romney’s Iowa campaign co-chairman. However, the success ended up a overshadowed by Romney repeated mispronunciation of the word "Sikh" as "sheik" while speaking about the victims of Sunday's shooting in Wisconsin — a particularly unfortunate mistake, given the recent discussion about certain people's tendency to confuse members of the South Asian religion with Muslims.

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Clint Eastwood Thinks Mitt Romney Is Just Handsome Enough to Be President

Speaking to a group of high-paying Republican donors yesterday in Sun Valley, Idaho, Clint Eastwood recalled his first encounter with Mitt Romney: a campaign ad he saw while filming Mystic River in Massachusetts ten years ago. "I said, God, this guy, he's too handsome to be governor, but he does look like he could be president." Eastwood then proceeded to endorse Romney as the only person capable of implementing a "decent tax system" where "people are not pitted against one another as who's paying taxes and who isn't." This should put to rest any lingering conservative doubts over that seemingly pro-Obama ad Eastwood ran during Super Bowl half-time.

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Harry Reid Heard From Some Guy That Mitt Romney Didn’t Pay Taxes for Ten Years

Did Harry Reid steal the Lindbergh baby? We are not certain.

What's Mitt Romney hiding in his tax returns? Harry Reid finally figured it out:

Saying he had "no problem with somebody being really, really wealthy," Reid sat up in his chair a bit before stirring the pot further. A month or so ago, he said, a person who had invested with Bain Capital called his office.

"Harry, he didn't pay any taxes for 10 years," Reid recounted the person as saying.

"He didn't pay taxes for 10 years! Now, do I know that that's true? Well, I'm not certain," said Reid.

Oh, wait, did we say "figured it out"? We meant "heard an insane rumor from a guy who has seemingly no way of knowing anything about Mitt Romney's taxes." Awesome scoop, Harry Reid.

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Maybe This Is Why Mitt Romney Hates Rafalca

According to ABC News, Rafalca and his dumb horse ballet could potentially delay Mitt Romney's running-mate announcement. Rafalca is competing on August 2 and 3 and, if he does well, could compete again on August 8 and 9, thus potentially keeping Ann Romney overseas until then.

The candidate is unlikely to announce his running mate — unarguably one of the most important moments of his campaign — without his wife, whom he often refers to as his “sweetheart,” by his side.

Sure, that's probably true. Candidates do typically have their their wives with them when they introduce their running mates. Both couples hug each other and pose for photos so America can see how much they all like one another, and it's a nice, happy scene. Nevertheless, we highly doubt that anyone would care if Ann Romney isn't standing there the moment Mitt Romney announced his pick, unless he's picking Ann Romney.

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Mitt Romney Does Not Exactly Endorse a Preemptive Israeli Strike on Iran [Updated]

Romney at the Wailing Wall. (Photo by Lior Mizrahi - Pool/Getty Images)

Mitt Romney has arrived in Israel, where he immediately found himself in the middle of another overseas mini-controversy. This one wasn't totally his fault, though — it was his foreign policy adviser Dan Senor who, in previewing the candidate's speech in Jerusalem tonight, suggested Romney would support a preemptive strike by Israel on Iran's nuclear facilities. "If Israel has to take action on its own, in order to stop Iran from developing that capability," he said, "the governor would respect that decision." 

A short time later, the campaign tried to soften the statement, saying that it's Romney's "fervent hope that diplomatic and economic measures" will be enough to dissuade Iran, but it wasn't fast enough to keep the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, the Washington Post, USA Today, Reuters, the Guardian, the Financial Times, and others from running headlines saying that Romney supports a unilateral Israeli strike on Iran.

Update: Romney appeared on CBS's Face the Nation, where he said that Israel and America "come together in peace that want to see Iran be dissuaded from its nuclear folly." In what appeared to be a reference to this morning's confusion, he added, "Let me use my own words in that regard." While citing the fact that he was on foreign soil as a reason for not getting into policy specifics (current or proposed), he said he felt diplomatic tools should be used "with the greatest speed that we can muster." But, he said, "We do have other options, and we don't take those other options off the table."

He also delivered the speech previewed by Senor. It did seem different from the version described this morning, with no direct mention of military action against Iran, though he did again mention Israel's "right to defend itself." He also said preventing Iran from gaining nuclear capabilities "must be our highest national security priority": 

Romney also praised former Boston Consulting colleague and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (or Bibi, as he called him at the start of his remarks), with whom he met earlier today. The two seemed eager to play up their relationship -- Netanyahu referred to Romney as "a personal friend" and even complimented the candidate's apparent agelessness ("We’ve known each other for many decades, since you were a young man, but for some reason, you still look young.")

Sheldon Adelson also attended the speech, though the billionaire donor played it coy. When asked why he'd made the trip to Israel, he responded, "I came to get a shwarma sandwich, what do you mean?" Hopefully they'll serve those at tomorrow's much-discussed King David Hotel breakfast. 

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