The Sorrows of (Not-so) Young Mitt

Mitt's campaign looks to actually be in trouble. There have been other surges by other candidates but Santorum's rise is different. When other candidates rose in the polls against him, Romney could outspend them by factors of ten and beat them down. He's doing it again against Santorum in Michigan. But, for a a couple reasons, it may be less effective this time around.

Charlie Pierce outlines the first one in this post. Romney has already tacked so far to the right to try to win the base that he can't attack Santorum where he's really weak, i.e., his crackpot conservative stances. As Charlie puts it, "Romney has sold so much of his political soul to the wingnut base of his party on these issues that his positions on them are now indistinguishable from Santorum's...."

The second reason, put forward here, is that Mitt can't seem to crack into small donors and his well-heeled donor base may actually be running low on cash, or at least the will to spend it on Mitt. Of course, those people will probably come back for the eventual GOP nominee but that might not matter to Mitt if his well runs dry now.

Mitt and Newt

With Mitt's definitive win in Florida yesterday, the blogs are talking endgame. Despite Newt's declarations of scorched earth politicking, most are asking how long he'll actually stay in the race. Robert Wright at the Atlantic predicts 10 more days.

I feel like I'm also seeing a lot more deeper looks at Mitt today. Frank Rich wrote a very interesting piece on how little people seem to know about who he really is. Meanwhile, Charlie Pierce, who's blog on Esquire I only recently discovered and absolutely love for it's profane cattiness, submitted a fierce post on Mitt and his money-backed Florida win (he actually compares him to TV's Dexter).

Of course, Mitt made his own headlines today by uttering this deliciously tone-deaf gaffe: "I'm not concerned about the very poor." You don't say?

Just How Bad Was Newt's Debate Performance Last Night?

Did any of you watch the GOP debate last night? I was on a plane coming back from Florida but honestly would have watched IU lose to Wisconsin if I'd been around a TV.

The coverage this morning is pretty universal in declaring last night's debate a complete debacle for Newt. Thus, it sounds like Mitt has recaptured momentum (Intrade has his odds of winning Florida at 90%). Given his big advantage in media spending, it seems like Newt's goose could be cooked.

Sunshine State Dispatch

Unsurprisingly, the GOP race is hitting the airwaves pretty hard here in Florida. My Floridian co-workers have told me that they are already sick of all the ads. That's unfortunate for them because they still have a week to go before the primary and the candidates are spending serious coin on ads. Mitt's apparently already bought $2 million in TV ads in the state and who knows how much his PACs have purchased. Newt's trying to catch up and one of his super PACs has reportedly purchased $6 million in ad time.

Sadly, my job has seriously cut into my local TV watching time so I don't yet have a real sense of who's dominating the airwaves. In fact, I've seen almost as many ads for David Maus Chevrolet ("Whatever It Takes!") but it does appear that Mitt has the upper hand for now. I think I've seen one pro-Newt ad while I've seen maybe half-a-dozen Romney ads with this one leading the way by far:



As you can see, Romney is trying to punch a hole in Newt's claims of being an outsider and for his ties to Freddie Mac. If I'm not wrong, those are the same attacks that seriously hurt Newt in Iowa. We'll see how effective they are this time around.

DNC Hitting Romney Hard on Taxes

Check this out. I know we're all concerned that this issue is peaking too soon but this is really strong stuff:

I Said to Keep This Kind of Thing Behind Closed Doors!

Via TPM, here's a fun little exchange between Romney and some puny 99-percenter who had the temerity to raise the issue of income inequality. Mitt's a good enough campaigner that I think he'll probably work to lock up this kind of reaction but this definitely echoes his frustrated "corporations are people" outburst. And, it just keeps piling on this issue. Here's hoping for plenty more of it.

Romney's Taxes

I'm sure that you all saw that Romney was challenged directly at that last GOP debate about his tax returns. It was all kinds of awesome. For details on the exchange, check out the Washington Monthly's post. In short, Romney stumbled his way to the following: 1) he admitted that his effective tax rate last year was about 15 percent, 2) that he will release his 2011 return in April when he files it, and 3) that while most of his income comes from investments and such piled up at Bain, he does get "speaker's fees from time to time, but not very much."

Let's look at those points individually. First, as you can see here, his effective tax rate is equal to that paid by people who make somewhere in the neighborhood of $50,000 to $74,000 a year. I'm not positive but I think most people in that bracket have fewer than Romney's 11 homes.

Second, the timing and depth of his promise is already coming under attack because it's so weak. Check out Matt Lauer's exchange with Chris Christie, who has been a Romney stalwart but seems to have found himself unable to defend this. Bottom line: Romney's promising to release less than other candidates have done and everyone sees through the fact that he's only willing to release them after the GOP primaries are done.

Finally, we come to Romney's "not very much" income gained through speaking fees. Conservatively, Romney made an estimated $362,000 in speaking fees in 2011. Not very much indeed.

This issue definitely has legs and Romney knows it (but not enough to talk about $362,000 without acknowledging that very few Americans make that much in a year). This is going to get better and better.

Frustrating Disconnect

A new Pew survey reports that Americans think the divide between rich and poor is the largest source of tension in the country today. Combine that with the fact that the leading GOP contender, Mittens, is himself stinking rich, largely because he ran a cut-throat vulture capitalism fund, openly advocates for huge tax breaks for the wealthy, and says crap like, "it's fine to talk about those things [income inequality] in quiet rooms" and you'd think that Obama would be cruising toward an easy November victory. Yet, Intrade currently gives the Prez a 51% chance of reelection. I trust Barack to run a highly effective campaign and to hammer away at Romney on economics but given the vast differences between their stances I just don't get why he's not already running away with it.

Et Tu, Bain Capital?

Mitt "I Like to Fire People" Romney has been telling anyone who'll listen that he helped create 100,000 new jobs during his tenure at Bain Capital. While it's easy to see how they arrived at that number (everyone loves a nice round number) it's hard to sift through all the B.S. to see exactly how the Romney campaign justifies it. At best, they are apparently not counting people laid off by Bain and are counting jobs added after Romney left the firm. The Wall Street Journal editorial staff, ever steadfast in its defense of the GOP, tried to justify that but according to this WaPo blog post, Bain Capital called that analysis hooey, saying that it:

“uses a fundamentally flawed methodology that unfairly assigns responsibility to us for many events that occurred in companies when we did not own or control them, and disregards dozens of successful venture capital investments.”

They appear to be defending themselves against charges that their responsible for bad things that happen to companies after they sell them but in doing so are calling Mitt's numbers into question. Ouch.

Can Romney Lock Up the Nomination Before He Sinks Himself?

By now you've surely all seen Romney's latest gaffe. If I were Romney, I'd like firing people, too. He's made a lot of money doing it. Of course, people are taking his quote out of context but even a generous reading of this shows Romney to be awfully out of touch.

Even so, is there enough time in the nomination calendar for Romney's foot-in-mouth disease to derail him? It will be interesting to see how things go down in New Hampshire today. Nate's latest projections have Romney winning by a good margin but his projected percentage has slipped into the 30s. I, for one, hope that he slips down into the mid-30s with Santorum and Gingrich showing strong enough to press on to SC and FL.

In any case, I guess the most important question is: should we as Obama backers hope that Romney wins and saves a couple of prime gaffes for the general?

Newt on the Attack

As promised, Newt is pursuing a scorched earth campaign against Romney in New Hampshire. One salvo is a 30-minute film and a pro-Newt PAC has produced. Here's the hard-hitting trailer: