Ann Romney convention speech: Mitt's wife tried to make us love him. Did she succeed? Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images Ann Romney was trying to accomplish several things in her speech Tuesday night at the GOP Convention, none of them easy. Mitt is doing fine with married women, but he trails woefully with unmarried female voters. So it wasn’t surprising when she spoke directly to women, moms in particular, saying that, “You are the best of America.” But when she told us she was there to “talk to you about love,” I got a little nervous. On one level, it makes sense: Every candidate’s wife is there to smooth out his rough edges, to balance out her husband’s weaknesses. She wasn’t just trying to humanize her husband, she was trying to make us love him. Ann did get specific when she mentioned some of Mitt’s accomplishments as governor. Had she just promised us that “This man will lift up America!”
How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich | Politics News The nation is still recovering from a crushing recession that sent unemployment hovering above nine percent for two straight years. The president, mindful of soaring deficits, is pushing bold action to shore up the nation's balance sheet. Cloaking himself in the language of class warfare, he calls on a hostile Congress to end wasteful tax breaks for the rich. "We're going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share," he thunders to a crowd in Georgia. Such tax loopholes, he adds, "sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary – and that's crazy." Preacherlike, the president draws the crowd into a call-and-response. The crowd, sounding every bit like the protesters from Occupy Wall Street, roars back: "MORE!" The year was 1985. Today's Republican Party may revere Reagan as the patron saint of low taxation. Then something strange happened.
Mitt Romney’s Tax Mysteries: A Reading Guide Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney looks on as his running mate Paul Ryan speaks during a campaign rally in Powell, Ohio, on Aug. 25, 2012. We lay out what we know and don't know about Romney's tax situation. (Jewel Samad/AFP/GettyImages) So what do we know about how he avoided that extra dollar? What's Been Disclosed? Romney has released [6] his 2010 tax return, and an estimate of his 2011 return. Mitt Romney said recently that he has paid “at least 13 percent [9]” in federal income taxes each year, but the campaign won't go into more detail (for a closer look at his 13.9 percent rate in 2010, see our previous reading guide [6]). Romney's Bain Career Buyout Profits Keep Flowing to Romney [12], New York Times, December 2011 The New York Times laid out how Romney's generous retirement deal let him keep investing in new Bain funds for 10 years after he left the company in 1999. Romney's Tax Rate Overseas Accounting Romney's IRA's off-shore investments: helping his tax bill?
Why the GOP Should Fear a Romney Presidency - Jack M. Balkin At best, he would be hamstrung by the conflicting demands of a radicalized party. At worst, he would wreck the Reagan coalition. Brian Snyder/Reuters What kind of president would Mitt Romney be? Reconstruction or Disjunction? When new presidents take office, they face not only the country's existing domestic and international problems but also the political regime created by their predecessors. Skowronek's key insight is that a president's ability to establish his political legitimacy depends on where he sits in "political time": Is he allied with the dominant regime or opposed to it, and is the regime itself powerful or in decline? For example, Lyndon Johnson was allied with the Democrats' New Deal regime, while Richard Nixon -- the second Republican elected after FDR -- was opposed to it. A president who has the good luck to run in opposition to a political regime that is falling apart is in the best possible position politically. The Last of the Reaganites Romney's Impossible Task
Ann Romney: Mitt ‘makes me laugh’ By Agence France-PresseWednesday, August 29, 2012 4:25 EDT Republicans crowned Mitt Romney their presidential nominee as his wife Ann sold their wholesome family and sweetheart love story to US voters in a prime-time convention speech. Romney took to the stage at the packed convention center in Tampa, Florida to proffer a polite thank you kiss as part of a carefully choreographed attempt to reintroduce the sometimes awkward candidate as a loving family man. The 65-year-old multi-millionaire businessman will formally take up the nomination with his all-important acceptance speech on Thursday, the climax of three days of rousing convention addresses by party grandees and rising stars. Romney lies neck-and-neck with Democratic President Barack Obama in national polls ahead of a November election that should be the challenger’s for the taking, given the sour economy and stubbornly high unemployment. “This man will not let us down. “You can trust Mitt… He loves America. Agence France-Presse
Washington's Deficit Obsession Is Insane, Chart Indisputably Proves The unemployment rate is too damn high, and all that America's politicians can talk about is the budget deficit. If only they knew that we can take care of both of them at once. Friday's unemployment report, showing joblessness still stubbornly high, makes the absolute insanity of Washington's deficit obsession even plainer. In fact, unemployment and deficits are very much related, or at least correlated, as you can see from this chart, which shows the budget deficit as a percentage of GDP (represented by the green line) vs. the unemployment rate (blue line), going back for the past 65 years. (h/t Joe Weisenthal at Business Insider) Notice anything? Why could this be? Meantime, a lot of the evil government spending that makes the ghost of Calvin Coolidge cry is designed to help carry people through prolonged unemployment and also maybe find new jobs. Both are still way too high.
Mitt Romney for President of the United States of America in 2012: Issues The foundations of our nation's strength are a love of liberty and a pioneering spirit of innovation and creativity. These values - inherited from our Founders and embodied by all who came to our shores seeking opportunity - have made the United States the most powerful nation in the history of the world. But today, under President Obama's leadership, Washington is smothering these values at home and sapping our influence abroad. The federal government has grown too large. And President Obama has presided over one of the worst economies in modern history - millions of jobs have been lost, record numbers of Americans are in danger of losing their homes, and personal bankruptcies have skyrocketed. He has failed the American people. Mitt Romney believes in America. Afghanistan & Pakistan Enjoying the sanctuary of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, al Qaeda set in motion the conspiracy that killed so many Americans on September 11, 2001. Obama's Failure Mitt's Plan China & East Asia Iran
How the Oligarchs Took America This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website. There is a war underway. I'm not talking about Washington's bloody misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, but a war within our own borders. It's a war fought on the airwaves, on television and radio and over the Internet, a war of words and images, of half-truth, innuendo, and raging lies. I'm talking about a political war, pitting liberals against conservatives, Democrats against Republicans. The right wing won the opening battle. Knocked out of their complacency, no longer basking in the glow of Barack Obama's 2008 victory, wealthy Democrats are now plotting their response. Even the Obama administration, which shunned outside groups in 2008, has opened the door to a covert spending war. The endgame here, of course, is non-stop war. This is what nowadays passes for the heart and soul of American democracy. Not surprisingly, political power has a way of following wealth. "Think of the American economy as a large apartment block.