Tenaj's Blog

Tue Aug 14, 2012 at 11:59 AM PDT

Where are the tax returns?

by scottiex2Follow

 A Diversion Without A Difference?

ANALYSIS:If Mitt Romney's decision to announce his vice presidential pick earlier than most other presidential candidates in modern political history was supposed to turn the campaign away from the personal (his record at Bain, his refusal to release more than two years of tax returns, etc.) and back onto the sagging economy, it hasn't worked out that way.

At Paul Ryan's homecoming at his alma mater, Miami University of Ohio, the big takeaway was the Republican running mate's offensive play against President Obama on Medicare -- an issue that wasn't out-front on the campaign trail until this week.

Ryan accused Obama of raiding "Medicare to pay for Obamacare, which leads to fewer services for current seniors, is an achievement."

"Do you think raiding Medicare to pay for Obamacare is an achievement?" Ryan asked. "Well, neither do I." But, as ABC's Shushannah Walshe points out: "What the House budget chairman didn't say, and what both Romney and Ryan want voters to believe, is that the Republican ticket opposes the Medicare changes, but that's not accurate. Ryan actually endorsed the same exact cuts in his signature budget plan, the same plan Romney has said he would sign if he became president."

In Ryan's first solo interview after becoming Romney's No. 2 this week with Fox News' Brit Hume, Ryan spent most of his time talking Medicare too.

"President Obama is actually damaging Medicare for current seniors," Ryan said. "It's irrefutable. And that's why I think this is a debate we want to have, and that's a debate we're going to win." And Ryan's ascension to the Republican ticket has only seemed to spur more detailed probing of Romney's own fiscal proposals. (Romney has also been forced to make clear this week that he is running on his own plan rather than Ryan's: "I am the one running for president," Romney said in an interview with CBS News yesterday).

Romney adviser Ed Gillespie did not do himself, or the Romney campaign, any favors yesterday when in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer he was unable to name the timeframe when Romney's plan would balance the federal budget.

"I should know it," Gillespie acknowledged. "I'm embarrassed on your air that I don't have that number at the top of my head. I didn't know we were going to talk about that today. I apologize." (Romney has set an 8-10 year timeline for balancing the budget if he were elected.)

What has gotten less play on the campaign trail this week -- and what has failed to break through over the din of the Medicare and budget chatter -- are bread-and-butter issues like the economy and gas prices. Those are the ones that voters say will drive their decision at the ballot box come November more than anything else.

A group called "Jews and Christians Together," which backed Rick Santorum in the Republican primary, is sending a memo to Republican National Convention delegates urging them not to vote for Mitt Romney at the convention, even if they're bound to him.

The nine-page memo casts Romney's nomination in the direst terms. A press release from the group reads:

"DUMP ROMNEY" contends that no delegates are actually "bound" by law or GOP
rules to vote for Romney and that, to win the White House and toss-up
Senate seats, delegates must exercise their right to "conscientiously
abstain" from Romney on the crucial first ballot, aiming for a
stronger ticket leader in subsequent convention voting rounds.

The core of a hard-hitting new 80,000 word book and incubating Tampa
insurgency, the entire memo can be read online free via Amazon Kindle
Cloud Reader using the Amazon.com search term "DUMP ROMNEY." "Were
frontrunners simply entitled to the nomination, a convention wouldn't
be necessary," the texts say, noting that Intrade predictive markets
gives Obama odds of about 60-40 over Romney and that New York Times
political analyst Nate Silver projects about 300 electoral votes for
Obama, rating Romney's current odds around 21%.

The memo doesn't specify who Romney should be replaced with.

A core of Ron Paul supporters had been the only organized Republican opposition to accepting Romney as the nominee, but Paul campaign manager Jesse Benton told BuzzFeed that the memo had nothing to do with them, calling it "disgusting and highly inappropriate."

Instead, it's a brainchild of Steve Baldwin, the former chief of the Council for National Policy, a low-profile, well-connected conservative group. Baldwin said the memo was sent out to 20,000 people in politics in media, as well as RNC delegates.

"We’re just saying that Romney has so many liabilities that will be exploited by Obama," Baldwin said in a phone interview. "I don’t have a problems with Mormons personally, but it is a liability issue" among evangelical voters, Baldwin said.

Baldwin said that the people who put together the memo are supporters of different primary candidates, including Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich (Baldwin is a Bachmann supporter).

Jews and Christians Together briefly made the news in March for putting out robocalls in Ohio on behalf of Rick Santorum, then still a presidential candidate. The call accused Romney of supporting "open homosexuality in the military, the appointment of homosexual judges, and the ENDA law, making it illegal to fire a man who wears a dress and high heels to work, even if he's your kid's teacher."

The memo is accompanied by an "expanded" 100-page version, available on Amazon. It devotes a lot of space to attacking Romney's Mormonism as "hostile to American monotheism and hetero-monogamy" (there's even a picture of Brigham Young in drag).