Mitt Romney

Tax Avoidance Questions Continue To Haunt Romney

Brian Beutler | February 13, 2012, 5:45AM

Reporters covering the GOP primary horse race may have moved on, but a key question continues to dog Mitt Romney's presidential campaign -- one that will loom large if he wins his party's nomination. Has he avoided U.S. taxes by investing a fortune offshore?

At a town hall event in Maine on Friday, an antagonistic questioner asked Romney, "Do you think it's patriotic of you to stash your money away in the Cayman Islands?"

In response, Romney correctly noted that money U.S. taxpayers invest offshore is largely taxed just as it would be if they invested it in the states. But he once again denied avoiding any U.S. taxes by investing offshore -- a claim tax experts openly doubt.

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Mitt Romney

Dems Slam Romney For Inconsistencies On Birth Control

Sahil Kapur | February 9, 2012, 5:17PM

In his 2006 Massachusetts health care law, Mitt Romney embraced a virtually identical contraception coverage mandate as President Obama recently has, experts say, and as a result expanded access to birth control for hundreds of thousands of women. And Democrats really want you to know that.

"They are practically mirror images or each other," John McDonough, a professor of public health at Harvard, said on a conference call organized by the Democratic National Committee. "They completely reflect each other."

Romney has embraced the shocked, shocked tone of leading Republicans on this issue in recent days, and Democrats have acted swiftly to flag up inconsistencies in his position.

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Mitt Romney

Why Florida Was A Dangerous Test Case For Romney's General Election Prospects

Brian Beutler | February 2, 2012, 5:41AM

Mitt Romney

The fight for Florida's fifty delegates was more than just a key test for the four remaining Republican presidential hopefuls. It also took the GOP's three year experiment with far-right politics into a more appropriate laboratory -- a state where the voters didn't reflect the party's base as neatly as they did in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.

And though Mitt Romney trampled his opponents and solidified his status as the nominee-in-waiting, Florida was also a wake-up call. To win so resoundingly, Romney had to inch away from conservative movement dogma for the first time since he began his candidacy.

It wasn't easy.

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Mitt Romney

Romney Team Silent On Key Offshore Tax Avoidance Question

Brian Beutler | February 1, 2012, 5:37AM

Mitt Romney

Just over a week ago, Mitt Romney's top campaign and financial aides held an on-the-record press call to walk reporters through the former governor's 2010 tax return.

The briefing cleared up several questions, but left others unanswered -- including one from TPM that will either exculpate Romney from allegations that he's used investments in offshore entities to avoid U.S. taxes, or reveal that his campaign has not fully addressed those allegations.

On the call, Romney's trustee pledged get back to us with this information. But despite multiple inquiries in the days since the conference call, the Romney camp has not set the record straight one way or another.

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Mitt Romney

CHART: How Romney's Tax Rate Stacks Up To Recent Presidential Candidates'

Brian Beutler | January 30, 2012, 5:27AM

Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann.

When Mitt Romney tries to avoid scrutiny for his exceptionally low effective tax rate by noting that, in absolute terms, he's paying "a lot" in taxes, he won't be fooling most of his political colleagues. It takes a special kind of affluence to reduce one's tax burden so dramatically. And despite their significant wealth most recent Presidential candidates have paid significantly more in taxes as a percentage of their incomes in the year (or two) before their campaign.

The exception is John Kerry. Though Kerry himself had a modest income (for a politician) his wife, Teresa Heinz, comes from great wealth and, like Romney, made millions in investment income in 2003 -- the year she and he both released their tax returns. Together, their effective tax rate was a bit lower than Mitt and Ann Romney paid in 2010.

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Carl Levin

Top Dem Offshoring Expert Smells Something Fishy In Romney's Tax Code

Brian Beutler | January 26, 2012, 11:05AM

Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) says Mitt Romney will have to make his pre-2010 tax returns available. That may sound like a predictable demand from a partisan Democrat. But it's more than that.

Levin may well know more about tax avoidance strategies than anybody in Congress. In his capacity as the Democrats' top investigator he's has made extensive inquiries into the techniques businesses and individuals use, including overseas havens, to hide their money from the IRS. And what Romney's revealed so far troubles him.

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Taxes

Senate Democrats Plan To Put Republicans On The Wrong Side Of The Middle Class

Brian Beutler | January 25, 2012, 3:11PM

Senate Democrats are preparing an aggressive legislative agenda to complement the vision President Obama outlined in his State of the Union Address. The goal is to test the idea that the public supports an agenda of aggressive federal action on behalf of the middle class, and that Republicans are locked in a pattern of reactionary opposition, even to popular policies.

The push is premised on the notion that the country has turned the corner on the fights over deficits and the size of government, and that keeping issues of equity and opportunity for the middle class at the center of the national debate will redound to Democrats' political benefit, either by breaking the GOP or by putting them on the wrong side of public opinion.

But in an extremely consequential election year, when consensus becomes an endangered species on Capitol Hill, it will take a groundswell of political pressure to force either party to work with the other on a substantive agenda. So expect the Dems to hawk these issues relentlessly.

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Mitt Romney

Three Key Questions Raised By Romney's Tax Revelations

Brian Beutler | January 25, 2012, 5:44AM

Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney's campaign has tried desperately to put a lid back on the can of worms that burst open weeks ago when the one-time GOP presidential front runner declined to release any of his tax returns.

But by actually releasing his 2010 return, and an estimation of his 2011 return, camp Romney has provided reporters with some, but not all, of the answers they're looking for as they try to paint a complete picture of the finances of one of the wealthiest candidates for President in U.S. history.

Romney's revelations confirm that his effective tax rates in the past couple years have been as low or lower than those of workers with truly modest means. They also confirm that he's availed himself of truly complex tax strategies designed to boil his liability down to the lowest level allowed by the country's heavily rigged, labyrinthine tax code. And we know, too, that these are things Romney didn't want voters to know -- at least not yet.

But they raise a series of new questions that will likely require Romney to disclose several years' worth of additional tax returns if he wants to answer them satisfactorily. Here are three big ones that touch generally on the theme of Romney's efforts to reduce his tax burden by taking advantage of areas of the law that simply aren't available to most people.

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State Of The Union

State Of The Union: Obama's Point-By-Point Romney Refutation

Brian Beutler | January 24, 2012, 10:55PM

President Barack Obama

President Obama's State of the Union address was premised on two political bets: that there's a broad national appetite, spanning conservative and liberal ideologies, for certain populist reforms; and that Republicans in Congress are too deeply committed to opposing his agenda to back those reforms along side him.

His speech was peppered with the sorts of proposals that play well across the country. But after executing a three year plan of partisan opposition to his full agenda, Republicans can't possibly support them -- and that puts them on the steep side of an election Obama is framing while Republican presidential hopefuls tear each other down.

It was also sharp-elbowed. It read in a way as a series of critiques of the GOP's most prominent rhetorical attacks on Democratic priorities, and as a piecemeal rebuttal of the talking points his most likely general election opponent Mitt Romney has levied against him in a bid to shore up support among Republican base voters.

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Mitt Romney

Romney Camp Revelations Leave Key Tax Questions Unanswered

Brian Beutler | January 24, 2012, 10:31AM

Mitt Romney

On a conference call with the media Tuesday morning several of Mitt Romney's political and financial aides tried to suck the life out of the undying story of Romney's tax liability, walking reporters through hundreds of pages of his family's tax returns.

As he acknowledged several days ago, Romney pays a very low effective tax rate given his enormous income and extraordinary wealth. His effective rate is about the same as that of a wage earner making $40,000 a year, barely hanging on in the broader middle class.

For the most part, Romney's aides deftly addressed lingering controversies about his returns. Many of these stem from the complicated nature of the strategies they use to keep his liability down, all of which constitute very new terrain for political reporters. But a couple of things stuck out.

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Mitt Romney

Top Tea Partiers Bummed About Both Mitt And Newt

Sahil Kapur | January 23, 2012, 11:41AM

Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich

Tea party conservatives are fearful that Mitt Romney could harm the Republican Party brand that the movement has sought to recast post-George W. Bush, a top FreedomWorks staffer tells TPM. He concedes that the reason conservatives haven't rallied behind one of his opponents is because they see no clear right-wing alternative who's also electable.

"If you nominate a Romney who is sort of a moderate and doesn't seem to believe in anything -- he's not authentic -- that can do a lot of damage to the brand of the Republican Party, which we are trying to rehabilitate," said Brendan Steinhauser, the director of federal and state campaigns of FreedomWorks, the 1.5 million member Dick Armey-led group that has played a key role in shifting the Republican Party to the right.

"If he gets nominated he could be like George W. Bush or John McCain and disappoint voters who are starting to warm to Republicans," Steinhauser told TPM.

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Mitt Romney

Bain & Co. Email: We Love Mitt -- But Don't Confuse Us With That Other Bain

Brian Beutler | January 20, 2012, 2:16PM

An email from the consulting firm Bain & Company to recent hires suggests that the presidential campaign of its alum Mitt Romney is creating headaches for the firm, particularly as it attempts to differentiate itself from Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney helped found, which has received bad publicity in recent weeks.

The email, obtained by TPM, was sent in recent days by Graham Rose, a Bain partner in its Boston office, to recent hires from the Wharton School of Business. Rose, himself a Wharton alum, oversees recruiting for Bain at Wharton. A company press release from 2008 identifies him working in the consulting firm's private equity and industrial goods and services practices.

The email reviews Romney's history with the two companies, explains how the two companies are distinct entities, and expresses pride in Romney's accomplishments while noting that the company does not play an active role in partisan politics.

Q. Is the confusion between Bain & Company and Bain Capital causing any issues?

A. We have to explain more frequently the distinction between the firms. Our clients know who we are and what we do. They know that we develop practical insights for them to act on, and share a passion for their results. Our employees know and embody our values and commitment. They've voted us Consulting magazine's Best Firm to Work For in the management consulting industry nine years in a row. Glassdoor just ranked us Best firm to work for in any industry, and Working Mother magazine named us to the list of 100 best companies for working mothers. Further, we will continue to monitor our brand and correct any inaccuracies.

Rose did not immediately respond to a request for comment from TPM.

You can read the partially redacted email, which contains a mix of talking points an company policies, below.

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Mitt Romney

Finding The Real Deal On Romney's Offshore Investments

Brian Beutler | January 19, 2012, 2:59PM

Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann.

On Tuesday, Mitt Romney finally acknowledged what we've long suspected: that, despite earning millions of dollars a year, his tax rate is approximately 15 percent -- the same as it would be if he were a teacher earning $50,000 a year.

The disclosure touched off a flurry of news stories -- some about the rigged nature of the U.S. tax code, most about how this fact would play in the primary and general elections. Then on Wednesday ABC News broke another story. Romney, it turns out, has a lot of money invested in offshore funds -- the sort of funds you used to hear about years ago when wealthy people, foreign investors, private pensions and others would invest and shelter their money.

The timing of the ABC story couldn't have been better for those hoping to create a hazy sense that Romney's some kind of tax avoider. But they're largely two different things.

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Barack Obama

Why A President Romney Would Find It Hard To Repeal 'Obamacare'

Brian Beutler | January 18, 2012, 5:27AM

Mitt Romney

Should he win the nomination and the presidency, then on inauguration day in 2013, after all the pageantry has subsided, Mitt Romney will face a key test: does he take aggressive action to roll back Obamacare as he and every other GOP contender has promised? Or will he accede to pragmatic realities and seek detente with Democrats on the issue that has most divided the parties over the past three years?

The amount of money, strategizing, myth-making, and political capital that Republicans have already thrown at the health care law will make it very difficult for Romney or any GOP President not to enter office with guns blazing. But many of the would-be policy makers who have made dismantling the law their top priority haven't given any real thought to how, mechanically, to unwind it. A closer look reveals that chipping away at Obamacare, or even repealing it altogether will be a daunting challenge, and even if successful will leave the Republican party holding the bag politically for the policy muddle they will create in the process.

"It would be a mess," said Donald Berwick, who led the law's implementation last year as Obama's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services director. "If I was given the assignment of unwinding the law, I wouldn't know how to do that. I would thoroughly disagree with it but it would be technically very difficult."

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Income Inequality

CHARTS: What Romney Doesn't Want You Talking About -- Except In 'Quiet Rooms'

Brian Beutler | January 13, 2012, 5:27AM

Mitt Romney

Too bad for Mitt Romney. Turns out income inequality -- that thing he claims has no place in our political debate, or anywhere outside of "quiet rooms" -- will be a central theme of President Obama's re-election message. We know this because one of his top economic advisers essentially claimed as much in a public address at a top DC think tank on Thursday morning.

And the data he brought to the table suggests Democrats will have an easy time making their case.

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Budget

CHART: A Hidden Source Of Budget Deficits

Brian Beutler | January 12, 2012, 12:26PM

Dmitry Rukhlenko / Shutterstock

Before Warren Buffett and Mitt Romney enter a bidding war over who will volunteer more of their millions to reduce the deficit, the government could recoup many billions of dollars every year if Congress just made it easier for the Treasury to collect what it's already owed by law.

Meet the tax gap -- the difference between taxes owed and taxes paid.

Via the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the IRS has found that in 2006, taxpayers shorted the government by about $385 billion -- and an additional $65 billion was paid late. Back then, the tax gap was bigger than the annual budget deficit. With the economy still suffering, that's likely not true today. But closing it even partially would take substantial pressure off of strained federal programs, which have been under constant attack by the GOP for over a year.

As you can see, the tax gap is on the order of the government's biggest expenditure categories, and dwarfs the voluntary contributions Republicans suggest wealthy liberals like Buffett should volunteer to the Treasury.

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Mitt Romney

Romney's Claim To Be A Job Creator Hits The Skids

Brian Beutler | January 6, 2012, 5:30AM

Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney's effort to disguise one of his biggest political liabilities has hit a major snag -- one that may force him to abandon his most effective but misleading talking points about his work in the private sector..

Romney makes two different, but implicitly entwined claims: That while working in corporate management he created over 100,000 jobs and that -- by comparison -- Obama his presided over millions of job losses.

This is a false juxtaposition, based on two false claims. And so far, precious few reporters have pressed Romney or his campaign about it. But in the past several days, the veneer of plausibility has begun to peel leaving the candidate highly exposed to backlash from the press.

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Mitt Romney

CHART: Romney Plan Raises Taxes On Lower-Middle Class, Cuts Taxes On Wealthy

Brian Beutler | January 5, 2012, 3:31PM

Mitt Romney's tax plan is more complex than those of his current and erstwhile primary competitors. But in broad effect it accomplishes the conservative goal of dramatically lowering taxes on the wealthy at the expense of the lower and middle classes.

The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center crunched the numbers -- part of a series of analyses the group has done of the GOP candidates' tax proposals -- and found that the plan constitutes a major tax cut for wealthy Americans. But compared to today's rates, Romney proposes effective tax increases for people making less than $40,000.

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Mitt Romney

Here's What Romney's Unreleased Tax Returns Almost Certainly Hide

Brian Beutler | January 5, 2012, 5:32AM

Mitt Romney still says he's unlikely to publicly release his tax information, even if he clinches the Republican presidential nomination, and Democrats have a pretty good idea why.

Romney is a privileged poster child for the "Buffett Rule" -- President Obama's principle that the tax code should make it impossible for a person of great wealth to pay a lower share of their income in taxes than ordinary people. The DNC knows it, policy wonks know it, Romney certainly knows it. But the reasons why are technical and illustrate just how different Romney is from the vast majority of Americans who will cast votes for him -- in either the GOP primary or the general election.

One tax expert told TPM of "fairly sophisticated tax strategies" that would be "not available to ordinary tax payers." A technique that puts you in a position that's "like having an unlimited 401k account" sounds very attractive. But maybe not if you're running for office, for Pete's sake.

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2012

Why The Policy Battles Of 2011 Won't Be Settled Until After The 2012 Elections

Brian Beutler | December 29, 2011, 2:25PM

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and President Barack Obama

When President Obama and the GOP's primary contenders talk up the 2012 election as a choice for voters between two visions for the country's future, it's only about half hyperbole.

We'll see a prelude of this fact in the months between now and November both on the campaign trail and on Capitol Hill as politicians club each other with their past votes and statements on taxes, Medicare, Social Security, and other potent issues. But it's not just rhetoric.

To an unappreciated extent, the legislative whipsawing in 2011 has set the country and the parties up for a major reckoning about the role and size of government at the end of next year. And the outcome of the election will help determine which side of the argument wins.

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Barack Obama

More Backlash For Wyden Than For Ryan On Controversial Medicare Plan

Brian Beutler | December 15, 2011, 3:35PM

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)

Sen. Ron Wyden wants to assure his colleagues he hasn't undermined them politically. In a head-turning move, Wyden announced Wednesday that he's teamed up with House GOP budget chair Paul Ryan on a policy framework to partially privatize Medicare -- a move that stunned his fellow Democrats.

Setting aside the policy -- which would in essence turn Medicare into ObamaCare with a robust public option -- the very existence of the plan has deep implications for the 2012 elections, most of them bad for his own party.

Speaking to reporters Thursday after an event with Ryan, Wyden said the political ramifications are overblown.

"Nobody ducks their past votes and their previous statements," Wyden said. "That's just a given."

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The Daily Show

Jon Stewart: Obama Has Bigger Balls Than Romney

David Taintor | December 15, 2011, 10:57AM

Jon Stewart

Who has bigger "balls," Jon Stewart asked Wednesday: Mitt Romney or Barack Obama?

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Medicare

The Bipartisan Political Alliance That Will Turn The Fight Over Medicare On Its Head

Brian Beutler and Benjy Sarlin | December 14, 2011, 9:08PM

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)

An unholy, unexpected political marriage between a Democratic senator and a House Republican firebrand will have implications beyond Capitol Hill -- and could conceivably alter both the political tenor of the 2012 elections and the long-term policy fight over the future of Medicare.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) is teaming up with Paul Ryan, the House's top budget guy and the author of the GOP's controversial budget which proposes phasing out traditional Medicare and replacing it with a private plan. The two announced via The Washington Post that they'll be teaming up on a different version of that Medicare plan -- one that closely mimics plans offered by leading GOP presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, and a proposal authored by former Sen. Pete Domenici and former Clinton budget director Alice Rivlin, which loomed large in the Super Committee's failed negotiations.

The move makes Wyden the first elected Democrat to endorse creating a premium-support system to compete with traditional fee-for-service Medicare, and for Ryan represents a de facto admission that his own plan was too radical to ever gain bipartisan support. That's bound to affect how congressional and presidential candidates approach the issue, which will feature prominently in next year's elections. But it raises a number of other questions, both about the merits of the policy and of the political calculus behind it.

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Mitt Romney

THE HORROR: Top Conservative Slams Romney For Taking Cues From 'Data'

Brian Beutler | October 28, 2011, 12:43PM

Presidential Candidate And Former Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA)

No matter how obvious it seems to outsiders that Mitt Romney's the GOP's most electable potential challenger to Barack Obama, conservatives don't like him. There are a lot of reasons for that. Of course, there's the conviction issue (the impression that he lacks it) and the track record issue (liberal Republican governor of bright blue Massachusetts) but the right's problems with him go beyond the ways in which they feel he's crossed them. Turns out Romney's got an intelligence problem.

Take George Will, a conservative columnist for the Washington Post, part of whose Sunday column was leaked to Politico.

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Barack Obama

White House To GOP Critics On Libya: We Were Right

Susan Crabtree | October 20, 2011, 7:25PM

The White House is brushing aside criticism -- from the GOP presidential field and others -- that Obama doesn't deserve credit for the death of ousted Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi.

In a lengthy press briefing after President Obama heralded Qaddafi's death and publicly congratulated the Libyan people for winning their revolution, White House spokesman Jay Carney was asked whether the President felt validated by Qaddafi's killing and the conclusion of the Libyan civil war.

"Well, I think I've made clear that we believe that the President made the right decisions to work with our allies, to work with NATO, to work with the United Nations, not to do something on the cheap but because it was the right policy answer to the situation that presented itself, taking a long-term view about what outcome do you want in Libya," Carney said.

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Mitt Romney

Romney Tweaks The Ryan Budget: Cut Social Security Benefits, Privatize Medicare (VIDEO)

Brian Beutler | October 19, 2011, 11:41AM

Former Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)

Mitt Romney caught a lot of heat Tuesday for his comments about foreclosures. But in the same interview with the Las Vegas Review Journal, he outlined a plan for the country's future that would please Paul Ryan, and conservatives hell bent on rolling back the social safety net.

Without noting that Social Security has been in good shape for about 20 years, Romney proposed making it solvent in the long term through a mix of benefit cuts, taking the option of imposing payroll taxes on higher-income earners off the table completely.

"Arithmetically, there are probably three ways of making Social Security permanently solvent," Romney said. "One would be simply raising taxes. I don't favor that one. Number two would be to increase the retirement age. Number three would be to have a little slower growth in benefits for higher income beneficiaries.... Some combination of those last two is the place we can go in my opinion to solve Social Security for future retirees."

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Rick Scott

Unpopular Gov. Rick Scott Wants To 'Make Sure Florida Is The Model For The Country' (VIDEO)

David Taintor | September 14, 2011, 12:08PM

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) on MSNBC's Morning 9/14/11

Highly unpopular Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) sat down with the folks of Morning Joe on Wednesday to discuss the Republican presidential candidates' chances in Florida as well as some of his state's own issues.

Asked how Mitt Romney and Rick Perry would do in Florida, Scott said he thinks either candidate could win in a general election. And Scott doesn't think Perry will be in much trouble for calling Social Security a "monstrous lie" and a "ponzi scheme."

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Mitt Romney

Romney Accuses 'Labor Stooges' At NLRB Of Political Payback

Susan Crabtree | September 12, 2011, 3:42PM

GOP Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney joined the GOP's latest anti-union salvo -- reining in the National Labor Relations Board -- at an event in South Carolina Monday.

Romney, and his latest high-profile supporter Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, toured Boeing's new manufacturing plant in North Charleston. The NLRB is suing Boeing for moving an operation to South Carolina, a right-to-work state, from Washington state after unions protested there.

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2012

Gallup and ABC/WaPo: GOP Voters Like Perry, But Haven't Dumped Romney Yet

Kyle Leighton | September 6, 2011, 6:15PM

Fmr. Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) and Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX)

Texas Gov. Rick Perry might be the leader in the race for the GOP Presidential race at the moment, but the previous frontrunner isn't too shabby in the eyes of Republican primary voters either. New data from Gallup and an ABC/Washington Post survey both show that the candidates enjoy high favorability ratings among party faithful.

In the Gallup poll Perry is viewed favorably by 73 percent of GOP primary voters, while Romney sits at 71. Even though Perry has moved ahead of Romney in national polls, Romney still occasionally outpolls President Obama in match-ups, and has also been shown in some surveys to be the candidate that voters think could do better on the economy than the President. The advantage within the numbers for Perry is that for the moment, he's rated "strongly favorable" by fifteen points more than Romney, meaning his support is more intense.

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Mitt Romney

Chart Of The Day: Team Romney Says 'Obama Recovery' Graph Is Perfectly Clear

Evan McMorris-Santoro | September 6, 2011, 4:57PM

GOP Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney (MA)

Buried in Mitt Romney's 160-page jobs plan announced Tuesday is a chart of recent recessions and their subsequent recoveries that briefly made the rounds on Twitter -- mostly pushed by progressives who found the image to be shockingly misleading.

Not so, says the Romney campaign -- the chart is perfectly clear. All you have to do is look.

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Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney Calls Obama Agenda 'A Payphone Strategy In A Smartphone World'

Benjy Sarlin | September 6, 2011, 3:44PM

GOP Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney (MA)

Mitt Romney employed an elaborate telecommunications metaphor in his economic speech on Tuesday to criticize President Obama.

He began his speech by waving his own touchscreen phone in the air after waxing nostalgic about the days when you used to put a quarter in a payphone to make calls from the airport. Later, he returned to the theme in a major way.

"I mentioned a moment ago that we're now using smartphones, not payphones," he said. "President Obama's strategy is a payphone strategy and we're in a smartphone world. What he's doing is taking quarters and stuffing them into the payphone and he can't figure out why it isn't working anymore. It's not connected, Mr. President! Your payphone strategy does not work in a smartphone world."

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Mitt Romney

Romney's Claim That Regulations Hurt The Economy To The Tune Of $1.75 Trillion Per Year Is Based On A Flawed Study

Benjy Sarlin | September 6, 2011, 2:01PM

GOP Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney (R-MA)

According to Mitt Romney's USA Today op-ed this morning, "the federal government has estimated the price tag for its regulations at $1.75 trillion." It's an eye-popping number that's been making the rounds among conservative publications for awhile now, but it's based on a flawed study.

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Mitt Romney

Romney Previews Big Economy Speech In USA Today Op-ed

Benjy Sarlin | September 6, 2011, 10:09AM

Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney is set to deliver a detailed address on how he plans to turn around the economy this afternoon, but he offered up a preview in USA Today this morning.

"Tomorrow, I will introduce a plan consisting of 59 specific proposals -- including 10 concrete actions I will take on my first day in office -- to turn around America's economy," Romney wrote. "Each proposal is rooted in the conservative premise that government itself cannot create jobs. At best, government can provide a framework in which economic growth can occur. All too often, however, government gets in the way. The past three years of unparalleled government expansion have retaught that lesson all too well."

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Polls

Speech Week: Obama, Romney Battle For The High Ground On Jobs

Kyle Leighton | September 6, 2011, 6:15AM

President Barack Obama and former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA)

Congress is back from recess this week, and as TPM has pointed out, the 2012 election starts Thursday. The President will be delivering his highly anticipated jobs speech then, after former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney lays out his plan on Tuesday. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, ahead in the polls for the GOP presidential nomination, has been talking about his record as a job creator at home, but hasn't been particularly specific about what he would do as president.

As voters tune back in again as fall approaches, there will be effectively one question on their minds: who can revive the economy? It remains the most important issue, and unless something drastically changes, it will be the issue that the 2012 election hinges on. So when it comes to the economy, who's on the best ground in prelude to this weeks' big events?

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Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney Swears He's Jim DeMint's Kind Of Guy

Evan McMorris-Santoro | September 5, 2011, 7:26PM

GOP Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney (MA)

It was quite a performance. But was it enough?

Mitt Romney ended his tour through Tea Party country on Monday with a late-scheduled slot at Sen. Jim DeMint's (R-SC) Palmetto Freedom Forum. DeMint backed Romney's run for the White House in 2008, but has not extended him much love this time around.

As he did at a New Hampshire tea party rally over the weekend, Romney laid out his case that the haters on the right are wrong and, truly, the former governor of Massachusetts is just the man the angry wing of the GOP is looking for.

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Polls

And Another One: New Poll Shows Perry Leads Nevada Too

Kyle Leighton | September 2, 2011, 1:30PM

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R)

Tex. Gov. Rick Perry has taken the lead nationally, but GOP voters are really starting to catch on with his campaign in key primary states as well. Recently, Perry's stormed to the front in South Carolina and Iowa in multiple surveys, and a Republican poll out Friday shows him at the top in another early state in the GOP nomination process: Nevada.

A Magellan Strategies poll out Friday showed that Perry is the first choice of 29 percent of Neveada GOP caucus-goers, followed by former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney at 24 percent. The survey shows pretty much a two way race: the rest of the field is in single digits, and former contender Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is down to fourth with 6 percent, behind businessman Herman Cain's 7.

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Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney Tries To Make August Job Numbers Rick Perry's Problem

Evan McMorris-Santoro | September 2, 2011, 9:12AM

GOP Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney (R-MA)

It's clear to Mitt Romney what Americans should do about the terrible August job numbers released Friday.

"In order to change the direction of this country, we need to change presidents," Romney said in a statement Friday. President Obama "has failed," he said, and it's time for the country to move on from hope and change.

But it's also clear to Romney what Republican primary voters should do in the wake of the ugly jobs report: go against what appears to be their nature and pick someone other than Rick Perry to be their presidential nominee next year.

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2012

Poll: GOP Insiders Overwhelmingly Favor Romney

Benjy Sarlin | September 1, 2011, 1:09PM

GOP Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney (R-MA)

Republican "insiders" are wary of Rick Perry's ability to win, according to a survey by National Journal, picking Mitt Romney by a wide margin as the more electable candidate.

The poll, which regularly checks in with a pool of Republican and Democratic strategists, finds both parties in agreement that Romney is the superior candidate. Republicans think the GOP would be better off nominating him by a 69% to 31% margin. That number is even higher among Democratic insiders, 83% of whom see Romney as the better bet versus 17% for Perry.

Unnamed insiders from both parties cited questions about Perry's ability to win over independents given his resume as a hardline conservative, red-state governor. "Perry can fire up the base, but this election will be won in the middle, not on the fringes," one Republican said.

Given his recent appeals to the Tea Party, winning a poll of veteran Republican politicos may not be the most exciting achievement for Romney. And given that Perry is amassing a solid lead in national polls and surging in a number of early primary and caucus states, it may not be the most representative slice of GOP opinion either. A recent PPP poll of South Carolina, for example, showed Perry cleaning up not only with the conservative, Tea Party wing of the GOP, but with more moderate Republicans that should in theory be Romney's base.

Mitt Romney

Tea Partiers To Protest Mitt Romney's Attempted Embrace Of Them

Evan McMorris-Santoro | August 31, 2011, 9:28AM

GOP Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney (R-MA)

Mitt Romney may be trying to make new friends with the tea party, but it seems that some tea partiers are not interested in giving him a friendly welcome.

Freedomworks, which has made standing in the way of Romney's presidential ambitions a goal, will protest Romney's appearance at a Tea Party Express event in New Hampshire this weekend, according to Politico.

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Polls

Quinnipiac: Obama Matchups With Romney, Perry In A Dead Heat

Kyle Leighton | August 31, 2011, 7:40AM

President Barack Obama and former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA)

A new national poll from Quinnipiac University shows that national races on both the presidential level and for Congress are in a dead heat as Washington prepares to return to work in September. Tex. Gov. Rick Perry now leads the announced GOP field in his quest for the presidential nomination, the first choice of 26 percent of Republican voters, followed by former frontrunner former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney at 20 percent, in what is now the fifth national poll Perry has taken the lead.

The poll also shows that President Obama, whose approval rating has been weakened by a slow economy and general disdain for Washington, is running very closely with both Perry and Romney. Obama leads Perry with 45 percent to the Texas governor's 42, and ties Romney at 45 percent. Both matchups are within the poll's margin of error and therefore a statistical dead heat.

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