It's getting bad. Everyone is demanding specifics from Romney-Ryan. And they aren't biting. Romney is no less reticent about telling us about his tax plan than he is about releasing his own tax returns.
It's not just Democrats and the mainstream press either-though it's shocking how many pieces there are asking Romney for specifics in the last few days. They are multiplying. Just look at the front page of the Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/tell-us-mr-romney-how-youd-cut-taxes-but-not-lose-revenue/2012/09/11/69cadac8-fc20-11e1-b153-218509a954e1_story.html?hpid=z2
Bill Clinton-who else-of course had the best line of the day on the Romney tax plan:
Clinton described the Republican ticket’s answer to how they would balance the budget while cutting taxes and increasing defense spending as “see me about it after the election.”
“If you had an arithmetic problem to solve and you wanted to get from negative to 0, would your first move be to add negative seven?” he said. “I mean, I’m not making this up — this is their strategy.”
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/09/bill-clinton-honor-911-by-helping-people-vote.php?ref=fpb
See me after the election. Clinton so often has the best way of putting it. Remember his definition of compassionate conservatism back in the 2000 election.
What it means is I really care about you, I do. I care about you a whole lot. And I wish I could help you, but I can't.
In 2000 Gore seemed to think he needed distance from Clinton. President Obama seems to feel less so. There is speculation that the huge spike we suddenly sawy in consumer confidence in the Gallup poll was driven by the DNC convention. How much you wonder might that be directly attributable to President Clinton's speech alone?
Conservatives are getting sore at Romney. He's too vague, he needs to tell us what he's actually going to do. Amen.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/81033.html?hp=l1
However, he may know something that they don't know-that his plans are terribly unpopular.
Krugman makes the interesting suggestion that Romney may well be surprised with how bad he's getting beaten up on his fuzzy math.
After all, it always seemed to work in the past. Paul Ryan had this reputation as a truth teller and a straight shooter. This reputation is now about as real as that marathon he claimed to run in under 3 hours or all those rocks he claimed he climbed.
"Hmm. So even on the right, people are complaining that Romney isn’t providing enough details about his plans. And I’ve spoken to journalists who are sure that Romney will be forced to say more before Election Day."
"No he won’t. He might lose for lack of detail, but no detail will be provided, for a very simple reason: his proposals don’t add up. He literally can’t do what he says he would do, namely cut tax rates on the rich without raising the tax burden on the middle class or making the deficit surge; nor can he propose spending cuts as large as he claims without cutting deeply into programs people depend on."
"Another way of saying this, of course, is that his alleged budget plan is actually a fraud."
"Why would be do such a thing, and expose himself to the criticism he now faces? Well, why should he have expected this scrutiny? Paul Ryan has been running around for years with a supposed fiscal plan constructed largely out of magic asterisks, and got hailed as a Bold Truthteller. Romney must be asking why the rules have changed."
"Apparently, though, they have. And because Romney went with the assumption that he would never be asked to put up, he is now in a position where he can’t."
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/no-details-forthcoming/
Romney's trust me campaign would be perfect if not for the fact that no one trusts him-not even the Right wing. But outside of that, he's almost there.
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