Visual source: Newseum
James Downie at The Washington Post on the Romney vs. Rosen dust-up:
To tie so many talking heads who appear on cable every dayto either campaign is a preposterous exercise, and a standard neither side of the political debate should want. If the Obama camp is responsible for Rosen, is Romney responsible for GOP Rep. Allen West’s outrageous accusation that 80 Democrats are communists? Is he responsible for Sherriff Joe Arapaio (Romney’s ’08 Arizona campaign chairman) and his birther conspiracy theories? Absolutely not. If that were the standard, the campaign would just be day after day of candidates disavowing random pundits and supporters’ comments. That Republicans feel they have to stoop to this suggests a real desperation. Let’s not let this become the new normal.
Now, on to the substantive issues.
David Jackson at USA Today makes a really important point:
Let's get one thing straight: The "Buffett Rule" that President Obama is promoting this week has no chance of passing.
Even if the Republicans don't block it in the Senate -- and they will -- the GOP-run House will never sign off on the proposal that millionaires and billionaires pay at least the same tax rate as middle-class Americans.
But the issue of higher taxes on the wealthy is very much alive this campaign season, thanks to something that is scheduled to happen after the Nov. 6 election: The expiration of the George W. Bush tax cuts. [...]
White House spokesman Jay Carney cast it as "a choice between investing in education and innovation and infrastructure -- building an economic foundation for the future -- or providing tax benefits to folks who haven't even asked for them." [...] When talk of the Buffett Rule has faded, we'll be hearing about the Bush tax cuts before, during, and after the election.
Bill Press looks at how Republicans have repudiated Ronald Reagan on taxes:
McConnell and other Republicans also say they could never ask millionaires to pay more because that would violate the spirit of Republican icon Ronald Reagan, which just proves that they don't know Ronald Reagan any better than some evangelists know Jesus.
President Reagan, in fact, did not oppose the principle of the Buffett Rule. He was the first to champion it. Speaking at Northside High School in Atlanta, Ga., on June 6, 1985, Reagan vowed to get rid of loopholes that created unfairness in the tax code. "Some of those loopholes were understandable," he acknowledged, "but in practice they sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary -- and that's crazy!"
A few weeks later, speaking at the White House, Reagan doubled-down on tax fairness, citing a letter he'd received from a wealthy American who, like Buffett, simply by taking advantage of loopholes, was able to pay a lower tax rate than his secretary. "He wrote me the letter to tell me he'd like to come to Washington and testify before Congress as to how that's possible for him to do -- and why it is wrong!"
Again, that was no wild-eyed socialist. That was Ronald Reagan. In keeping with history, President Obama offered this week to change the name of his plan from the Buffett Rule to the "Reagan Rule," if that would make it easier for Republicans to vote for it. But, of course, that wouldn't work. Today's Republicans would rather repudiate Ronald Reagan than cross uber-lobbyist Grover Norquist, who has cowed them all into voting against any new taxes. Reagan was lucky to run for president when he did. He couldn't win a primary in today's Republican Party.
Calvin Woodward at
Bloomberg factchecks Romeny's claims that 92% of jobs lost during President Obama's term have been lost by women:
Mitt Romney has come up with an "amazing statistic" and Republicans inside and outside his presidential campaign are doing their utmost to spread it around: "92.3 percent of all the jobs lost during the Obama years have been lost by women."
Amazing it may be. As a meaningful measure of Obama's economic record and its effect on women, though, it is dubious at best.
Romney's math is solid as far as it goes. But more men than women have lost jobs since the recession began -- that's why economists called it a "man-cession."
Tina Dupuy at
The Statesman Journal says Republicans don't need a war on women, they needed a war on religion to motivate their base:
Their intention was to march two Republican-created boogiemen into a battle that would make the War on Christmas cringe: ObamaCare and ObamaIsAMuslim. The Affordable Care Act stipulates birth control be included in insurance coverage instead of forcing women to pay out of pocket for such medications. This was the shot across the bow for the GOP to start their war. Republican sage, Congressman Darrell Issa, called a bunch of men of faith (yes, all men) to testify to Congress how the provision in the health care law regarding birth control would adversely affect them.
Then the right-wing echosphere spent the next week bouncing the sound bite: “This isn’t about contraception. This is about religious freedom.”
America’s right-wing: Afraid of Muslims, suspicious of Mormons, terrified of atheists and martyrs of religious freedom.
Republicans botched their war on religion with the word “slut.” Oh and by proposing laws against women getting equal pay, and a right to privacy or recourse if a doctor lies to them.
Jonathan Alter takes on the Ryan-Romney tax cut plana and demolishes its premise with facts:
The new plan offered by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and approved recently by Mitt Romney and congressional Republicans puts the Republicans on record supporting a federal government that within a decade will consist of little more than national defense, entitlements and interest on the national debt.
Those are largely transfer payments to defense contractors, seniors and bankers. The rest of what the government actually does would be eviscerated, from building roads to environmental protection to medical research.
Ryan has abandoned the Republican fantasy on display during the primaries that cutting liberal spending programs will be enough to restore fiscal sanity. He’d go where the big money is -- entitlement reform -- and also eliminate a series of tax deductions used by the affluent, though in an April 10 editorial board session with Bloomberg View he was still mum on which ones.