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Voters and reporters looking to Mitt Romney for new jobs proposals or additional details about his existing plans shouldn't expect many, the presumptive Republican nominee's aides said Thursday.
Most of Romney's fall campaign will involve "re-introducing a lot of the policy that came out a year ago," Romney senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom said on a conference call with reporters. The reason for that, he explained, was to remind them "of the governor's very detailed policy" now that voters are playing closer attention to the campaign.
The conference call was organized to outline the jobs policies about which Romney will speak today in Colorado. But the five priorities mentioned on the conference call -- energy, trade, education, cutting the deficit, and freeing up businesses from regulation -- have generally been staples of the former Massachusetts governor's campaign for much of the past year.
Kacper Pempel / REUTERS
Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney delivers foreign policy remarks at the University of Warsaw Library in Warsaw July 31, 2012.
The question of specifics, though, has been one that has plagued the Romney campaign -- and it's not only Democrats who have voiced this criticism.
"The Romney campaign thinks it can play it safe and coast to the White House by saying the economy stinks and it's Mr. Obama's fault," the Wall Street Journal's right-leaning editorial board wrote in early July. "Thanks, guys, but Americans already know that. What they want to hear from the challenger is some understanding of why the President's policies aren't working and how Mr. Romney's policies will do better."
But the Romney campaign has generally brushed off these complaints as imprudent politics. Boston has clearly broadcast that they are satisfied with the plans they have offered. ("He doesn’t need to lay out new policies," Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, a surrogate of Romney's and potential running mate, told National Review Online earlier this week.)
The Romney campaign has been generally opaque in its approach to several issues that could conceivably expose their candidate to scrutiny, which could distract from their central narrative about Obama and the economy. For instance, the campaign's refusal to detail which tax deductions Romney would favor eliminating – to show how he’d prefer to balance the budget – mirrors his refusal to release more than two years of tax returns, to detail his exit from Bain Capital, or to lay out how his administration would be more transparent than Obama’s.
On each question, though, the Romney campaign has left open a void of detail, and the Obama campaign and Democrats have gladly stepped in to fill it.
The president himself trumpeted a report from the nonpartisan, independent Tax Policy Center about Romney's tax plan.
The study concluded that, based on the available details about Romney's plan, that it would threaten a higher tax burden on the middle class, because it disproportionately takes advantage of exemptions that would be eliminated to finance tax reform.
But the enduring story of the Romney campaign is its conclusion early in the campaign that little else will matter on election day aside from voters' conclusion about Obama's handling of the economy. They've bet that the broad contours of Romney's policy contours will be enough to sway voters, and that they can weather criticism about the specifics without any of that becoming fatal.
"That report you referenced is a joke," Fehrnstrom said of the center’s report on the call. "There are serious problems with the authorship of that study, and the methodology."
One of the authors was an economic adviser member of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. But the other was the senior staff economist on President George H.W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers.
"The governor's plan essentially lays out the parameters that he wants to achieve," Jonathan Burks, the Romney campaign's deputy policy director, said on the call. "And within that, he would write a tax bill that achieves those goals. And so it's not a question of today, you know, we've got a 2,000-page tax plan that could be scored and demonstrated ... The details of how that would be accomplished would have to be worked out with Congress."
Republicans are quick to note that President Obama has offered few detailed proposals for his second term, and argue that the "American Jobs Act" first introduced by the White House last fall is only a re-hash of old policies.
But the Romney campaign's bet that it doesn't need to offer more detail opens the door to the Obama campaign and Democrats' efforts to turn the election into a choice between the president and Romney, even if it involves mischaracterizing elements of Romney's background – or inserting policy details that don’t exist -- that the GOP candidate won't define for himself.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) made an especially specious claim in that vein when he told the Huffington Post this week that a Bain investor -- who he did not name -- told him that Romney had paid no effective tax rate for a decade.
Fehrnstrom angrily condemned that suggestion during an appearance Thursday on Fox News, but there are no indications that the evidence Romney could offer to rebuff those charges will be publicly available anytime soon.
NBC's Jay Rankin and Garrett Haake contributed.
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Romney has no "policies". Let's see ....energy, jobs, improve the economy, cut taxes (for the rich).....a fourth grader could give you those (except the rich part). So Romney has nothing....except insulting the president. He won't tell anyone what he will do as president, he won't release his taxes (which all presidents have done), he won't explain his overseas accounts. Obama inherited a nightmare. Anyone that thinks he didn't is delusional. Sure mistakes were made. But his policies kept us back from the edge. It could have been soup lines again. So, think when you vote.
Here's another reason why Obama will WIN and Romney will lose.
The last incumbent Democratic President to lose his re-election was Jimmy Carter in 1980.
Carter lost because he was a weak President and Ronald Reagan was a strong challenger.
Regardless of what anyone on this blog says, President Obama is not a weak President like Carter was. But, even if he was, and to appease the anti-Obama people here, let's pretend Obama is as weak now like Carter was in 1980 (though he is not), the FACT remains,
Unfortunately, Mitt Romney is the Republican DEFAULT candidate who, during the Republican Primaries, nobody except a core 20 - 27% voters wanted. The most frequent campaign cry during the Republican Primaries was
Now you are stuck with Romney, and like I said before,
Face it! It's going to be President Obama for FOUR MORE YEARS!
BTW
Well http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/
gives President Obama a 70.2% chance of winning the election over Romney's 29.8% chance, and that is up from the sixties the last time I checked just a day ago.
It dont matter now Mitt people do not believe you or trust you and you cannot win.
I didn't know Romney even had policy plans.
Willard be half the man your father was and show six years.
Tax dodging "party pooper" Romney has no policies and hopefully can build more elevators for his cars with money he stole from everybody else who paid taxes
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/03/jenna-jameson-mitt-romney-endorsement_n_1737769.html?utm_hp_ref=elections-2012
http://entertainment.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/03/13107325-porn-queen-jenna-jameson-endorses-mitt-romney-for-president?lite
http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2012/aug/3/retired-porn-queen-jenna-jameson-endorses-romney/
I want to vote for you Romney, but you are making it pretty hard! Are you just George Bush in disguise? Your plans don't seem to hold water. I hope we hear some good things soon, so I can be turned around. A lot of work to do my friend, I hope you are ready for the debates, because if you are not, you won't be able to just smile away what Obama's going to throw at you. May your Mormon god or any other god help you!
Long tail, long trail, Willard the Rat. Where are those tax returns?
Look out--here comes another Etch-a-Sketch moment. Mitt is falling behind so they're going to try to reinvent him once again. The Human Windsock should never be trusted with the keys to the White House.
I'm reading in other places that Reid is sticking to his story because his source is the real thing. Release the tax forms Mittens, or be gone.
RobUS Romneys policies are Bushs' old policies and they didn't work, and Romney has never worked a day in his life anyway. So what the hell does he know about the working class people of the USA????? Romney best thing you can do for the USA is, move to another country where you are hiding your money that you haven't apid any taxes on. GOOD BYE.
OBAMA/BIDEN 2012
It's strangely silent and devoid of the praises of right wingers every time there's an article that focuses on Romney alone. There are no right wingers on here commenting on Twitt's wonderful "plans" because they don't know what Twitt's plans are. I don't think there's any way that Twitt's going to win in November, but we need to keep an eye on the House and Senate. We need to clean the House of the tea-terrorists and make sure none of them sneak into the Senate either, or we'll have four more years of the same obstructionist, America-killing BULLchit.
This election is a choice between two visions for the future of America: One vision is for continuation of the progressive vision of a balance between equality and freedom as the moral foundation of justice, and a more recent conservative vision of an entitlement due the wealthy and the equivalence of corporations to the rights and protections of natural persons under the Constitution.
A progressive future is one in which government is a custodian of the public trust and advocates for justice; where justice is a balance between equality and freedom. Government as a custodian of the public trust means that everyone plays by the same rules and that everyone is equal before the law. Public trust means the rights of the people to preserve and protect the common property of the United States is not severable to the interests of privatization. Public trust means that a corporation has no rights except those given to it by law and does not have equal standing with a natural born person under the Constitution.
The conservative future is one of a hostile corporate takeover with privatization of government functions. The corporate takeover means that having wealth is an effective barrier to others participating in the process of government. It means that government would no longer serve the interests of the community but collaborate with the wealthy corporate owners to establish a separate set of laws that entitle them to preferential treatment while creating barriers to competition by eliminating opportunities for others.
The free market is a myth: if it isn't regulated by government to prevent fraud, it is regulated by the corporate oligarchy to prevent competition. Free means not having to go to jail for fraud and theft.
Freedom of speech for corporations is a political myth: the right to free speech is a right of the natural born person, not an artifact of legal convention.
The conservative options for health care are no birth control, no abortion and no health insurance unapproved by a corporate CEO. The progressive option is universal health care and the right of women to make their own health decisions.
This election is about education for citizenship, not choice for a privileged elite who don't want to associate with the lower classes.
This election is about living in fear, or finding a means to reducing the violence that haunts personal security.
This election is about who gets to rewrite the tax laws: a privileged elite who personally benefits from tax entitlements to the wealthy, or one who advocates for tax fairness.
This election is about who gets to nominate justices to the Supreme Court: pack a court with conservative judicial activists who want to roll back human rights, or one who advocates for judicial competence.
This election is a moral choice between affiliation or aggression, empathy or egotism, service or selfishness, cooperation or competitiveness.
The tale of two visions is the difference between a government of the people, by the people and for the people, and a government run by a plutocracy of wealth and corporate power.
Willards fall campaign will include "re-introducing" his "very detailed" policies laid out a year ago??? Now this IS news! I didn't know he had any policies other than to belittle the POTUS and point fingers to distract from his overseas riches, outsourcing, hecklers getting the better of him on the campaign trail, flip-flop in his flip-flops, his top aids making fools of themselves when a mic is thrust into their mouths...I could go on and on. Nope. Not going to vote for that one. I'll pass.
Obama/ Biden 2012
In Michigan we bought that line from Mr now Gov. Snyder.
He said the same thing as Mr Romney "I'm going to change things for the better
for the State and build business for more jobs" But no specifics.
What we got were big cuts to education and services and a TAX SHIFT from business
to seniors and lower income folks.
If he'd told us HOW he was going to do it BEFORE he would never have been elected.
I for one am not buying that line again. Sorry Mitt.
Willard Mitten Romney's plan - More for me, Less for you.
Romney makes the Republican Cartel appear worse than Nixon, comparable to the administration (Bush) that gave the World the GREAT RECESSION OF 2008.
No Tax Returns, No Economic Plan, No Specifics, Just Trust Me even though I have LIED and FLIP FLOPPED in every word I have spoken, I Mitt Romney do not need to tell "you people", my income or taxes paid, my plan or my specifics because I am Mitt Romney and I am Mr Wonderfull.
DEMOCRACY is DEMOCRATS in ALL public offices in 2012
We, the 99% American People, don't need or don't want a "re-introduction of exlax ETCH-A-SKETCH'S policy plan" which is QUITE SIMPLE! ROB the 99% American People & GIVE to the corrupt Republican corporate MONARCHY and their ONE-PERCENTERS!
99% American People, vote 100% STRAIGHT DEMOCRATIC and let's rid our selves of these corporate leaches that have STOLEN our American way of life and MADE US their SLAVES!! Their UNCONTROLLED CAPITALISTIC GREED has driven the MIDDLE CLASS into poverty! exlax ETCH-A-SKETCH, John Bonehead and the rest of their political puppet buddies need to be driven out of our Democratic government ONCE & FOREVER! Our government was meant to be a SERVICE to its people, NOT TO MAKE SLAVES OF THEM!!
This message is brought ot you by a LIFELONG DEVOUT REPUBLICAN, that's right, REPUBLICAN who is totally disgusted with their blatant corruption and who has NOTHING TO GAIN but the satisfaction that I have helped my fellow Americans help themselves out of this horrendous mess!!!
The scary thing is that almost half of the people will vote for this dishonest elitest loser and probably re-elect the tea party bozos against their own self interest because they cannot think for themselves and cannot see the blatant lies of the Republican extremests. Please people, give Obama a Congress that he can work with to move this country forward.
Typical Mormon tactic, I'll tell more about the Mormonism after you become a Mormon.
The prefix "re" means again. It is usually used to show that something has been repeated, as in re-package, where in you package something that was once in a package. Romney's use of the prefix seems a bit of a misnomer, since there was no package to begin with.
Romney keeps digging holes for him to fall into and yet Republicans still defend him - while criticizing him (see e.g. Krauthammer on Fox).
Republicans can't vote for someone this November because their party has no one worth supporting. What Republicans do have, however, is the absolute certainty that only Republicans can starve the beast and the absolute hatred of Obama.
Meanwhile, the concept of collegiality and compromise is as foreign to today's Republican Party as viewing government as a tool to be used judiciously for the benefit of our society.
Where have the Everett Dirkson's, Bob Dole's and Jerry Ford's all gone to?
I've given all you people need to know.
Romney/Sheen This is WINNING!
Headline: Romney will 're-introduce' policy plans to voters this fall
'fu-ck' that. I want to see his plans for introducing his taxes like previous Presidential candidates. Otherwise he is not a legitimate candidate and should be disqualified.