Editorial: Romney's 47 percenters blur facts, message

In his now-famous video clip criticizing the 47 percenters, the rough share of people who pay no federal income taxes, Mitt Romney raises some legitimate points.

LM Otero, AP

Mickey Corsi protests outside a Romney fundraiser in Dallas on Tuesday.

LM Otero, AP

Mickey Corsi protests outside a Romney fundraiser in Dallas on Tuesday.

The nation's tax code does let too many people off the hook, undermining the sense that Americans are all in this together. And the many federal entitlement programs do threaten to create an unaffordable culture of dependency.

But as is too often the case with the Republican presidential candidate, he muddles things up. He confuses the 47% who pay no income taxes with the 49% who get government benefits. And he conflates both groups with supporters of President Obama. In fact, the three groups overlap only in parts, like rings of the Olympic logo.

Those who pay no federal income taxes are not made up exclusively of those Romney derides as dependent on government and lacking in personal responsibility. They include millions of senior citizens and low-skilled workers who consider themselves neither victims nor entitled to anything.

Government benefits are heavily skewed towards seniors, nearly all of whom paid Social Security and Medicare taxes for decades to earn them. Judging by the polls, both they and low-income workers are likely to give Romney respectable levels of support in November, unless they feel he is insulting them or cannot relate to their situation — the issue that turned Romney's remarks white hot.

In surreptitiously taped comments at a May fundraising event, leaked Monday by the liberal magazine Mother Jones, Romney plays to his donors' prejudices to sell a message that the Democratic Party is about dependency and the Republican Party is about free enterprise and limited government.

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In reality, the number of people who pay income tax dropped largely because of the recession and tax cuts approved during Republican administrations. And Republicans defend many of the $1 trillion in annual tax expenditures -- deductions, credits and loopholes -- that represent another form of entitlements.

But what might be most troubling about Romney's strivers-vs.-moochers formulation is how he unnecessarily personalized a debate that should be about policy. Rather than criticizing a string of laws that has shielded too many adults from the obligation of paying federal income taxes, he disparages the non-payers themselves — apparently for the sin of complying with the law.

That presents a rich irony, because Romney has defended his own low tax rates (of 14% on $21.6 million in 2010, much less than the top rate of 35%) by saying that he was fully in compliance with the law, and that Americans should pay only what's required.

Inevitably, Romney's comments are being compared to Obama's in 2008, when he was taped saying that some voters not likely to vote for him "cling to their guns or religion." You'd think, after that experience, candidates wouldn't say things at closed fundraisers that they wouldn't say in public. At least Obama knew that he committed a huge gaffe and said he had misspoken. Romney keeps doubling down on his mistake, pushing a kind of resentment politics.

If Romney wants to end a psychology of entitlement, here's a better way to start: Propose a detailed tax simplification that strips out giveaways. That would include those that enable his own loophole-ridden rate and a raft of middle-class goodies such as the mortgage interest deduction, in the process of ending the free ride for a chunk of the 47%.

The principle should be that everyone above the poverty level should have at least a minimal stake in financing the nation's defense, highways, national parks and other needs -- with the burden distributed in the simplest, fairest, most efficient way possible.

Far more important, though, is bringing runaway benefit programs under control. Here Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan, have made some constructive proposals. But their arguments would be far more effective if they'd put forth a vision that unites Americans to overcome a common threat rather than playing to stereotypes that divide them.

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Obama's Campaign Zeroes In on Romney's Wealth

3:46 p.m. | Updated Is Mitt Romney too rich to be president?

President Obama’s push on Monday to extend tax cuts for the middle class — but not for the rich — is being joined by a new, all-out effort from his allies to portray Mr. Romney as out of touch with average Americans.

On Sunday, Democrats seized on new reports about Mr. Romney’s offshore bank accounts to hammer the presumptive Republican nominee, accusing him of not being forthcoming about the sources of his multimillion dollar fortune.

By Monday, more of Mr. Obama’s surrogates were hitting the airwaves to mock Mr. Romney’s day of high-dollar fund-raisers at estates in the Hamptons. The Democratic National Committee created a video highlighting reports of bank accounts in offshore institutions.

Brad Woodhouse, the communications director for the Democratic National Committee e-mailed the video to reporters with the subject line: “Sunday Blood Sunday.”

Appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program on Monday, Robert Gibbs, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama’s campaign, bluntly accused the Republican candidate of not giving voters the information they need to make a decision about his wealth.

“Release the tax returns,” Mr. Gibbs said. “Put all this to rest. If Mitt Romney is not hiding something in Bermuda and Switzerland and the Caymans, it will be in the tax returns.”

Mr. Romney’s allies hit back furiously against the suggestion that he was hiding anything. Dan Señor, an adviser to Mr. Romney, said on “Morning Joe” that Mr. Gibbs was being “stunningly dishonest” in his attacks.

“The reason we know about these accounts, as Robert knows, is because they are in the tax returns that Mitt Romney released,” Mr. Señor said. “We know this because he submitted this information.”

A statement from the Republican campaign called questions about Mr. Romney’s wealth an “unfounded character assault” and said it was “unseemly and disgusting.”

Mr. Romney’s personal wealth became a serious issue during the Republican primary campaign when his rivals demanded to see his tax returns. Mr. Romney eventually released two years of his returns.

But since then, Mr. Obama’s campaign has focused more directly on Mr. Romney’s role as a business executive, suggesting that his career was a boon to the wealthy and that he did not have the interests of workers at heart.

The campaign first attacked Mr. Romney’s former company, Bain Capital, for shutting down factories and laying people off. Then it turned to the issue of outsourcing, describing Mr. Romney’s company as a “pioneer” in moving jobs overseas.

Now, it looks as if Mr. Obama’s strategists are ready to focus once again more directly on Mr. Romney’s wealth.

Will it work?

Democrats are hoping to find the right mix of policy and politics by offering voters a striking contrast between Mr. Obama’s refusal to extend tax cuts for the wealthy and Mr. Romney’s desire to cut taxes for people like himself.

Last week, Democratic allies of the president’s repeatedly pointed to Mr. Romney’s vacation at his lakeside estate in New Hampshire of evidence of his being out-of-touch.

In the East Room on Monday, Mr. Obama drew the line just that sharply, saying that under the economic ideas of Republicans, “the wealthy got wealthier, but most Americans struggled.”

He did not mention Mr. Romney by name, but predicted that the fight over tax cuts for the wealthy would be resolved by the choice that voters make in the presidential election this November.

“My opponent will fight to keep them in place,” he said. “I will fight to end them.”

Mr. Romney’s advisers believe the effort to focus voters on Mr. Romney’s wealth will misfire. They argue that voters want the candidates to talk about how they will turn around an economy that has battered middle class people.

Polling suggests they may be right. A Washington Post / ABC News survey in April found that 71 percent of those surveyed did not believe that Mr. Romney’s wealth would be a major reason to support or oppose him.

The polling did suggest that for those who said it was a major factor in the decision, it was more likely to be a negative. But Mr. Romney’s advisers argue that the facts about his offshore accounts will make that less likely.

Kevin Madden, a spokesman for Mr. Romney’s campaign, said on Fox News Sunday that the Republican candidate “hasn’t paid a penny less in taxes by virtue of where these funds are domiciled.” he said, “His liability is exactly the same as if he held the fund investments directly in the U.S.”

But for the most part, Mr. Romney’s advisers intend to try and ignore the attacks on his personal wealth. On Monday, they focused their responses on Mr. Obama’s renewed call to let the tax cuts for the wealthy expire.

“Americans are struggling in a ‘zombie economy’ and President Obama’s only answer is to pass one of the largest tax hikes in history,” said Amanda Henneberg, a spokeswoman. “President Obama’s tax increases on families and job creators will create more economic uncertainty and fewer opportunities for struggling middle-class families.”

UPDATE: Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for Mr. Obama’s campaign, emailed Monday afternoon to say that the president is not targeting Mr. Romney because he is a wealthy individual.

“This is not our intention. It’s not about wealth,” Mr. LaBolt wrote. “There have been other wealthy candidates, nobody is out to demonize wealth.”

Instead, Mr. LaBolt drew a distintion between Mr. Romney’s wealth and what the Democratic spokesman called Mr. Romney’s lack of “transparency” when it comes to disclosing information about his financial situation.

“It’s about the fact that Governor Romney, who could be the first President in history to keep his finances offshore, has defied precedent and kept his tax returns secret even though they could prove whether or not he avoided paying taxes,” Mr. LaBolt said.

Follow Michael D. Shear on Twitter at @shearm.

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Obama Defends Attacks on Romney's Work at Bain

5:11 p.m. | Updated CHICAGO — President Obama said that he considered attacks on Mitt Romney’s experience at Bain Capital to be fair game, declaring that the former chief executive’s claims to being a strong business leader made his background at the private equity firm worthy of a serious debate.

“This is not a distraction,” Mr. Obama said during a news conference at the end of the NATO summit in Chicago on Monday, referring to Mr. Romney’s Bain record. “This is what this campaign is going to be about.”

The president has come under criticism from some of his Democratic allies for the Bain attacks. On Sunday, Cory A. Booker, the mayor of Newark, and a top supporter of Mr. Obama, called the president’s attacks on Bain a “nauseating” part of negative campaigning on both sides.

Mr. Booker said the attacks on Bain Capital in campaign advertisements were unfair, though he later issued an about-face on Twitter and in a video, during which he said that Mr. Romney’s record at Bain was actually fair game.

Mr. Obama refused to concede that the attacks were unfair or unjustified, saying that Mr. Romney’s limited experience buying and selling companies for profit leaves him with little understanding of the job that a president needs to do.

“If your main argument for how to grow the economy is, ‘I knew how to make a lot of money for investors,’ then you are missing what this job is about,” Mr. Obama said, stressing the words “this job” in his answer.

“It doesn’t mean you weren’t good at private equity,” Mr. Obama added. “But that’s not what my job is as president. My job is to take into account everybody, not just some.”

Mr. Obama said he views private equity firms like Bain Capital as a “healthy part of the free market” designed to “maximize profits.” He said there are “folks who do good work” in that line of work.

But he made clear that he views those who work in private equity — and Mr. Romney in particular — as limited by a view of the economy that prioritizes profits above all else. The president said that view was too limited at a time of economic struggles in the country.

“Their priority is to maximize profits, and that’s not always going to be good for businesses or communities or workers,” he said.

Referencing the videos his campaign has released in the past two weeks that featured workers laid off by Bain companies, Mr. Obama said: “I’ve got to think about those workers in that video just as much as I’m thinking about folks who have been much more successful.”

“The reason why this is relevant,” Mr. Obama said, “is Romney’s main calling card for why he should be elected is his business experience.”

Mr. Obama’s advisers insist that their full-throated assault on Bain Capital, now in its second full week, is intended as a critique of Mr. Romney’s claims to be a jobs creator. But much of the commentary on Mr. Obama’s behalf describes Mr. Romney in highly personal and unflattering ways.

That approach has begun to have consequences. On Sunday, Mr. Booker said both campaigns should stop the “crap” they have been offering the public.

“This, to me, I’m very uncomfortable with,” Mr. Booker said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program.

A few hours later, Mr. Booker released a three-minute video backing off his criticism and trying to draw a distinction between personal attacks and legitimate criticisms of Mr. Romney’s time at Bain. In the video, he said it is “reasonable” for Mr. Obama’s campaign to examine his rival’s business record.

Mr. Booker’s first instinct may have been influenced by his ties with Wall Street executives, many of whom are his supporters. Other Democrats who have criticized the Bain attacks — like Steven Rattner, Mr. Obama’s former auto czar — are also close to the private equity world.

But the episode involving Mr. Booker suggests that Mr. Obama is walking a fine line as he tries to make Bain Capital a central issue in the presidential campaign. Both candidates are eager to attract independent voters who may be turned off by attacks they think cross a line of decency. And Mr. Romney has jumped at the chance to argue that the president has done just that.

Last week, Mr. Romney said the Bain attacks from Mr. Obama were intended to suggest that “I’m not a good person, or a good guy.”

The Republican party sought to stoke the issue further on Monday, using video of Mr. Booker’s “Meet the Press” comments to raise money with an e-mail that says, “I Stand With Cory.” The Republican National Committee also launched an “I Stand With Cory” petition drive and began using the #StandWithCory hashtag on Twitter.

And Mr. Romney’s campaign produced a video alleging that Mr. Obama’s supporters have “had enough of President Obama’s attacks on free enterprise.”

Mr. Obama’s campaign has dismissed that criticism, saying its Web site — RomneyEconomics.com — is an effort to describe how the values Mr. Romney pursued at Bain would color his actions as president.

“This is not about private equity or how Romney ran his company,” Stephanie Cutter, a deputy campaign manager for Mr. Obama, told reporters recently. “It’s about whether his business experience there qualifies him to be president.”

But the campaign advertisements and conference calls are frequently platforms to question Mr. Romney’s personal qualities.

A video released Monday by Mr. Obama’s campaign highlights an office supply company whose workers were fired when it was bought by a Bain company. In the ad, the workers deride Mr. Romney’s personal ethics.

One says that Mr. Romney “did not care about us as workers.” Another says that Mr. Romney “takes from the poor and the middle class and gives to the rich. He’s just the opposite of Robin Hood.”

A third says flatly: “You can tell by the way he acts, the way he talks. He doesn’t care anything about the middle-class or the lower-class people.”

In another ad, set at a Kansas City, Mo., steel plant, Joe Soptic, a former worker there, says that as president, Mr. Romney “would be so out of touch with the average person in this country.”

“How could you care? How could you care for the average, working person if you feel that way?” Mr. Soptic says.

He went even further in a conference call with reporters, saying that Mr. Romney “is only worried about one group of people, and that’s people like him, people at the top.”

The personal criticisms of Mr. Romney also come directly from Mr. Obama’s campaign officials. In the conference call with Mr. Soptic, Ms. Cutter said the issue was Mr. Romney’s personal values.

“Romney didn’t care about rewarding hard work or responsibilities,” she said. “It’s absolutely on the table as an indication of Romney’s values.”

That message is being echoed in “super PAC” advertisements on the campaign’s behalf. An ad by Priorities USA Action concludes with a worker saying that Mr. Romney “promised us the same things he’s promising the United States. He’ll give you the same thing he gave us. Nothing. He’ll take it all.”

To be sure, Mr. Romney’s campaign has been aggressive in describing Mr. Obama in personal ways. Mr. Romney repeatedly says that the president “doesn’t get it,” painting Mr. Obama as a kind of slow-learning neophyte in the Oval Office. His campaign often describes the president as a liar, saying he personally broke promises he made to the American people.

And the Republican super PACs have targeted Mr. Obama personally. The Times reported last week on a plan by one of them to link Mr. Obama to his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr..

The question may be whether either campaign is making progress with voters by making the race more about the candidates and less about the policies they pursue.

Mr. Booker said on “Meet the Press” that the trash talk was crowding out more serious conversations about the economy and other issues. And in his video clarification, he continued to urge the candidates to stay away from the personal attacks.

“My concern is we are about to go into a significant political campaign that will affect the destiny of our nation,” he said. “I am, indeed, upset. I am, indeed, frustrated. But I believe the American public, working together, we can begin to more and more denounce this type of campaigning.”

“Ultimately,” he added, “my hope is that this election will not therefore be about the small things, will not be about divisiveness, will not be about denigrating, will not be about painting with a broad brush.”

Bain Capital issued a statement Monday in response to the new video from Mr. Obama’s campaign. Charlyn Lusk, a spokeswoman for the firm, said it has always tried to grow businesses.

“Our control of Ampad ended in 1996, fully four years before it encountered financial difficulties due to overwhelming pressure from ‘big box’ retailers, declines in paper demand, and intense foreign price pressures,” she said. “During Bain Capital’s ownership, revenues grew in 80 percent of the more than 350 companies in which we have invested.”

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 21, 2012

An earlier version of this post referred incorrectly to Cory A. Booker. He is the mayor of Newark, N.J., not the mayor of New Jersey. It also misspelled the name of President Obama's former auto czar. He is Steven Rattner, not Stephen.

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Ted Kennedy Helped Shape Mitt Romney’s Career, and Still Haunts It

Twelve years earlier, they shared that stage as opponents in a bitter Senate race. Back then, Mr. Romney accused Mr. Kennedy of waging “untrue, unfair and sleazy” personal attacks. Now, the Republican governor was introducing the liberal Democratic senator as “my collaborator and friend.”

Mr. Romney’s complicated relationship with Mr. Kennedy, from campaign foe to health care partner, helped shape both his political career and his image. Today, as a Republican candidate for president, he is courting conservative voters, a constituency that does not look kindly upon Mr. Kennedy or the Romney approach to health care, which will come under scrutiny again this week when the Supreme Court takes up challenges to a similar measure championed by President Obama.

But try as he might to distance himself, Mr. Romney cannot escape Mr. Kennedy’s influence. On the campaign trail, he uses the senator, who died in 2009, as a foil, denouncing Mr. Kennedy’s “liberal welfare state” policies and boasting of how Mr. Kennedy “had to take out a mortgage on his house to make sure he could defeat me.”

He has said losing to Mr. Kennedy was “the best thing” that could have happened to him, “because it put me back in the private sector.”

Mr. Romney’s attempt in 1994 to “out-Kennedy Kennedy,” as people here say, led him to take stands on issues like abortion and gay rights that he has since backed away from, giving rise to accusations that he is a flip-flopper. Mr. Kennedy’s tough campaign advertisements, which portrayed Mr. Romney as a cold-hearted financier, rattled him, and his bruising loss in the race “viscerally pained” him, one friend said.

But he emerged tougher, convinced that it is better to punch first than to counterpunch later — lessons his campaign is putting to use today.

“Romney was the young up-and-comer in ’94 who thought that the aging champ had lost his edge and was then surprised to get knocked out,” said Rob Gray, a Republican strategist who advised Mr. Romney in his 2002 race for governor. “That certainly caused him to reassess how any future campaign should be built.”

The two men could not have been more different. Mr. Kennedy was the back-slapping Irish pol with the rakish past; Mr. Romney the upstanding businessman who viewed Mr. Kennedy with some disdain. While they eventually joined forces, theirs was a transactional relationship. Despite Mr. Romney’s glowing Faneuil Hall introduction, they never truly became friends.

“I just don’t think they spoke the same language,” said Scott M. Ferson, a former Kennedy aide and Romney neighbor who became a bridge between the two.

They did extend courtesies to each other. Mr. Kennedy lent his support to the construction of a Mormon temple in Belmont, Mass., a project just minutes from Mr. Romney’s home and dear to him. Later, as governor, Mr. Romney turned up during the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston for the dedication of a ribbon of parks named for Mr. Kennedy’s mother, Rose.

But it was their work on health care, a lifelong passion for Mr. Kennedy, that may have had the most enduring impact on Mr. Romney. The legislation gave him national standing to run for president in 2008, only to emerge as a political liability in the current campaign in a way that neither man could have foreseen.

“It’s an irony with a capital I,” said Jeffrey M. Berry, a political scientist at Tufts University who followed their careers. “From the grave, Ted Kennedy is involved in the Republican race for the presidency.”

Mr. Romney and Mr. Kennedy entered the 1994 Senate race as strangers, but their families had been circling each other for decades.

Mr. Romney was 15 in 1962, when Mr. Kennedy was first elected to the Senate. That same year, George W. Romney, Mitt’s father, was elected governor of Michigan; Mr. Kennedy’s brother, President John F. Kennedy, campaigned for his Democratic opponent. Decades later, the elder Romney — who had once worked with Senator Kennedy on legislation promoting volunteerism — prodded his son to run for the Senate seat Mr. Kennedy occupied.

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Debbie Wasserman Schultz: You guys know Romney’s a flip-flopper, right? (Daily Caller)

Speaking to reporters after Saturday’s Republican primary debate in New Hampshire, Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said Republican voters would be wise to question front-runner Mitt Romney’s conservative credentials.

“This is a candidate without any conviction at all, willing to say or do anything to get elected,” she said. “Tonight he talked about how supportive he was of overturning Roe v. Wade, yet just in 2002 he was a candidate for governor who was totally supportive of Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose. I mean, that’s a pretty significant issue to have such a major flip-flop.”

“I think Republican voters need to ask themselves whether Massachusetts elected a conservative Republican candidate for governor,” she continued.

Romney’s perceived insincerity has been a major focus of criticism since he first ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. During his two campaigns for statewide office in traditionally Democratic Massachusetts — for the U.S. Senate in 1994 and for governor in 2002 — Romney ran as a moderate, pro-choice Republican.

After leaving office in 2007 and setting his sights on the presidency, however, Romney moved to the right and left many conservatives wondering if his views on issues like abortion were heartfelt or simply a matter of convenience.

Wasserman Schultz’s comments indicate that Democrats will pick up the “flip-flopper” meme if Romney should win his party’s nomination. But by attempting to exacerbate the divide between Romney and the Republican base, they also re-enforce the notion that President Obama’s allies see his as the strongest and most threatening candidate in the GOP field.

“At this point he’s certainly done everything he can to get as far to the right as possible,” she said. “He’s embraced extremism, he’s embraced the tea party, so he certainly needs to be held accountable for the things he’s saying now.”

“He’ll be held accountable for the Mitt Romney who ran in 1992 and the Mitt Romney who ran in 1994,” she continued. “You never know which Mitt Romney you’ll be running against, but we’ll be running against them all.”

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Will Mitt Romney’s Lack of Political Experience Hinder Him? (ContributorNetwork)

COMMENTARY | In the 2008 election, Republicans criticized Barack Obama for his lack of political experience. Democrats turned the tables on Republicans on the experience argument when the GOP nominated Sarah Palin for vice president.

Now Republicans are trying to decide upon their nominee for president. One of their leading candidates is Mitt Romney, who is among the many who labeled Obama as "inexperienced" in his 2010 book. Romney may have been in business for awhile (like George W. Bush), but his political resume is relatively thin.

He served a single term as governor of Massachusetts. Other candidates like Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rick Perry and even Rick Santorum have many more years in office. Romney keeps touting his business credentials, but that's not the same as political experience. If Romney manages to win the nomination and get by President Obama, will that lack of political experience come back to haunt him?

To test this, I look at a recent CSPAN survey of who the best presidents were, according to a panel of historians. The best presidents include George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Harry S. Truman. This survey also rated the worst presidents, which count James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, Warren G. Harding, and William Henry Harrison on that list.

Political experience is measured in years in Congress, as governor and as vice president. Using this data, the following 10 presidents (best and worst) receive the following ranking: Buchanan (20 years), A. Johnson (18 years), Truman (10 years), Pierce (nine years), F. Roosevelt (four years), Harding (six years), T. Roosevelt (three years), Washington and Lincoln (two years each) and Harrison (0 years).

As you can see, those presidents with the worst rankings for competence tended to have more political experience. Presidents who tended to score well on such rankings of effectiveness have very little political experience.

You would think this would benefit Romney. He really doesn't have to have a lot of political experience to be a good president. Yet harping on the experience issue when critiquing his opponent isn't likely to help the one-term Massachusetts governor.

It not only calls attention to his own lack of political experience, but also reminds voters of Obama's record. The president has served seven years in the Illinois legislature, three years in the U.S. Senate and four years as chief executive, dwarfing Romney's political experience. But even though Obama destroys Romney when it comes to political experience, remember that one could say the same thing about James Buchanan and Abraham Lincoln.

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