Morning Must Reads: Opposition

  • Perry rolls out his 20% flat tax along with a Cut, Cap & Balance-esque fiscal plan.

The plan starts with giving Americans a choice between a new, flat tax rate of 20% or their current income tax rate. The new flat tax preserves mortgage interest, charitable and state and local tax exemptions for families earning less than $500,000 annually, and it increases the standard deduction to $12,500 for individuals and dependents.

  • He’ll take the fight to Romney.
  • The Obama campaign licks its chops.
  • No peak yet: Cain’s still out front in national polls.
  • Opposition to Ohio’s collective bargain restrictions picks up steam as the ballot referendum nears.
  • Why Volcker soured on his eponymous rule.
  • And Herman Cain’s campaign drop another heavy hint that it’s just an elaborate improv sketch:
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    The Phony War: Obama and Romney Are Debating Character, Not Policy

    More than five months from Election Day, the back-and-forth about Mitt Romney’s record at Bain already feels played out. Unfortunately, there’s good reason to expect the campaign continues in this vein indefinitely. Neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney are terribly interested in dwelling on policy platforms. Romney’s plan to slash spending and keep taxes low on the wealthy isn’t especially popular, at least not at any level of detail beyond a blithe promise to shrink the deficit. Meanwhile, Obama’s signature first-term achievements, like health care, the stimulus and Wall Street reform, are all unpopular or tricky to sell. (The Dodd-Frank bill is the most popular of these, but hyping it means offending wealthy donors.) So what we’re getting instead is a superficial duel about character–and, worse, one that’s based on the largely false premise that the better man can better “manage” the economy back to health.

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