- The Cain campaign tries to blame harassment leaks on Perry, which is both impossible to prove and irrelevant to the allegations.
- It loses him some conservative defenders.
- Team Perry denies any role and then, inexplicably, says Romney probably did it.
- Romney declines to criticize anyone but the DNC, probably while sketching out a nomination acceptance speech in his head.
- Here’s a Jon Huntsman “scandal” because… why not? He’s still running, I think.
- Obama jets off to the G-20 where Euro woes loom.
- A familiar headline: Fed Lowers Its Forecast for Growth, but Takes No Steps.
- The New York Times has a nifty Obama reelection forecasting tool you can play around with. Interestingly, if you match GDP growth with the Fed’s forecast and Obama’s approval rating with the RealClear average, Obama and Romney are exactly 50-50.
- Relatedly, Nate Silver on forecasting 2012.
- Michigan Republican’s anti-bullying bill includes an exception for ”statement[s] of a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction.”
- And this sounds like class warfare: A luxury car plows into Occupy Oakland crowd, injuring protesters.
Morning Must Reads: Inexplicable
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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.
