- $10 million in political TV advertising has been broadcast in Iowa this month; Perry, Romney and their respective PACs account for 80% of it.
- Romney’s campaign says he has the nomination all locked up.
- There are scenarios where he could lose, but not so many.
- The rise of absentee voting in Florida could decide its primary early.
- Gingrich runs afoul of paper trails on his first divorce and feelings about Romneycare.
- He won’t make the ballot in Virginia–a setback his campaign equates to Pearl Harbor–and the backstory is bizarre.
- It’s never too late for Bill Kristol.
- Ron Paul’s evolution on newsletter authorship.
- U.S. social mobility is becoming myth.
- Our debt is still golden.
- Congress didn’t feel the recession.
- America’s conflicted on inequality.
- The administration will let Yemen’s Saleh into the U.S. for medical treatment.
- Andrew Exum thinks it’s a bad idea.
- And Obama gets a faceful of baby.
Morning Must Reads: Golden
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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.
