Florida Primaries

And we head farther on down the road a piece.

Standings as of 1/21

Gingrich 1 --32
Santorum 1-2
Romney 1 - 2
Paul 0 - 3

 

Standins are 19 Newt, 19 Willard in the race for 1100 delegates.

 

Is Gingrich the NJIT of politics?

 

Bravo, Willard.

Thank you for pointing out, to Newton's face, that Freddie Mac doesn't spend $25K a month on a historian for 6 years -- especially a historian who answers to the company's chief lobbyist.

I only wish Chuck Todd or the rest of the GOP sycophants in the mainstream media had raised this issue to his face in the dozens of interviews he's granted over the past few months.

 

Yea that pretty much left Newt speechless.

Double bravo to Mitt for making 22 million last year not actually working a day.

Maybe this is the type of leadership we need.

 

Yeah, once the 99 percent find out the GOP nominee "earned" more in a day than they did all year last year, he'll be very, very popular. And by "earned" I mean a number shifted from one column to another to his benefit.

 

I watched the first half of last night's debate and I thought Mitt did pretty well.

I think the best thing that can happen to him is for Newt to start winning and force him to get out of that prevent defense he was in for New Hampshire and South Carolina.

RCP has Newt leading in Florida. I think if the focus remains on those two as long as possible, in the long run that would be better for the GOP than have Romney run away with it.

 

Thanks to the penalty the GOP placed on Florida for moving their primary early, there are as many delegates at stake in the combination of Guam, American Samoa and Puerto Rico as Florida (50). Which means that Newt can take a vacation during the campaign and STILL earn delegates by campaigning in those states (which he's done once already). Or that Mitt can hit Puerto Rico and get closer to his money on the Cayman Islands.

 

Mitt's tax returns: $21.6 million in income, $3.9 million (13 percent) in taxes in 2010. About the same in 2009.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/us/politics/romneys-tax-returns-show-21-6-million-income-in-10.html?hp

Politically kind of a dud if you ask me -- maybe knowing some of the numbers makes it starker to some people, but once he acknowledged that he was paying 15 percent, this isn't surprising. More interested in him moving his money out of Swiss bank accounts in 2010 because his political advisers thought it would look bad to have it there, but all in all I think he and his team have managed this one pretty well.

The one variable is whether anyone can pressure him to disclose from the time he was actually running Bain. So far his campaign is holding firm to these two years being sufficient.

 

LTL, I disagree with your assessment (which naturally doesn't make it wrong). The perfectly legal devices used by Romney to pay lower rates on his fortune which basically just ran itself with no input on his part than are paid by many middle-income voters such as yours truly stick in the craw, and are strong evidence of the contention that the U.S. is a profoundly corrupt society run for the benefit of a small number of incredibly wealthy people whose only interest in society is extorting more wealth from it. Plus, as Richard Nixon could tell Mitt, the modified limited hangout route never works. The suspicion Romney is hiding more than he's telling will continue to dominate the issue as long as Gingrich and Obama remain candidates.

 

I think I left a mistaken impression -- I also have a big problem with the tax structure itself, that's my #1 issue in this election. My point is that the disclosure of the specific numbers involved doesn't add a whole lot to my anger about it, since Mitt acknowledged a week ago that he only pays the 15 percent.

It will be interesting to see if Mitt eventually releases more. Also once a skilled reporter (and maybe an accountant) looks at the entire document and finds something that Romney might be trying to hide in plain sight, that could alter the direction.

 

13.7 percent of 21 million is considerably less than 15 percent of 21 million, both of which is, relatively speaking, a fraction of 30+ percent of 50,000.

So not only did he obfuscate, he's actually better off than even Warren Buffett's secretary thought that he was.