Paul Begala: “We can almost guarantee that 48 percent of each state’s voters will go for Obama, and another 48 percent will decide for Romney. And so the whole shootin’ match comes down to around 4 percent of the voters in six states.”

“I did the math so you won’t have to. Four percent of the presidential vote in Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, New Mexico, and Colorado is 916,643 people. That’s it. The American president will be selected by fewer than half the number of people who paid to get into a Houston Astros home game last year — and my beloved Astros sucked last year; they were the worst team in baseball. Put another way, there are about as many people in San Jose as there are swing voters who will decide this election. That’s not even as many people as attended Puerto Rican cockfights in the past year — although there are obvious similarities.”

Fewer than 1% of Mitt Romney’s donors “have hit the limit they can donate to his election bid, suggesting cash is likely to keep pouring into his coffers,” Reuters reports.

“Only 40 donors have given $75,800 — the maximum individuals are allowed to give before the November 6 election — to the joint Victory fund that Romney shares with the Republican National Committees, according to a Reuters analysis of the fund’s first campaign finance filing submitted late on Sunday.”

William Cohan: “The most mysterious of the unexplained mysteries about Mitt Romney’s considerable wealth is how he was able to amass between $21 million and $102 million in his individual retirement account during the 15 years he was at Bain Capital LLC. How did he do it, given the relatively small amounts that the law permits to be contributed to such a plan on an annual basis?”

Mitt Romney says he’ll release just two years of tax returns, so John Cassidy notes it’s “only fair to assume that Mitt is doing what he always does: acting on the basis of a careful cost-benefit analysis.”

“But what information could the earlier tax returns contain that would be so damaging if it were brought out into the open? Obviously, we are entering the realm of speculation, but Romney has invited it.”

“Here are four possibilities: 1. Extremely high levels of income… 2. More offshore accounts…. 3. Politically explosive investments… 4. A very, very low tax rate.”

Mitt Romney has reached a decision on his running mate, his friends believe, and he may disclose it as soon as this week, the New York Times reports.

Meanwhile, Sen. John Thune (R-SD) told The Hill that he’s been to Boston to meet Romney’s senior advisers and has met Beth Myers, who is leading the search for the vice presidential nominee.

Mitt Romney “will launch a fresh assault this week accusing President Obama of political cronyism at the expense of middle-class workers,” the Washington Post reports.

“In a coordinated offensive starting Monday, the Romney team and its allies will say that the president has been a ‘typical politician’ and has demonstrated ‘systematic favoritism’ toward top campaign fundraisers by lavishing them with federal appointments and their companies with taxpayer money and special government deals, according to campaign officials.”

The Romney campaign released an ad today — complete with President Obama singing to counter the brutal ad that smacked Romney over the weekend — to push this point.

[Read more…]

Zeke Miller: “Three months into this general election campaign, it’s become clear that President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have made drastically different bets on what will motivate voters this November — choices that are playing out in two campaigns so different they might as well be running in different elections.”

“For Obama, it has been a summer of gritty engagement: Sweaty campaigning, dramatic and intensely tactical — not to say cynical — policy moves aimed at specific constituencies. For his part, Romney has kept it cool and vague, staying largely off the trail and out of the weeds while his campaign plays out in 30-second television spots.”

“It is also roughly the reverse of what a traditional re-election fight: The challenger is running a Rose Garden campaign, while the president stumps frantically, far from the South Lawn.”

“People are not worried about the details as to when Mitt Romney left Bain Capital to save the Olympics or the details about his assets, which are managed by a blind trust for Pete’s sake.”

— Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), in an interview on Face the Nation.

President Obama told WAVY-TV that his re-election campaign will not apologize to Mitt Romney for saying he outsorced jobs while CEO of Bain Capital.

Said Obama: “No. We will not apologize. Mr Romney claims he’s Mr. fix-it for the economy because of his business experience, so I think voters entirely legitimately want to know what is exactly his business experience.”

“And as the head of a private equity firm his job was to maximize profits and help investors. There is nothing wrong with that. On the other hand that company also was investing in companies that were called by the Washington Post ‘the pioneers of out sourcing.’ Mr. Romney is now claiming he wasn’t there at the time except his filings with the SEC listing says he was the CEO, Chairman, and President of the company. As President of the United States, I’ve learned and we just talked about it, anything that happens on my watch is my responsibility. Harry Truman said ‘the buck stops with me’ and I think understandably people are going to be interested in are you in fact responsible for this company you say is one of your primary calling cards for your wanting to be President.”

“I give him his own advice: stop whining.”

— Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D), in an interview on ABC News, on Mitt Romney demanding an apology for the attacks on his tenure at Bain Capital.

Conservative columnist George Will slammed Mitt Romney on ABC News for failing to fully release information on his tax returns and offshore accounts, saying Romney “must have calculated that there are higher costs in releasing them.”

Said Will: “If something’s going to come out, get it out in a hurry. I do not know why, given that Mitt Romney knew the day that McCain lost in 2008 that he was going to run for president again that he didn’t get all of this out and tidy up some of his offshore accounts and all the rest. The cost of not releasing the returns are clear. Therefore, he must have calculated that there are higher costs in releasing them.”

GOP strategist Matthew Dowd had a similar view: “There’s obviously something there, because if there was nothing there, he would say, ‘Have at it.’ So there’s obviously something there that compromises what he said in the past about something.”

Meanwhile, William Kristol told Fox News: “He should release the tax returns tomorrow. It’s crazy. You gotta release six, eight, 10 years of back tax returns. Take the hit for a day or two.”

Mitt Romney hasn’t invited Sarah Palin to the Republican convention and the Tea Party is livid, Newsweek reports.

“What galls the Tea Party activists is the sense that Romney represents a lost opportunity for their agenda of less government, flatter taxes, and constitutional restraint. Facing a vulnerable president saddled with a bad economy and a crisis in the public sector, they feel stuck with a guy served up by Republican elites who speaks conservatism with an establishment accent. Worse, in this view, Romney seems incapable, or unwilling, to even defend himself, as the Obama campaign machine highlights his offshore bank accounts and his career at Bain Capital.”

“I think there’s no doubt that I underestimated the degree to which in
this town politics trump problem solving. Washington
feels as broken as it did four years ago.”

— President Obama, in an interview with CBS News.