“With so much at stake in this election, both Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan should ‘go rogue’ and not hold back from telling the American people the true state of our economy and national security. They need to continue to find ways to break through the filter of the liberal media to communicate their message of reform.”

— Sarah Palin, in a statement to the Weekly Standard.

The Week: “The GOP effort to seize control of the Senate is losing steam, and some Democrats are boasting that even the GOP’s House majority is imperiled.”

Paul Ryan “was booed at the annual AARP convention Friday after saying that, if elected, their Republican administration would repeal the nation’s healthcare law as the best way to save Medicare,” the Los Angeles Times reports.

“Just five minutes into his talk at the gathering of the powerful 50-and-older lobby, Mitt Romney’s running mate — the architect of the Republican proposal to change Medicare for the next generation of seniors — was repeatedly interrupted as he criticized President Obama’s healthcare law.”

A source close to the Romney campaign told Politico that the decision was made to release Mitt Romney’s 2011 tax return “so that there would be some distance between that headline and the debate, and to do the best the campaign can with an issue on which voters have likely already absorbed a lot of information.”

“There was also no ideal time for the release of the information, but Friday was after five days spent discussing remarks Romney made in a secretly taped fundraising video about 47 percent of Americans considering themselves ‘victims,’ and not paying taxes. Providing information about his own tax rate seems geared toward eliminating the question about whether he himself has at any point not paid taxes, but without providing the returns themselves.”

Think Progress: 10 questions Romney should answer about his taxes.

Wall Street Journal: “The Obama campaign wants to set a low bar for the president’s performance, reflecting in part the reality that the president’s debating skills are weaker than his other political assets. More importantly, the campaign is looking to the three presidential debates, the first of which will be in Denver on Oct. 3, not for a breakthrough, but as a fresh chance to deliver the president’s core messages.”

“Mr. Romney and his advisers, by contrast, are talking up the opportunity for the debates to shake up the race. His top advisers have made clear he is spending a lot of time preparing. He began in the middle of the summer and spent almost all of the Democratic National Convention at the secluded Vermont estate of Kerry Healey, his former lieutenant governor in Massachusetts, where he ran practice sessions. Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) played Mr. Obama in the simulations…

The extensive early preparation is unusual for a presidential
candidate, as is the fact that his advisers publicized his preparation
so widely.”

Mitt Romney’s campaign, in a report filed to the Federal Election Commission this week, showed $50.4 million cash on hand — nearly $40 million less than President Obama’s reported $88 million.

National Journal: “Campaign finance experts say Romney, and Obama for that matter, have masked their true financial figures by reporting money raised by allied groups like the RNC in addition to the principal campaign account. They have presented all of the money as being part of one big pot, but that conflation belies the fact that how a campaign raises cash determines how it can spend it.”

“To a large degree, Romney’s fundraising was never as impressive as his bottom-line hauls suggested because much of the money was earmarked for accounts he doesn’t directly control. Money raised with and for GOP committees still matters, but its value is diminished because the candidate doesn’t directly control it.”

Bloomberg: Who’s really winning the fundraising race?

Sen. Harry Reid (D) said Mitt Romney’s disclosure of his 2011 tax return continues to leave many unanswered questions.

His statement: “The information released today reveals that Mitt Romney manipulated one of the only two years of tax returns he’s seen fit to show the American people – and then only to ‘conform’ with his public statements. That raises the question: what else in those returns has Romney manipulated? … Governor Romney is showing us what he does when the public is looking. The true test of his character would be to show what he did when everyone was not looking at his taxes.”

A new Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald/Bay News 9 poll in Florida shows Sen. Bill Nelson (D) leads Rep. Connie Mack IV (R) in the U.S. Senate race, 48% to 40%, a three-point shift in the Democrat’s favor since July.

A video shows Vice President Biden can’t stop laughing after his wife was misinterpreted by a crowd.

[Read more…]

In 2011, Mitt and Ann Romney paid $1,935,708 in taxes on $13,696,951 in mostly investment income, an effective tax rate of 14.1%.

Romney could have paid a lower tax rate in 2011 due to large charitable contributions, but voluntarily limited them — and paid more taxes as a result — to conform to his previous statements that he has paid at least 13% in taxes each year.

Flashback: Mitt Romney told ABC News in July that “frankly if I had paid more than are legally due I don’t think I’d be qualified to become president.”

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) is undermining Mitt Romney’s message in the key battleground state, Roll Call reports.

Said Boehner: “One of the things that probably worked against Romney in Ohio is the fact that Gov. Kasich has done such a good job of fixing government regulations in the state, attracting new businesses to the state, so our unemployment rate in Ohio is lower than the national average.”

Herman Cain jabbed Mitt Romney while talking to the Gainesville Sun saying that he would have been doing better if he was the Republican presidential nominee, claiming he’d probably have a “substantial lead” on President Obama at this point.

Said Cain: “The reason is quite simple: I have some depth to my ideas.”

Jonathan Chait: “Mitt Romney’s campaign has been notable for its reliance on President Obama’s gaffes. It built its entire convention theme around Obama’s slightly disjointed disquisition about infrastructure (‘You didn’t build that’) and has, at other points, seized gleefully on such lines as ‘the private sector is doing fine’ and ‘our plan worked,’ Joe Biden’s ‘chains’ metaphor, among others.”

“Yesterday, two gaffe-exploitation attempts collided somewhat awkwardly, when Romney had to interrupt his message about Obama’s 1998 gaffe endorsing neoliberal redistribution to seize upon a fresh new gaffe in which Obama said change has to come from outside Washington.”

“Has a presidential campaign been more reliant upon seizing on its opponent’s words (and wrenching them out of context)? This appears to be the hallmark of the Romney 2012 campaign method.”