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.

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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.”

Here are the today’s swing state polls, updated as needed throughout the day:

Colorado: Obama 48%, Romney 45% (Purple Strategies)

Florida: Romney 48%, Obama 47% (Purple Strategies)

Michigan: Obama 39%, Romney 30% (Michigan State)

North Carolina: Obama 46%, Romney 43% (HPU/Fox)

North Carolina: Obama 48%, Romney 46% (Purple Strategies)

Ohio: Obama 48%, Romney 44% (Purple Strategies)

Pennsylvania: Obama 48%, Romney 47% (Susquehanna)

Virginia: Obama 46%, Romney 43% (Purple Strategies)

Finally, a poll from Arizona suggests it might be a swing state as well.

Arizona: Romney 48%, Obama 45% (Purple Strategies)

Politico: “Mitt Romney was expected to use a billionaire-fueled fundraising juggernaut to crush President Barack Obama’s once vaunted small-donor army. But things haven’t gone according to plan.”

“Headed into the home stretch of the 2012 presidential race, it is Obama who looks to have an edge, thanks to an awakening donor base, aggressive summer spending on ads and ground game, and a Romney hoarding strategy that left him with plenty of cash in the bank, but not much to show for it.”

New York Times: “Mitt Romney entered the final months of the presidential campaign with a cash balance of just $35 million, racing to find new large donors and rally low-dollar contributors in August even while he raised tens of millions of dollars for the Republican Party.”

Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign “gave out about $200,000 in bonuses to senior employees just after the Republican National Convention, which ended with the candidate not getting much of a bounce in the polls,” Politico reports.

“Social Security right now is a collectivist system, it’s a welfare transfer system.”

— Rep. Paul Ryan in a 2005 audio recording talking about privatizing the “socialist-based system” of social security — or as he jokingly said he preferred, “personalizing” it.

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