Newtastic!

Evan McMorris-Santoro on how the professional left is reacting to the fundraising prospects of Newt Gingrich winning the GOP nomination. Money quote: "We all think it's funny as shit, but I don't see anyone believing it could actually happen."

Bittersweet

Gabby Giffords resigns from Congress today. Watch her entrance into the House chamber for the State of the Union address last night:

I'm Watching You, Mitt

President Obama's State of the Union turns into point-by-point refutation of Mitt Romney.

Sounds Like a Straight-Up Fib

Mitt Romney just said on NBC that President Obama raised corporate tax rates. But that is simply false.

Well, in some respects I have to compliment the president on adopting a whole series of ideas that I've been speaking about for the last several years. If you want to get the economy going, lower corporate tax rates. He's raised them.

In the land of 30 second commercials you could probably fudge and said that parts of health care reform raised fees on corporations. But Romney specifically says rates, which is just demonstrably not true. Our Brian Beutler caught it when he said it.

Has anyone heard Romney say precisely this before?

GOP Response

Read the transcript.

The speech Mitch Daniels is giving is certainly better than what we're hearing on the primary trail. That said, it's for a very different audience -- the American middle, as opposed to Republican primary voters. Daniel is also an impressive figure in his own way. I mean that. But, My God, not in a running for president kind of way. The idea that Daniels would be seen now by many Republican as a White Knight who could save them from Newt and Mitt is a testament to how weak they see the current field.

SOTU Live-Blogging Pt.3

9:48 PM: I guess I wasn't the only to hear that name-check of Romney on letting the housing market bottom out?

9:50 PM: Obama: Willing to be flexible on milk spill regs.

9:55 PM: Great idea for Mitt to release his tax returns today. True stroke of genius. Because who could have predicted President Obama would make the Buffett Rule a centerpiece of his speech?

9:58 PM: Dems are usually really bad at making the simple point that all tax policy involves trade-offs. This passage got it right. Probably the best part of the speech ...

We don't begrudge financial success in this country. We admire it. When Americans talk about folks like me paying my fair share of taxes, it's not because they envy the rich. It's because they understand that when I get tax breaks I don't need and the country can't afford, it either adds to the deficit, or somebody else has to make up the difference - like a senior on a fixed income; or a student trying to get through school; or a family trying to make ends meet. That's not right. Americans know it's not right.

10:02 PM: Email just out from the Speaker's Office ...

Because the president clearly cannot run on his record, he has regrettably turned to the politics of envy and division. The "Buffett Rule" is a gimmick. We need to cut spending, not impose tax hikes that would destroy jobs.

10:09 PM: Shorter Obama: I'm looking at you, Romney

SOTU Live-Blogging Pt.2

9:29 PM: Follow along at home with the transcript of the speech.

9:31 PM: The rhetoric of the Republican primary has gone so far off the rails into creating a wild caricature of the president that I think it probably makes this speech more bracing (in a positive sense) for some viewers. I mean, where's his call for more bureaucracy and hostility to achievement? Where are the apologies for America?

9:36 PM: Sad that McCain can't stand for comprehensive immigration reform which he's supposedly been pushing for for years.

9:46 PM: Here's the passage where the president hits the Buffett Rule (still to come) ...

But in return, we need to change our tax code so that people like me, and an awful lot of Members of Congress, pay our fair share of taxes. Tax reform should follow the Buffett rule: If you make more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes. And my Republican friend Tom Coburn is right: Washington should stop subsidizing millionaires. In fact, if you're earning a million dollars a year, you shouldn't get special tax subsidies or deductions. On the other hand, if you make under $250,000 a year, like 98 percent of American families, your taxes shouldn't go up. You're the ones struggling with rising costs and stagnant wages. You're the ones who need relief.

Now, you can call this class warfare all you want. But asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense.

We don't begrudge financial success in this country. We admire it. When Americans talk about folks like me paying my fair share of taxes, it's not because they envy the rich. It's because they understand that when I get tax breaks I don't need and the country can't afford, it either adds to the deficit, or somebody else has to make up the difference - like a senior on a fixed income; or a student trying to get through school; or a family trying to make ends meet. That's not right. Americans know it's not right. They know that this generation's success is only possible because past generations felt a responsibility to each other, and to their country's future, and they know our way of life will only endure if we feel that same sense of shared responsibility. That's how we'll reduce our deficit. That's an America built to last.

Context

President's usually get some bump, but often a fleeting one from a State of the Union address. After the jump, a chart of the trend of the president's popularity over the last year ...

SOTU Live-Blogging

9:00 PM: So audience participation allowed for this one?

9:01 PM: Seriously worried that someone might call their response speech a post-buttal.

9:04 PM: My take on where we are going into this speech.

9:11 PM: The heart of the President's speech, putting the Buffett Rule into effect -- makes you wonder what Mitt was thinking releasing his tax returns on this day of all days.

A Few Thoughts on Where We Are

As we head into the President's third State of the Union speech, it's worth stepping back and looking at the broad swath of events over the last year.

Over the last year and especially after the debt ceiling debacle of late summer, the White House has been trying to refocus the national debate away from budget cutting and retrenchment toward job creation and tax equity. The Buffett Rule, the endlessly repetitive hawking of the president's Jobs Bill (legislatively futile, politically powerful), welcoming a fight with the Republicans over an extension of the payroll tax holiday. We can see them all of a piece, staking out a policy agenda and converging on early 2012 as a platform to set the terms of the national debate.

How's Mitt Doing?

A few days ago I published a post on Newt Gingrich's extreme unpopularity with the general electorate. Almost no prominent national politician approaches Gingrich territory. But these aren't great times for Mitt Romney either. Just a short time ago he was the only Republican contender for president who had a net favorable rating with the public. But just over the last month or so he's ballooned to an almost net -16 point negative rating.

Check out the chart after the jump ...

Seems Like Old Times

Mitt Romney got tripped up with a tax issue when he ran for governor in 2002 too.

New Florida Poll

We've got a fourth poll of Florida out this morning. And it has Romney up by 2 points over Gingrich, 34% to 32%. The first three had Newt up by either 9 or 5 points.

Romney Paid 13.9%

We've got the first report about Romney's 2010 taxes. His effective tax rate was 13.9%, just below the 15% he estimated last week. Here are the initial details.

Key passage from Reuters story ...

Romney advisers stressed that the holdings in the Caymans -- along with those in a Swiss bank account that was closed in 2010 after an investment adviser decided it could be politically embarrassing to Romney -- were reported on tax returns and were not vehicles to avoid taxes.

My quick take on this is that there's a lot here that's fairly damaging for Romney in political terms, largely for the reasons I set forth earlier in this post. Beyond that there's a lesson about the consequences of losing control of events. For a man running for president in 2012 it's damaging stuff. But now everything in these documents comes with a preface that reads "We really wanted to keep this secret. But that didn't work out."

Trying to Muscle the Bigs

In the spin room after tonight's debate Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom told reporters that they believe the Romney tax return story will end tomorrow, with the release of a single year's returns.

He also signaled they'll make their case on the dollar amount Romney paid in taxes, rather than the percentage of his income and the fact that he gave a lot to charity.

Quick Reax

So what just happened?

My basic read is that the debate all happened in the first 20 or 30 minutes. Romney was brutal and totally on message, hitting a series of key attack lines where Gingrich is just extremely vulnerable. But then Newt came back and I don't think I've ever seen him quite as on his game as his was tonight. He didn't get a chance to have one of those Newt explosion minutes. But just for rolling with the punches, finding openings to get right back in Mitt's face and more than anything playing that frontrunner card which must have driven Mitt to distraction. Watching it I remember thinking, wow, this is a sort of an amazing moment just in terms of political theatrics because both of them really brought their A games, both of which are very different things.

Florida Debate Live Blogging Pt.5

10:38 PM: So many times over this. But I just don't think Romney gets that most people don't think it's funny that you made someone take out a mortgage on their home. It's low level 10k bet, like to fire people who provide me services, etc., just not funny.

10:42 PM: I think Newt helped himself with those concluding remarks.

One of My Fav Moments

When Mitt tried to take Newt to task for trying to make his taxes even lower than the 15% he pays now. Just not an argument that works well for Mitt.

Florida Debate Live Blogging Pt.4

10:31 PM: Don't think that cut it for Mitt on what he's done for conservatism.

One Reader's Take

From TPM Reader MF ...

Despite this being a close debate, I don't think it's going well for Newt even if he still looks pretty good. Newt needs to run roughshod over the debates or his balloon deflates pretty quickly. His whole surge is predicated on the notion that he's going to tell Obama he's a foreign Muslim Communist to his face, so doing OK isn't really going to cut it for him. In that sense Romney has an ongoing advantage even if he's never going to look as self-satisfied as Gingrich does up there. Mitt just needs to expose a few chinks in the armor.