“What Romney would do: Cut taxes and regulations, shrink government, undo pretty much the entire Obama agenda, and stick it to labor.

The Good: Using independent boards of experts to assign federal research dollars. Allowing more highly skilled immigrants to work and stay in the country. Getting tough with China, assuming it’s done right.

The Bad: Requiring congressional approval of all “major” regulations, apparent reductions in funding of productive investments like education and infrastructure.

The Ugly: Capping total federal spending at 20 percent of GDP, with 4 percent reserved for defense—a potentially devastating reduction in government services that, if implemented swiftly, could also deal a serious economic blow. Then again, his numbers don’t really add up, so who knows what he’d really do?

The Verdict: The focus on lower taxes and regulation will appeal to conservatives who see those as major impediments to long-term growth. The lack of investment in education, infrastructure, and technology will worry everybody else. In some ways, the real story is what’s not here: Proposals designed specifically to boost growth in the short run, despite still-high unemployment. 

They Said It: “Our best hope—and not an entirely implausible one—is that presumptive-nominee Romney has a secret plan for the economy. If he doesn’t, we may be in for years’ more stagnation.” - Josh Barro, in the Guardian”

- Jonathan Cohn, The Blind Spot in Romney’s Economic Plan

Photo courtesy of Business Insider

Is climate change a wedge issue versus Romney?

“Looked at another way, though, climate change might not be a bad thing for Obama to talk about—as a wedge issue, with certain audiences. Specifically, the well-educated swing voters who backed him last time around but may be taking a look at Romney, who showed strength with upscale voters in the Republican primary. National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar recently argued that this is a real vulnerability for Obama:

It’s easy to forget, now that Obama is preaching a populist message on the campaign trail, that a major part of his support came from the very 1 percent that he’s now calling on to pay their fair share in taxes. Obama carried the super-wealthy—those making $200,000 or more a year—with 52 percent of the vote, 17 points more thanJohn Kerry won in 2004. But now surveys show Obama losing significant ground with affluent voters, trailing Romney 49 percent to 43 percent among those making $100,000 or more in the latest Quinnipiac poll—his worst showing among any economic demographic.”

- Alec MacGillis (and a quote from Josh Kraushaar), Is Climate Change A Wedge Issue vs Romney?

Photo courtesy of Earth beat Radio

How far can Romney pivot on immigration?

“Of all the issues on which Mitt Romney will be tempted to execute an “Etch-a-Sketch” moment as he heads into the general election, immigration is the most pressing. Remember, on immigration Romney didn’t just rely on his super PAC to slur his opponents; he identified himself robustly with the nativist strain in the GOP. This worked out fine in the primaries: It helped him snuff the existential threat of Rick Perry’s candidacy, and provided additional fodder for his team’s crucial attack on Newt Gingrich after the South Carolina primary. The general election, though, is a different proposition. With the Hispanic community an increasingly large part of the electorate, Romney will need to campaign for at least some part of the Hispanic vote, and his rhetoric in the past few months doesn’t leave him with many options to do so.”

- Ed Kilgore, How Far Can Romney Pivot on Immigration?

Photo courtesy of csmonitor

Should Obama attack Romney for being hollow or extreme?

“Left without a manufactured scandal or over-hyped gaffe to talk about these past few days, the media circus has turned its attention to matters of a higher order: campaign semiotics. Specifically, the apparent shift in the framing of the Obama campaign’s attacks on Mitt Romney, from casting him as a hollow man who “lacks a core” to casting him as someone who’s been sticking to a conservative, even extreme line for a while now on, among other issues, immigration, women’s health care, and the Ryan budget plan, which he recently declared “marvelous.” Monday, Politico went so far as to divine the big dog’s footprints in this messaging transformation, tracing it back to a meeting that Bill Clinton held with Obama’s top strategists back in November—“A more effective strategy, Clinton has told anyone who would listen, would be to focus almost exclusively on Romney’s description of himself as a ‘severe conservative,’ to deny him any chance to tack back to the center, according to three Democrats close to the situation.””

- Alec MacGillis, A False Choice For Obama’s Anti-Romney Message

Photo courtesy of seattlepi

Are swing voters as crucial as they are made out to be?

“The important factor is not where voters’ inclinations started out, but the fact that their inclinations were changed at all. The act of persuading a swing voter has traditionally been thought of as moving a given voter from more likely to vote against a given candidate to more likely to vote for him—say from 55 percent likely to vote against to 55 percent likely to vote for. But it could also mean moving that voter from somewhat likely to vote for a candidate to very likely to support that candidate (say from 55 percent likelihood to 65 percent)—or, for that matter, from very likely to almost certain (65 percent to 75 percent). All three of these examples are mathematically equivalent—and it makes sense to think of them all as swing voters.”

- Rut Teixeira, Why There Are Many More Swing Voters Than You Think

Photo courtesy of Flickr

“Well, I have to go learn a bunch of peoples names before I fire them.”

-TNR Staff, Who Said It: ‘Mad Men’ Character or GOP Candidate?

After Rick Santorum’s dual-state, Southern victory last night, the two-candidate race has finally arrived.  But, is Santorum in position to take away Mitt Romney’s chance at clinching enough delegates for the Republican nomination?

Or, have Republicans already squandered their chance to go after the front-runner on the single most troubling issue of his candidacy, health care?

“That the GOP field had somehow overlooked these smoking guns for months was only the latest turn in the campaign’s most confounding subplot. Back when the contest began last year, many pundits seized on health care as the one Romney liability that spelled certain doom for him. After all, the Romney plan contained the genetic code for Barack Obama’s health care bill, an achievement Republicans now equate with civilizational decline. Yet Romney’s rivals never managed to turn this defect into a disqualifying indictment. It was an astonishing whiff, and Romney wouldn’t be on the verge of the nomination without it.”

— Noam Scheiber “Lucky Run: How Mitt Romney’s Opponents Missed Their Shot,” from the April 5, 2012 issue of the magazine.

Photo courtesy of Politico.