Gop, 2012 Presidential Election | featured news

We’ve hit that moment in the election when people begin to lose their minds. Case in point, within minutes of the jobs report, Twitter filled with Republicans claiming the books were somehow cooked, the numbers aren’t real, etc. Let’s take a deep breath. Jobs reports are about the economy, not about the election. Confusing the two leads to very bad analysis.

Following an unexpectedly strong jobs report Friday showing unemployment falling to 7.8 percent and 114,000 new jobs added, conservative media figures and one prominent business leader quickly latched on to conspiracy theories about the veracity of the numbers. Call it jobs-numbers trutherism. And for the sake of historical record, its origin was a tweet from former General Electric CEO Jack Welch.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has described his disparaging remarks about the 47 percent of Americans who don't pay federal income taxes as "not elegantly stated." Now he's calling them "just completely wrong."

At least 133 residents of a state Senate district there have filed formal complaints with the state, saying they were added to GOP rolls without their knowledge. Aggressive recruitment efforts in one of California's most hotly contested voting districts has created a surge of newly minted Republicans like Marleny Reyes -- except she had no intention of joining the GOP.

Trailing in the must-win state of Ohio, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney asked his running mate Paul Ryan to meet him here this week. After 24 days apart, Romney and Ryan reunited on an airport tarmac on Tuesday amid grumbling from some Republicans that the campaign has grown complacent, leaving Ryan, its strongest advocate, off the national stage.

Conservatives had hoped that Mitt Romney’s choice of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (Wis.) as his running mate would make Romney act more like Ryan — bold, specific, confident.

...The Romneys gave $4.1 million to charity, but only took a deduction of 2.5 million of that in order to make sure their tax rate stayed above 14 percent... If he loses, he might be able to file an amended return and claim those deductions anyway.

Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, paid $1.94 million in federal income taxes on 2011 income of $13.7 million, most of it from investments, for an effective tax rate of 14.1 percent, his campaign said Friday.

After dominating the fundraising race for much of the summer, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney started the fall campaign sprint with a little more than $50 million available to spend and a large loan to repay, campaign-finance reports filed Thursday show.

Now, at least, there can be no doubt about who is waging class warfare in this presidential campaign. Mitt Romney would pit the winners against the “victims,” the smug-and-rich against the down-on-their-luck, the wealthy tax avoiders against those too poor to owe income tax. He sees nearly half of all Americans as chumps who sit around waiting for a handout.