January 31^st

 

The big political news of the last few days is Mitt Romney’s withdrawal from the 2016 Presidential race. Romney was a one term governor of Massachusetts and declined to run again. His poll numbers for re-election were not encouraging but he gave other reasons. He claims that this withdrawal was done to allow fresh faces to emerge. Well, maybe: it is certainly a slap at Jeb Bush who is not a fresh face. Jeb did not support Mitt in Florida when he campaigned there in 2012 so Romney is happy to poke back at Jeb ever so gently.

Romney would have brought a ton of baggage to his new campaign from his last one and maybe he thought that load would be too heavy to carry. Mitt’s new and gentler look included concern for the middle class and the poor, a far cry from his 47 percent speech. That speech surreptitiously recorded was, among other gaucheries, very likely to have cost him the last election. Romney claimed that 47 percent of Americans paid no federal income taxes and that these people would not vote for him because he had nothing to offer them, that they were supported by federal government hand-outs and so would prefer the status quo. He had some other insulting things to say about them as well. All of which played very well to the $50,000 a plate donor dinner to which he was speaking but not at all to the typical American voter.

Romney is right. It is true the about 47 percent of American tax units pay no taxes and it is probably true that most of these Americans would not vote for him. However, according to the tax policy center many of these non-tax payers simply did not earn enough to pay federal income taxes. They include the elderly, those with many exemptions as well as the working poor. It is also true that 78,000 filers with incomes between $200,000 and $500,000 paid no federal income taxes either. I’ll bet Mitt got most of them.