Boehner Tells House G.O.P. to Fall in Line

WASHINGTON — On a conference call with House Republicans a day after the party’s electoral battering last week, Speaker John A. Boehner dished out some bitter medicine, and for the first time in the 112th Congress, most members took their dose.

Their party lost, badly, Mr. Boehner said, and while Republicans would still control the House and would continue to staunchly oppose tax rate increases as Congress grapples with the impending fiscal battle, they had to avoid the nasty showdowns that marked so much of the last two years.

Members on the call, subdued and dark, murmured words of support — even a few who had been a thorn in the speaker’s side for much of this Congress.

It was a striking contrast to a similar call last year, when Mr. Boehner tried to persuade members to compromise with Democrats on a deal to extend a temporary cut in payroll taxes, only to have them loudly revolt.

With President Obama re-elected and Democrats cementing control of the Senate, Mr. Boehner will need to capitalize on the chastened faction of the House G.O.P. that wants to cut a deal to avert sudden tax increases and across-the-board spending cuts in January that could send the economy back into recession. After spending two years marooned between the will of his loud and fractious members and the Democratic Senate majority, the speaker is trying to assert control, and many members seem to be offering support.

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Romney Avoids 15 years of Taxes via Loophole Cutting Mormon Donations

In 1997, Congress cracked down on a popular tax shelter that allowed rich people to take advantage of the exempt status of charities without actually giving away much money.

Individuals who had already set up these vehicles were allowed to keep them. That included Mitt Romney, then the chief executive officer of Bain Capital, who had just established such an arrangement in June 1996.

The charitable remainder unitrust, as it is known, is one of several strategies Romney has adopted over his career to reduce his tax bill. While Romney’s tax avoidance is legal and common among high-net-worth individuals, it has become an issue in the campaign. President Barack Obama attacked him in their second debate for paying “lower tax rates than somebody who makes a lot less.”

In this instance, Romney used the tax-exempt status of a charity — the Mormon Church, according to a 2007 filing — to defer taxes for more than 15 years. At the same time he is benefitting, the trust will probably leave the church with less than what current law requires, according to tax returns obtained by Bloomberg this month through a Freedom of Information Act request.

In general, charities don’t owe capital gains taxes when they sell assets for a profit. Trusts like Romney’s permit funders to benefit from that tax-free treatment, said Jonathan Blattmachr, a trusts and estates lawyer who set up hundreds of such vehicles in the 1990s.
Near Zero

“The main benefit from a charitable remainder trust is the renting from your favorite charity of its exemption from taxation,” Blattmachr said. Despite the name, giving a gift or getting a charitable deduction “is just a throwaway,” he said. “I used to structure them so the value dedicated to charity was as close to zero as possible without being zero

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Ground Game: Obama Campaign Opens Up a Big Lead in Field Offices

Beyond the presidential debates, one final factor matters more than all the rest in a close race: ground game.Obama Opens Up Big Lead

It’s the ability to get your voters to the polls—a way of moving soft support into actual votes.

Field operatives have been undervalued in recent years, as the focus of campaigns has shifted to big-money ad-bombs, compounded by the super-PAC economy. But this presidential campaign is going to come down to a few percentage points in a half dozen states, and suddenly ground game is about to get a lot of respect.

So The Daily Beast decided to map out the Obama and Romney local headquarters across the country as one way of gauging the strength of each campaign’s ground game. And what we found was an overwhelming advantage—755 to 283—by the Obama campaign on at least this one metric.

In the key swing states of this election the numbers are stark:

In Ohio, 122 Obama local HQs compared to 40 for Romney.

In Florida, the Obama campaign has 102 local HQs versus 48 for Romney.

And in Virginia, a more even split—47 for Obama compared to 29 for Romney.

Within these swing states, the placement of these volunteer field offices is predictably stacked in populous swing counties like Hamilton and Stark in Ohio. But the Obama team’s numeric advantage allows them to place local offices in even more rural, red-leaning counties like Union, Muskingum, or Pickaway, which they lost even in the 2008 landslide.

The second tier of swing states also shows the Obama team’s focus on ground game—Iowa, in particular, is shaping up to be a must-win for Obama, and his campaign boasts 66 HQs in the state, compared to just 13 for the Romney campaign. Colorado has 61 Obama offices compared to 14 for Romney. And Paul Ryan’s home state of Wisconsin has 68 Obama HQs as opposed to 24 for the Romney-Ryan ticket.

“If this comes down to a 3 or 4 point race—which it looks like it will—ground game will matter.” says Ed Rollins, who ran Ronald Reagan’s landslide 1984 campaign. “And the Obama campaign has invested millions in ground game, going back to a foundation they built in 2008.”

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Lobbyists ready for a comeback under Romney

President Barack Obama’s gone further than any president to keep lobbyists out of the White House — even signing executive orders to do it.

Industry insiders believe that Mitt Romney will unshackle the revolving door and give lobbyists a shot at the government jobs their Democratic counterparts have been denied for the past four years, a dozen Republican lobbyists said in conversations with POLITICO.

“I’ve heard they are likely not to black ball anybody from any particular sector,” said Republican lobbyist Sam Geduldig at Clark, Lytle & Geduldig. “I assume, everyone is welcome to apply. I’m sure they are interested in getting the best people possible.”

Allowing lobbyists back into the White House could be a PR nightmare early on in a new administration, some Republicans fear. Romney would have to toss out Obama’s orders, which shook up how President George W. Bush did business and let Obama claim his agenda wouldn’t be hijacked by special interests.

Sources close to Romney’s campaign say there has been no official word from the campaign on what the rules about lobbyists in the administration will be. And Romney himself has said nothing definitive on the trail about the issue.

But there are clear signs that lobbyists could be back in the executive branch.

Some of the highest-level positions in a potential Romney administration are expected be filled by former lobbyists and Washington insiders. Health care consultant Mike Leavitt, who served as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency for Bush, is leading Romney’s transition effort. He’s considered a shoo-in for either White House chief of staff or Treasury Secretary. Campaign spokesman Kevin Madden, of JDAFrontline, is expected to get the job of White House spokesman.

Other senior campaign advisers are former lobbyists, as well, including Ron Kaufman, a former lobbyist at Dutko Worldwide, and Drew Maloney, who left Ogilvy Government Relations to lead Romney’s congressional outreach. Romney’s campaign has also relied heavily on K Streeters to organize high-dollar fundraisers, including David Tamasi of Rasky Baerlein Strategic Communications, Jack Gerard of the American Petroleum Institute, Wayne Berman and Mark Isakowitz of Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock.

A Romney spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment.

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Romney’s Unraveling Claim That Six Studies Validate His Tax Plan

In response to the persistent and substantial questions about the math of his tax plan not adding up, Mitt Romney and his campaign frequently argue that six independent studies back him up by ratifying the arithmetic of the centerpiece of his domestic agenda.

But the talking point about the talking point is unraveling.

More and more mainstream from outlets are pointing out that they fail to validate its soundness. And on Sunday Romney senior adviser Ed Gillespie was challenged on Fox News by Chris Wallace, who questioned whether the studies are really nonpartisan.

“Those are very questionable. Some of them are blogs. Some of them are from the AEI [American Enterprise Institute], which is hardly an independent group,” Wallace said. “One of them is from a guy who is — a blog from a guy who was a top adviser to George W. Bush. These are hardly nonpartisan studies.”

“These are very credible sources,” Gillespie said.

Of the six studies, two are blog posts by the conservative American Enterprise Institute; one is a report by the Republican-friendly Heritage Foundation; one is a paper by Princeton professor and former George W. Bush adviser Harvey Rosen; the fifth and sixth are a paper and Wall Street Journal op-ed by Harvard economist Martin Feldstein, an adviser to the Romney campaign.

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Why Romney keeps lying about Obama and welfare

By Jamelle Bouie

It’s been three weeks since Mitt Romney first took fire for asserting that the Obama administration “gutted” work requirements in welfare. When the first ad was released, PolitiFact took the lead in debunking its claim that under Obama’s plan, “they just send you your welfare check,” giving it the highest rating of “Pants on Fire.” FactCheck.org followed suit, and the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler offered a similar denunciation, giving the ad “four Pinnochios.”

But this didn’t deter the Romney campaign. The following week, they released another ad using a similar message. Independent observers again hit Romney’s dishonesty, and a key Republican architect of welfare reform said that “there’s no plausible scenario under which [the change] really constitutes a serious attack on welfare reform.”

If anything, Obama has strengthened the requirements; in his book “The New New Deal,” Michael Grunwald describes a $1.3 billion program that helped states give work to more welfare recipients. It was lauded by governors on both sides, but was eventually killed by congressional Republicans eager to land a blow on Obama.

It’s almost certain that Team Romney has heard these complaints, and just doesn’t care about them. Not only has Romney made this a key part of his stump speech — promising to “return work to welfare”— but this morning, he released yet another ad making the same claims:

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Paul Ryan no help to Mitt Romney with Hispanics

Mitt Romney is on track to lose the Latino vote by a wider margin than any Republican presidential candidate inover a decade, and strategists in both parties say he may have made a bad situation worse with his selection of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate.

What’s clear is that Romney’s lagging fortunes among Hispanics are unlikely to receive any boost from choosing a vice presidential candidate who has voted in Congress against the DREAM Act and supports overhauling entitlement programs that are extremely popular among Latino voters.

The Republican ticket’s dire position among Latinos has even stirred some hope among Democrats — and apprehension among some Republicans — that back-to-back smashing victories by President Barack Obama could move Latino voters in the Democratic column in a more durable way that could put the GOP at an electoral disadvantage for decades.

That’s an alarming prospect to GOP strategists who have seen their party driven to near extinction in states like California, where strident anti-immigration voices have turned the Latino vote away from Republicans, maybe for good. Even as Republicans have succeeded in electing more prominent Latino politicians, such as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval and New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, they continue to lose ground in the battle for Latino voters nationally.

“There is no issue that is more alarming for the future national viability of the Republican Party than this one,” said Steve Schmidt, who managed John McCain’s 2008 campaign. “The precipitous drop in the support levels for Republicans is alarming because it indicates that more and more Hispanics are simply disqualifying from consideration anyone with an ‘R’ next to their name.”

Obama’s lead over Romney among Hispanic voters in national polling hovers around and even above the 40 percent mark. Last month, a Latino Decisions survey showed Obama touching 70 percent of the vote and leading by 48 points. An NBC/Wall Street Journal/Telemundo poll conducted in late July found Obama taking 67 percent of Latinos to Romney’s 23 percent. The POLITICO/George Washington University Battleground Poll published Monday placed that lead at 62 percent to 26 percent.

In other words, Obama’s commanding lead has not diminished and may be cemented in place. Univision anchor Jorge Ramos framed the Republican dilemma in a tweet after Ryan was announced as Romney’s ticket mate: “?How can [Paul Ryan] attract the Hispanic vote? If Republicans don’t get a third of the Latino vote they won’t get the White House back.”

The selection of a vice president could have been an opportunity to shake up the state of the race among Latino voters, but few in either party think Ryan is a running mate who will accomplish that goal.

Ryan has the potential to be an appealing figure for some of the culturally conservative, family- and business-oriented sectors of the electorate, including Latinos. He’s a young, Catholic family man who’s as free market as they come.

He’s also a member of a Republican Congress that many Latinos view as a hostile entity. Latino Decisions found that by a 51-point margin, Latinos oppose cuts to Medicare — an even wider margin than the electorate at large, according to some polls. A footnote to his career that could harm him with Cuban-Americans in particular: In 2009, Ryan expressed skepticism about the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, though he has since revised that stance

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USAT/Gallup Poll: Paul Ryan gets low marks for VP

Americans don’t believe GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney hit a home run with his choice of Paul Ryan as a running mate, a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, with more of the public giving him lower marks than high ones.

Ryan, a Wisconsin congressman, is seen as only a “fair” or “poor” choice by 42% of Americans vs. 39% who think he is an “excellent” or “pretty good” vice presidential choice.

Romney pollster Neil Newhouse said in a statement that the findings reflect the fact that Ryan, a House member since 1999, isn’t widely known.

USA TODAY/Gallup Polls of registered voters after the announcements of running mates since Dick Cheney in 2000 all showed more positive reactions. Only Dan Quayle in a 1988 Harris Poll of likely voters was viewed less positively than Ryan, with 52% rating Quayle as a “fair” or “poor” vice presidential choice. The Ryan poll includes all adults, not just registered voters.

Since Romney introduced Ryan as his running mate on Saturday, Democrats have set out to portray the House Budget Committee chairman as an extremist for his plans to revamp Medicare. President Obama called Ryan an “articulate spokesman” for “a vision I fundamentally disagree with.”

“All these numbers indicate is the simple fact that Congressman Paul Ryan was not a nationally known figure prior to being named as Gov. Romney’s vice-presidential pick,” Newhouse said. “Congressman Ryan’s selection reinforces the seriousness of the issues that will be debated in this election and President Obama’s failure to get Americans back to work and his inability to strengthen the middle class.”

The poll also finds 17% of adults say they’re more likely to vote for Romney in November because Ryan is his running mate — about the same impact Palin had for John McCain four years ago among registered voters.

Republicans, however, see the appeal in Ryan, who was hailed this weekend as a bold, innovative thinker by party stalwarts. The poll finds 36% of Republicans are now more likely to vote for Romney. In 2008, only 3 in 10 Republicans said the choice of Palin made them more likely to vote for McCain.

The USA TODAY/Gallup survey also finds 48% of Americans view Ryan as qualified to be president if something should happen to Romney, while 29% do not and 23% were undecided. Only Palin, then the governor of Alaska, and Quayle, a two-term senator from Indiana, were rated lower than Ryan.

The poll of 1,006 adults was taken on Sunday. It has a margin of error of +/- 4 percentage points.

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Michael Tomasky on the (Possible) Coming Obama Landslide

Liberals don’t want to jinx it. It terrifies the right. And the press would prefer a nail-biter. But the fact is that finding Romney’s path to victory is getting harder every day.

Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney addresses supporters as he campaigns during a town hall forum at the American Legion Post 109 on March 21, 2012 in Arbutus, Maryland. (Patrick Smith / Getty Images)

There’s a secret lurking behind everything you’re reading about the upcoming election, a secret that all political insiders know—or should—but few are talking about, most likely because it takes the drama out of the whole business. The secret is the electoral college, and the fact is that the more you look at it, the more you come to conclude that Mitt Romney has to draw an inside straight like you’ve never ever seen in a movie to win this thing. This is especially true now that it seems as if Pennsylvania isn’t really up for grabs. Romney’s paths to 270 are few.

First, let’s discuss Pennsylvania. There has been good reason for Democrats to sweat this state. True, Obama won it handily in 2008, by 10 points. But it’s a state that is older and whiter and more working-class than most of America. Obama benefited from all the unique circumstances of 2008 that helped him across the country, but if ever there were a state where the “well, we gave the black guy a chance and he blew it” meme might catch on, it’s the Keystone State.

But the jobless rate there is 7.5 percent, well below the national average. Democratic voter registration has held its own. The Philly suburbs have grown. And this odious voter ID law is facing meaningful challenges. A hearing on the law’s validity has just been concluded. A state judge says he’ll rule on the law’s constitutionality the week of Aug. 13. It sounds as if the law’s opponents made a stronger case at the hearing than its supporters. In any case, the losing side will appeal to the state Supreme Court.

But whatever happens with that law, Pennsylvania has been trending back toward Obama lately. He now holds a lead there of nearly seven points, and he’s close to 50. And as I wrote the other day, Nate Silver now gives Barack Obama a slightly better chance of winning Montana than he does Romney of winning Pennsylvania. That tells you something.

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Neighbor who defended Zimmerman in interviews arrested on DUI charge

Frank Taaffe, the neighbor and friend of George Zimmerman who has at times been his most vocal supporter, was arrested on Friday on a charge of driving under the influence, records show.

Taaffe was arrested by police in Lake Mary. He has often been a figure in the controversy surrounding Zimmerman’s shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin Feb. 26 in Sanford.