Do the math

Republicans had a rough weekend for two main reasons. First, their numbers don’t add up. Second, most Americans disagree with Republican proposals, once the details are presented.

It was a rough weekend for the Republican presidential ticket….

Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney were battered yesterday on the usually pretty-soft Sunday talk shows. How rough was it? As I worked out at the gym this morning, I watched Donald Trump lambaste NBC’s painfully moderate David Gregory as a virtually paid advocate for President Obama. Across the bottom was the headline: “Do the math.”

Romney and Ryan’s real problem was that they hadn’t done the math themselves, or at least they hadn’t shown their work.

Republicans had a rough weekend for two main reasons. First, their numbers don’t add up. Second, most Americans disagree with Republican proposals to convert Medicare into a premium-support program or to cut taxes on the most affluent. So Republicans propose trillion-dollar changes to American taxation and social insurance, and they hope to run out the clock to November 6 without providing the critical supporting details. It’s not working.

More here.

Author: Harold Pollack

Harold Pollack is Helen Ross Professor of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. He has served on three expert committees of the National Academies of Science. His recent research appears in such journals as Addiction, Journal of the American Medical Association, and American Journal of Public Health. He writes regularly on HIV prevention, crime and drug policy, health reform, and disability policy for American Prospect, tnr.com, and other news outlets. His essay, "Lessons from an Emergency Room Nightmare" was selected for the collection The Best American Medical Writing, 2009. He recently participated, with zero critical acclaim, in the University of Chicago's annual Latke-Hamentaschen debate.

One thought on “Do the math”

  1. Not to harp on the past — although, what else are we supposed to harp on? — but I always thought the one of the biggest tactical missed opportunities of the 2000 election was Bush’s “fuzzy math” shtick in the debates. This was the time for Gore to nail him as a slacker unwilling to do the hard work required to actually govern, and to promise that he always would, personally, “do the math.”

    I don’t think Romney is actually a slacker, he’s just not smart enough or an able enough leader to square Republican orthodoxy with reality (probably no one is). Ryan, on the other hand, is strangely a kind of slacker — a GW Bush who thinks he’s good at math when actually he isn’t.

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