Reporting on Mitt Romney in October

According to reporting by The Nation, Mitt Romney and his wife benefited to the tune of millions of dollars through the auto industry bailout that he railed against.

According to Forbes, there is so much that Romney has not shared about how he would like to see the $5 trillion tax cut he has proposed be paid for that it is nearly impossible to draw many conclusions. Romney has insisted that the numbers work, yet he has yet to show how. Maybe he hopes that the numbers will materialize and his proposed tax cut, if enacted, would be paid for and would not blow an enormous hole in the budgetary deficit. Unfortunately, hope is not a strategy.

According to NPR, Romney has repeatedly talked about how he has worked effectively with a Democratic-majority legislature in Massachusetts while he was governor of that state. However, in reality, he vetoed more than 800 pieces of legislation that were presented to him for his signature, and the Democratic-majority legislature overrode by vote over 700 of those bills. Is this what “working well with those across the aisle” looks like?

According to the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC, the Romney campaign frequently uses a specific technique to help manage its communications: Romney says something that sounds very much unlike him, and that may directly contradict something he has said before, and that is often very hard to believe him saying, in order to get the quote reported. Then later, his campaign staff quietly comes out and “corrects” or “clarifies” what he said. He and his campaign have done this particular two-step many times.

At the first of three Presidential Debates held in October 2012, as reported by Forbes, when asked what he would do to improve the deficit, Mitt Romney said he would cut funding to PBS. That was the only specific step he said he would recommend taking to improve the deficit. Who knew it was so easy?

By the way, “PBS is not primarily funded through federal tax dollars. In contrast, it’s largely supported by, well, viewers like you (sound familiar?). Almost 60% of funding for public television comes from private donors or grants.