• Candidates back on the trail following Florida debate
• Romney paid 15% tax over last two years
• Gingrich accused of "working as an influence peddler"
• Obama to give State of Union speech
• Follow live updates here
You can view, and scroll through, Mitt Romney's full 2011 tax return here – his 2010 one should be up soon too.
It's all Newt today... In response to NBC asking audience members to pipe down during Monday's debate – and Gingrich's subsequently more subdued performance than when he was wiping the floor with John King on CNN – Salon ponders whether the former speaker is *actually* any good at debating:
In both debates last week, he fed off the live audience's energy and earned repeated ovations by channeling its hostility toward Williams and King, and the "liberal media" in general. As he went along, his confidence and creativity seemed to grow — his campaign ended spinning part of his anti-Williams riff into a television ad – and his performances were crucial to the sudden surge that culminated in Saturday's rout.But on Monday, there was no energy in the hall for Gingrich to feed off of, and no one on the media panel willing to step up and play his foil. From the very beginning, his responses were jarringly flat and unfocused. When an unusually sharp and focused Mitt Romney came after him hard in the debate's early minutes, Gingrich seemed unsure how – or even whether – to engage him. And when Romney dismantled Gingrich's defense of his lucrative Freddie Mac work like a seasoned prosecutor, the normally loquacious former speaker was literally left speechless.
The rest of the night wasn't actually that bad for Gingrich. Romney mostly let up on the attacks and the debate moved on to a series of policy questions – Castro (of course), Terri Schiavo (still?), the space program, Iran, immigration, and taxes. Gingrich scored his share of points, as did Romney, and the result after the opening dust-up was probably a draw.
Which might be good enough for another candidate, but Gingrich has made his supposedly peerless debating skills the centerpiece of his pitch to Republican primary voters. His most oft-repeated promise on the campaign trail is to challenge Obama to seven, three-hour "Lincoln-Douglas" debates. "I'd let him use a Teleprompter," Gingrich blusters. "I'll just rely on knowledge."
Newt Gingrich has threatened to pull out of future debates unless the audience are free to applaud.
In last night's debate, NBC asked audience members to save applause for the ad breaks. It changed the dynamic of the debate significantly, and it meant that Gingrich was unable to bounce off applause lines, in a way that boosted his performance in previous debates.
He complained about the rule in an interview on Fox and Friends this morning, turning it into one of his familiar anti-media tirades, arguing that it was anti-free speech.
Yeah, I wish in retrospect I'd protested with Brian Williams and took him out of it, because I think it's wrong. And I think he took them out of it because the media's terrified that the audience is going to side with the candidates against the media, which is what they've done in every debate.
We're going to serve notice on future debates. We're just not going to allow that to happen. That's wrong, the media doesn't control free speech, people ought to be allowed to applaud if they want to. That's just silly.
Thanks to Mediaite for the transcript.
Former president Bartlet is up to mischief:
The median gross income in 2010 was $33,048. Mitt Romney makes that in a day.
— Josiah Bartlet (@Pres_Bartlet) January 24, 2012
Does the Washington Post hate Newt Gingrich? Eric Randall at the Atlantic Wire notes that the paper's editorial page slams the former speaker today... and not for the first time:
Last month, The Washington Post editorial page raised a few eyebrows when four columnists wrote harsh critiques of Newt Gingrich in a single day, making for, in the words of Ben Smith "the maximum Newt hate a newspaper can fit into a single page." Well, in Tuesday's paper, the Post has done it again! Four of five columns on page A19 of Tuesday's paper are about Gingrich, and none of the columnists have very nice things to say.
More on the Romney pre-buttal from Chris McGreal, from the scene in Florida.
Romney has accused Obama of overseeing three years of "debt and decline" in his "prebuttal" to the president's state of the nation address tonight.
"Three years ago, we measured candidate Obama by his hopeful promises and his slogans. Today, President Obama has amassed an actual record of debt, decline and disappointment," Romney said in the speech in an abandoned warehouse belonging to a company that was closed by the recession in 2008.
"This president's agenda made these troubled times last longer. Instead of solving the housing crisis and getting Americans back to work, President Obama has been building a European style welfare state."
Standing under a banner - Obama Isn't Working - expropriated and adapted from Margaret Thatcher's successful 1979 election campaign ("Labour isn't working"), Romney honed in on the economic crisis that is Obama's weakest spot.
"The unemployed won't get tickets to to sit next to the first lady. Instead tonight the president will do what he does best. He'll give a nice speech full of memorable phrases. But he won't give you the hard numbers like 9.9% unemployment in Florida. Or 25%. That's the number of foreclosed homes in America that are here in Florida," he said.
Romney said that he expects Obama to blame a "do nothing Congress", with the House of Representatives under Republican control, for the his administration's failure to revive the economy. But, Romney said, for two years Obama's own party controlled both houses of Congress and he did little.
"Did he fix the economy? No. Did he tackle the housing crisis? No," he said. Romney said that instead Obama spent trillions of dollars on economic stimulus, passed expensive health care reforms and took over car manufacturers.
"He spearheaded one of the largest expansions of government in American history. And he's paying for all that with money he's borrowed from China. "He believes the party of big government," Romney said. "He's wrong, we're right."
Mitt Romney is in Florida, giving a pre-buttal to Barack Obama's State of the Union speech tonight, sticking it to the president over taking on more debt to hasten recovery.
"Obama says 'We can't wait'," Romney says. "To which I say; 'Yes we can'." Wag.
"What's critical is that we make today Barack Obama's last state of the union address," Romney continues. Wild cheers.
Why's everyone so up in arms about Romney's taxes anyway? It's a question of time, according to Buzzfeed:
Romney's problem isn't necessarily that he's rich -- we knew that -- or even his low rate. Democratic nominee John Kerry, after all, paid a similar rate on his own investment-based income in 2004. He also has some reasonable comebacks to Newt Gingrich on the issue: Gingrich would, Romney noted last night, have Romney paying no taxes at all under his abolition of the capital gains tax; and Gingrich, though he has disclosed his personal returns, has yet to disclose the returns of his company -- something that could raise new questions if disclosure fever spreads.
The real problem for Romney is simply time. He needs to turn the momentum in Florida by retaking control of the conversation, and by focusing -- this, at least, is the plan -- on Newt Gingrich's flaws. And with just a week before the primary, he's running out of time.
The New York Times has four reporters live blogging Mitt Romney's tax returns. Yep.
As the Times's deputy political editor Paul Volpe tweets, however, it's more interesting than it sounds.
Findings thus far include:
• Far from being a member of the 1%, it turns out Romney is actually a member of the 0.006%.
• Romney earned over $600,000 in author/speaking fees across 2010 and 2011. Recently he said he didn't earn "very much" from such engagements.
Rick Santorum criticised Mitt Romney this morning, accusing him of "over the top" attacks on Newt Gingrich in last night's debate.
The Hill have the transcript from the Fox News exchange:
CARLSON: Is Newt Gingrich correct when he says that Mitt Romney's attacks against him last night were lies?
SANTORUM: Well, I think some of them were over-the-top. To suggest that Newt was a lobbyist when, in fact, he was not technically a lobbyist, that's just factually incorrect, and there is a difference between someone who does consulting for a company and someone who actually goes out and actively lobbies. So that was wrong.
There's been one poll released so far today, with Public Policy Polling's effort [opens] showing Newt Gingrich 5 points ahead of Mitt Romney. PPP has Gingrich at 38% with Romney on 33%. Santorum and Paul are a long way back on 13% and 10% respectively, with a margin of error of +/-3.2%.
Gingrich has gained 12 points since a PPP poll conducted in Florida a week ago. Romney has dropped 8 points. Paul and Santorum have pretty much remained in place. Their favorability numbers show similar trendlines. Gingrich's has increased 8 points from +15 (51/36) to +23 (57/34). Meanwhile Romney's has declined 13 points from +44 (68/24) to +31 (61/30).
PPP reckon that if Santorum drops out before the vote a week today, Gingrich will see most benefit.
"His voters prefer Gingrich over Romney 50-23, and in a field where he's no
longer a candidate Newt's lead expands to 43-36."
Two polls released yesterday had Gingrich 9% and 8% ahead of Romney, according to Real Clear Politics' Florida polling chart.
A week ago Romney was 24 points ahead in a CNN/Time poll. A week's a long time in politics, I reckon.
Good morning, and welcome to our live coverage of the primary campaign.
The candidates are continuing to jostle in Florida today, after a debate last night during which Mitt Romney stuck it to Newt Gingrich over the former speaker's sacking for unethical behaviour.
Romney accused Gingrich of "working as an influence peddler", the Guardian's Chris McGreal wrote, drawing attention to his $300,000 fine for ethical violations, and challenging Gingrich's denials that he was a lobbyist for Freddie Mac.
"The speaker was given an opportunity to be the leader of our party in 1994 and at the end of four years he had to resign in disgrace," said Romney. "In the 15 years after he left the speakership, the speaker has been working as an influence peddler in Washington."
Gingrich released his $1.6m contract with Freddie Mac, the mortgaging outfit accused of funding the housing bubble, before the debate, claiming he was paid to advise the company as a historian – a claim met with derision from Romney.
The former Massachusetts governor is facing his own controversy, however, with his tax returns revealing that he paid just 15% tax on his $45m income over the last two years.
Chris McGreal said that during Tuesday's Republican debate, shortly before his returns were made public, Romney offered up a defence.
"I pay all the taxes that are legally required and not a dollar more," he said. "I don't think you want someone as the candidate for president who pays more taxes than he owes."
But he recognised that it could be a political problem.
"You'll see how complicated taxes can be. And will there be discussion? Sure. Will it be an article? Yeah. But is it entirely legal and fair? Absolutely. I'm proud of the fact that I pay a lot of taxes," he said.
It's Adam Gabbatt here, masquerading as Richard Adams while he gets some much needed R&R.