Is Anyone Going to Pay Attention to Mitt Romney's Actual Proposals?

Look, I know that Americans (and probably everyone else too) tend to vote for politicians based on optics, style, empty rhetoric, etc.  Most people just don't have the time or inclination to dive deep into policy substance.

But there's usually some level of substance.  We understand that Republicans want lower taxes and Democrats want more services for the poor, for example.  But when it comes to actual tax policy, Mitt Romney does have a plan.  This is from his official campaign website:

Make permanent, across-the-board 20 percent cut in marginal rates

Maintain current tax rates on interest, dividends, and capital gains

Eliminate taxes for taxpayers with AGI below $200,000 on interest, dividends, and capital gains

Eliminate the Death Tax

Repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT)

He also writes about the need to close loopholes and simplify the tax code, and on the campaign trail he stresses that he'll make his plan revenue neutral.  Remember, Republicans also hate deficits now that they're in the minority, and obviously if they cut tax revenues that will increase the deficit.

But now a study has come out that analyzes the Romney plan, and finds that his numbers don't add up.  Basically, if you cut marginal rates by 20%, and cut corporate taxes too (which is also part of his platform), then it's impossible to make up the difference by closing loopholes, even if you close every possible deduction there is.  So this plan will lead to tax hikes somewhere else (perhaps on the poor and middle class- after all Republicans have been protesting about the 45% of Americans who don't pay federal income tax- they want everyone to have "skin in the game"), or it will lead to even higher deficits.  Based on recent history, my money is on deficits.

The thing is, polling on these topics reveals that Americans don't support plans like this- people want taxes on the rich to go up, not down.  But it doesn't seem to matter- lots of them are voting for Romney anyway.  I think that if the Republicans win in November, they're going to pass some version of their plans, and lots of people are going to wish they had paid more attention to the details.

Kevin Drum, on this subject, has this to say:

At this point, President Obama's problem is trying to get people to believe that Romney actually supports a plan that's so outlandishly friendly to the rich. When the Priorities USA Super PAC tried to inform voters about Paul Ryan's similar plan, Robert Draper reports that "the respondents simply refused to believe any politician would do such a thing." And Romney, of course, will hide behind the fact that he himself hasn't endorsed any particular basket of tax increases to make up for his rate cuts, so the Brookings analysis is just guesswork.
Still, it's the most sympathetic analysis possible. Any other basket of credits and deductions would make things even better for the wealthy and even worse for the non-wealthy. It might be, in Jon Chait's words, cartoonishly evil to think that any politician would actually propose such a plan, but Romney has done exactly that. The only question is whether anyone can make the voters believe it.