Juicy piece in Politico Monday morning about how social conservatives aren't about to roll over and accept gay marriage. Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum chimed in with the usual "we lost because McCain and Romney were moderates" nonsense, but buried in the piece was this nugget from Gary Bauer.

Social conservatives are particularly — and understandably — bothered that the elites rarely want to discuss the elephant in the room: that the party’s economic policies don’t necessarily appeal to the the rank and file, who vote Republican because it is the party of traditional values.

“If we gave our voters an accurate portrayal of our ideas, that we want to cut the rate of growth on Social Security, give tax cuts to billionaires and then the values issues, the values issues would be more popular than the economic agenda of the current Republican Party,” said Bauer, citing particularly those Mass-attending Roman Catholics who have fled the Democrats.

Bauer added, “I would caution the donor wing of the Republican Party that is driving a lot of this: If they think social conservatives are the only thing preventing Republicans from winning, they’ll learn that their economic agenda will go down the tubes along with the Republican Party’s prospects.”

Couple of interesting things here.

One, Bauer is accusing the Republican Party of basically lying about it's economic agenda. They've tried to gut social programs under the ridiculous guise of "saving them." Well, Bauer just said, no: they want to cut those programs to shovel free money at billionaires, and that's exactly what the Ryan budgets do.

The second thing is Bauer is right on the unpopularity of this agenda. Most voters don't want Social Security cut, or Medicare for that matter, but they overwhelmingly favor raising taxes on rich people.

Beltway Republicans have convinced themselves that all they need to do is stop bashing gays, immigrants, and women -- and that will fix all their problems. But this analysis totally ignores the fact, as Bauer pointed out, that Americans just aren't buying trickle-down anymore.

The truth will set you free. Unless, that is, you're a Republican and the subject is taxes. As the New York Times reported on Thursday, "The Congressional Research Service has withdrawn an economic report that found no correlation between top tax rates and economic growth, a central tenet of conservative economy theory, after Senate Republicans raised concerns about the paper's findings and wording."

As documented in "15 Things the GOP Doesn't Want You to Know about Taxes and the Debt," virtually every article of conservative faith on tax cuts is demonstrably false. In contrast, what the yanked CRS report had to say on the history of tax cuts, productivity, investment, economic growth and job creation was indisputably true:

Throughout the late-1940s and 1950s, the top marginal tax rate was typically above 90%; today it is 35%. Additionally, the top capital gains tax rate was 25% in the 1950s and 1960s, 35% in the 1970s; today it is 15%. The real GDP growth rate averaged 4.2% and real per capita GDP increased annually by 2.4% in the 1950s. In the 2000s, the average real GDP growth rate was 1.7% and real per capita GDP increased annually by less than 1%.

There is not conclusive evidence, however, to substantiate a clear relationship between the 65-year steady reduction in the top tax rates and economic growth. Analysis of such data suggests the reduction in the top tax rates have had little association with saving, investment, or productivity growth.

However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution. The share of income accruing to the top 0.1% of U.S. families increased from 4.2% in 1945 to 12.3% by 2007 before falling to 9.2% due to the 2007-2009 recession. The evidence does not suggest necessarily a relationship between tax policy with regard to the top tax rates and the size of the economic pie, but there may be a relationship to how the economic pie is sliced.

As the Times reported, Republicans claim to have been irked by the report's use of such terms as "Bush tax cuts" and "tax cuts for the rich." Their real problem, of course, is with the truth.

Now, Republicans have warned for decades that that increasing tax rates on so-called "job creators" will hurt employment and slow economic growth. As it turns out, the economy grew faster and produced more jobs when upper-income tax rates were higher--even much higher--than today.

That record prompted David Leonhardt of the New York Times to ask two years "Why should we believe that extending the Bush tax cuts will provide a big lift to growth?" His answer was unambiguous:

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Imagine if, instead of paying your homeowner's insurance, you raised your kids' allowance. It wouldn't make much sense, would it?

But that's what our local, state and federal politicians have been doing for decades. And because of it, a lot of things that should be fixed in this country, aren't. That's what Grover Norquist meant when he said he wanted to make government small enough to drown it in a bathtub.

He finally got his wish. Hey New York and New Jersey - let's give Grover the credit he so richly deserves!

So here we are, dealing with a weather catastrophe. Was it completely out of our control, or could we have done some things to make it less likely?

Think of all the money we haven't spent, that instead went to tax cuts. Tax cuts are only loans against money needed for our national infrastructure.

All the levees and sea walls that weren't built. The bad roads. The unsafe bridges. The aging urban sewage systems that are only fixed when they break, spilling millions of gallons of water into the streets. Our fuel pipelines are leaking.

It's so bad, it's considered a national security risk.

When I saw those nurses carrying premature babies downstairs after their generator failed, I thought, isn't that something our tax dollars should do -- protect the power supplies of our hospitals? Our high rise housing projects?

Shouldn't our mass transit system be well preserved, instead of nickeled and dimed to death by budget cuts? Instead, we see plans to sell off our parks, our turnpikes, and other important public resources.

Yet we are a country that always has more than enough money for wars, and covert operations, and weapons.

When they tell us they can't pay for the things we do need, what they're saying is they won't. Both parties have bought the Austerity Doctrine and don't even remember how to dream big for America.

Because the fixation on deficits and tax cuts at the expense of reality have made our visions very, very small. Let's not put up with this crap anymore, no matter who wins the election.

On the eve of last week's presidential debate, Republican Mitt Romney floated a trial balloon to deflect public attention from his detail-free tax plan certain to give a massive windfall for the wealthy, burden middle class taxpayers and balloon the national debt. But largely overlooked in his murky and still-to-be defined proposal to put a dollar cap on individual tax deductions is the devastating impact it would have on charitable giving. Combined with his demand to end the estate tax, Romney's plan would choke off donations to America's non-profits, churches and charities.

When President Obama in 2009 proposed raising $318 billion over the next decade by trimming wealthier taxpayers' deductions for charitable giving from 35to 28 percent, Republicans were apoplectic. Then House Minority Leader John Boehner darkly warned the reform would "deliver a sharp blow to charities at a time when they are hurting during the economic downturn." But as Bloomberg and The Chronicle of Philanthropy each explained at the time, Obama's proposal would likely have little to no impact on charitable giving. An analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy put the impact at only 1.9 percent of total donations. Noting that the same upper income 28 percent deduction was in place during Ronald Reagan's first term, then-OMB chief Peter Orszag rightly concluded that "what drives charitable contributions is overall economic growth."

But Governor Romney's proposed cap on individual deductions is another matter altogether. As he explained his new plan conveniently unveiled on the eve of last week's first presidential debate:

"As an option you could say everybody's going to get up to a $17,000 deduction; and you could use your charitable deduction, your home mortgage deduction, or others - your healthcare deduction. And you can fill that bucket, if you will, that $17,000 bucket that way. And higher income people might have a lower number."

Within 24 hours, Romney changed his plan yet again. Once-again side-stepping the question of which tax credits, deductions and loopholes he would end, Romney pulled a new figure out of the air during Wednesday's debate:

"Make up a number, $25,000, $50,000. Anybody can have deductions up to that amount. And then that number disappears for high-income people."

If so, a large source of funding for America's hospitals, museums, institutions of higher education and more might disappear as well.

Currently, only about 30 percent of filers itemize their deductions, which in 2009 averaged over $26,000. But as Ezra Klein explained last week, "80 percent of tax savings from itemization goes to the top 20 percent of Americans households, and 25 percent of the savings goes to the 1 percent." In 2011, the Congressional Budget Office said those making over $500,000 a year gave 3.4 percent of their income to charity. (Individual contributions accounted for $227 billion of the $304 billion raised by charities in 2009.) Romney's proposed cap would have its greatest impact on upper-income, blue state residents, whose larger state and local tax bills and home mortgage interest payments currently provide the biggest sources of deductions. But charitable giving by the wealthiest Americans, like Mitt Romney's own $2.25 million deduction in 2011, could be slashed as well.

Jim Andreoni, a UC San Diego professor of economics who studies the economics of charitable giving, explained why:

"The effect on charitable giving is likely to be large for high income individuals, especially in the short run..."Some deductions are difficult to change, like mortgage interest or property taxes," says Andreoni. "Those will stay fixed for now, and for many high earners will more than use up the $17,000 cap on deductions. By contrast, charitable giving is about the only category of deduction that people can use in the short run to adjust for an increase in taxes. ... [E]ven though both your mortgage and your charitable giving are losing some tax benefits, only your giving can change in the short run to make up part of that loss.

So, high income donors will have two reasons to cut back on giving. First, they are losing after-tax income from deductions on things other than giving and that are hard to adjust, like mortgage interest. Second, giving itself will become far more expensive and is far easier to change than other deductions. It's intuitive to me that charitable giving will take a big hit from the cap on deductions."

(Given his annual 10 percent tithe mandated by his church, Mitt Romney would likely be an exception to the rule. Still, that doesn't make his claim that his charitable contributions make his own paltry tax rate "really closer to 45 or 50 percent" any more true.)

But capping the dollar value of annual deductions isn't the only way Mitt Romney's tax plan would gut charitable giving. As it turns out, Romney's proposal to end the estate tax, a move which would save his heirs $80 million and those of his billionaire backers billions more, would dramatically slow the cash flow to America's non-profits.

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"It is more blessed," Jesus said, "to give than to receive." That may be, but the billionaire backers of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign and Super PAC plan to do both. As they gather this weekend for a three-day Romney conclave in Park City, Utah and a secret Koch brothers summit in San Diego, the deep-pocketed donors and bullish bundlers ultimately hope to shower $1 billion on the Republican nominee. If the captains of industry and finance succeed, they can expect a golden shower of their own in return. After all, Romney has not merely promised to roll back environmental regulations, open federal lands to energy exploration and undo the Dodd-Frank reforms of Wall Street. Just by eliminating the estate tax, President Romney would divert tens of billions of dollars currently destined for the United States Treasury into the bank accounts of the richest families in America.

Despite record high corporate profits, historically low effective upper income tax rates and a stock market which has risen by over half since January 2009, Barack Obama is not enjoying the usual fundraising advantage of incumbency. Nowhere is this more true than on Wall Street. As Politico documented:

Mitt Romney's presidential campaign and the super PAC supporting it are outraising Obama among financial-sector donors $37.1 million to $4.8 million.

Near the front of the pack are 19 Obama donors from 2008 who are giving big to Romney. The 19 have already given $4.8 million to Romney's presidential campaign and the super PAC supporting it through the end of April, according to a POLITICO analysis of Federal Election Commission filings. Four years ago, they gave Obama $213,700. None of them has given a penny to the president's reelection campaign or the super PAC supporting it.

(As the New York Times reported this week, Robert Wolf, one of the few high-profile financiers publicly supporting President Obama, has been "muzzled" by his bosses at UBS.)

The energy industry, too, is proving a gusher for Mitt Romney and his Restore Our Future Super PAC. Hours after being named an oil adviser to the Romney campaign, Harold Hamm of Continental Resources contributed $1 million of his $11 billion net worth to Restore Our Future. Charles and David Koch have pledged $395 million for the 2012 election cycle, which combined with Karl Rove's American Crossroads and Tom Donohue's U.S. Chamber of Commerce could produce a billion-dollar tidal wave of cash to wash Barack Obama out of the White House. (As one Democratic consultant described the operation, "It's just like the Cold War. They're going to force Obama to spend himself into oblivion.")

Others among the usual suspects on the right are opening their vaults as well. Former Newt Gingrich sugar daddy and casino mogul Sheldon Adelson has said his donations could be "limitless" and will likely top $100 million. While billionaire investor and Chicago Cubs owner Joe Ricketts may have abandoned his Jeremiah Wright smear campaign, his is bankrolling other projects including the ersatz documentary based on Dinesh D'Souza's book, "The Roots of Obama's Rage." Meanwhile, Texas billionaire Harold Simmons has already delivered $18.7 million to Republican political organizations, a sum which will likely double by November.

(It is worth noting, as the New Republic and Huffington Post did recently, that many of Mitt Romney's Super PAC donors are embroiled in corporate bribery scandals. Adelson's casinos, the Walton family's Walmart operation in Mexico, Koch Brothers businesses in the Middle East and Meg Whitman's Hewlett Packard are all entangled with alleged violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.)

But Mitt Romney's gilded-class allies won't merely win if he slashes taxes and regulations for their businesses. They will reap a huge return on their multi-million dollar investments from the massive tax cut windfall for the wealthy would-be President Romney has in mind for them.

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Conservatives this week were quick to mock the Obama campaign's "The Life of Julia," an online slideshow highlighting how government investments in education, health care, small business and retirement security help enable the children of working families to climb the ladder of social mobility. Republican critics dismissed that common path to the middle class as the "condescension" of "cradle-to-grave, government-supported existence" supposedly championed by Democrats.

It is only fitting, then, that the Romney campaign offers its alternative vision. So here is "The Life of Mitt," a tale of a winner-take-all America in which government exists to ensure a privileged few stay that way.

Age Minus 9 Months: The son of American Motors magnate and Michigan Governor George Romney, Mitt fondly recalls being with his father for Detroit's Golden Jubilee. That celebration marking the 50th anniversary of the American automobile occurred on June 1, 1946, "fully nine months before Romney was born." Years later, Mitt would similarly "remember" seeing his dad march with Martin Luther King, Jr.

Age 8: Young Mitt Romney is living his American Dream; that is, being born to a father who achieved his own. "Only in America could a man like my dad become governor of the state in which he once sold paint from the trunk of his car." In Michigan, Mitt learned to love cars and trees which were the right height. He also begins to soak up valuable life lessons from his dad, like "Mitt, never get involved in politics if you have to win election to pay a mortgage." As for the millions of Americans unable to pay theirs, Mitt later concluded:

"Don't try and stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom, allow investors to buy homes, put renters in them, fix the homes up and let it turn around and come back up."

Despite his filial devotion, Mitt forgets his father's warning that "rugged individualism" is "nothing but a political banner to cover up greed."

Age 12: After attending a public elementary school, young Mitt is sent to the prestigious Cranbrook School in elegant Bloomfield Hills. This experience leads him to declare he's just "a guy from Detroit," one who happens to support school vouchers and tax breaks for home schooling, while slashing funds for public schools.

While Mitt Romney would certainly never had to worry about "getting a pink slip," he stills gets a chuckle thinking about those who did when his father moved AMC jobs from Michigan to Wisconsin. It's no wonder he chides his former home town in 2008, declaring, "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt."

Age 16: In 1963, Mitt confronts personal tragedy, as "dear, close family relative" Ann Keenan dies as a result of an illegal abortion. As he later explained during a 1994 Senate debate with Ted Kennedy, it was that searing experience which made him a pro-choice Mormon:

"It is since that time that my mother and my family have been committed to the belief that we can believe as we want, but we will not force our beliefs on others on that matter. And you will not see me wavering on that."

Age 19: In 1966, Stanford student Mitt Romney takes part in his only college protest, one in favor of the Vietnam War. But thanks to the generous 4-D exemption from military service, Mitt like many Mormon young men of his age was able to secure multiple deferments in order to perform his church mission. During that two and half year period when other American men were fighting in the rice fields of Vietnam, Romney faced hardships in the vineyards of France. These apparently included pooping in a bucket during his of roughing it in a palatial church mansion in Paris. As he revealed in a 1994 interview with the Boston Herald, Romney was not exactly racked by guilt as the war raged in Southeast Asia:

"Romney, however, acknowledged he did not have any desire to serve in the military during his college and missionary days, especially after he married and became a father," the newspaper wrote. "'I was not planning on signing up for the military,' he said. It was not my desire to go off and serve in Vietnam, but nor did I take any actions to remove myself from the pool of young men who were eligible for the draft. If drafted, I would have been happy to serve, and if I didn't get drafted I was happy to be with my wife and new child.'"

Thirteen years later, candidate Mitt Romney explained he passed on that tradition to his five boys:

"My sons are all adults and they've made decisions about their careers and they've chosen not to serve in the military and active duty and I respect their decision in that regard. One of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping me get elected because they think I'd be a great president."

Age 24: In 1971, Ann and Mitt Romney head to Cambridge, Massachusetts. There, Mitt starts a "terrific" four year program to get his JD and MBA at Harvard Business School, completing both degrees 37 years before accusing Barack Obama of spending too much time in the Harvard faculty lounge. Even with small children and Mitt in school, Ann avoided the "dignity of work" because "Mitt had enough of an investment from stock that we could sell off a little at a time. The stock came from Mitt's father."

That history might explain why Romney offered this advice in March to college students struggling to pay for his education:

"If you can't afford it, scholarships are available, shop around for loans, make sure you go to a place that's reasonably priced, and if you can, think about serving the country 'cause that's a way to get all that education for free."

Pell grants, schmell grants.

In 2012, Mitt tells college students to borrow money from their parents to start a business, advice his son Tagg took to the tune of $10 million.

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Now that the Dow is 60 percent higher than when Obama took office and the jobs picture is getting better every month, Republicans have a problem. They can't simply talk about how terrible the economy is, because all the headlines are saying it's getting better.

So Willard introduced a new twist. The economy is recovering from the Bush/Cheney Recession, he said, but not because of Obama.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said today President Barack Obama’s policies have harmed the U.S. economy, hindered its recovery and may cause damage for years.

“The Obama administration’s assault on our economic freedom is the principal reason why the recovery has been so tepid,” Romney said in a speech at the University of Chicago the day before the Illinois primary, which polls indicate he’s favored to win.

“If we don’t change course now, the assault on freedom could damage our economy and the well-being of American families for decades to come,” he said.

One wonders which "assault" on our "economic freedom" Willard finds most worrisome. Do you think it's the historically-low taxes, the record corporate profits, or the health care law that was modeled after his own, that doesn't take effect until 2014?

At any rate, I'm sure the answer is more tax cuts for rich people. And of course, fewer regulations.

“Day by day, job-killing regulation by regulation, bureaucrat by bureaucrat, he’s crushing the dream and the dreamers,” said Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts and co-founder of the Bain Capital LLC private-equity firm.

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Two weeks ago, Mitt Romney unveiled what he has repeatedly deemed a "bold" plan to deliver a 20 percent across-the-board tax cut. As it turns out, the plan isn't so bold after all. For starters, it's largely a retread of the 15 percent tax cut scheme Bob Dole rode to defeat in 1996. And after a wave of analyses showed Romney's plan would produce oceans of red ink while giving the rich yet another payday courtesy of the U.S. Treasury, Mitt admitted today that his plan "can't be scored" because "I haven't laid out all of the details."

As The Hill reported today, the GOP frontrunner is now essentially claiming he deserves an "A" because the dog ate his homework:

"So I haven't laid out all of the details about how we're going to deal with each deduction, so I think it's kind of interesting for the groups to try and score it, because frankly it can't be scored, because those kinds of details will have to be worked out with Congress, and we have a wide array of options."

As Ezra Klein's Wonkblog rightly concluded:

"Let's be clear on this: A tax plan that can't be scored because it doesn't include sufficient details is not a plan. It's a gesture towards a plan, or a statement of intended direction, or perhaps an unusually wonky daydream. But it's not a plan."

Romney's may not be a plan, but it is a recipe. At a time of record income inequality, the lowest federal tax burden in 60 years, and large budget deficits without listing all of his ingredients, Mitt Romney is just offering a recipe for exploding national debt and a windfall for the wealthy.

As the Washington Post explained in its discussion of an analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, "until the campaign offers a more specific plan, Budget Watch analysts said Romney's entire framework would add about $2.6 trillion to the debt by 2021." That's likely a conservative estimate. As ThinkProgress and the Washington Post's Lori Montgomery and Ezra Klein documented, Mitt Romney's risky new scheme makes George W. Bush look like Karl Marx:

Romney's claim that his plan would promote job and economic growth while reducing the deficit is also likely false. The Bush tax cuts were promoted under the same guise, only to blow a $2.5-trillion hole in the federal budget that was accompanied by worst performance of any post-war expansion" for growth in investment, GDP, and job creation. Romney's tax cuts are even more expensive, clocking in at a cost of more than $10.7 trillion over the next decade and reducing revenue to a paltry 15 percent of GDP, according to Linden. Balancing the budget on those terms, as Romney claims he will do, would be next to impossible.

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For the perpetual tax-cutters of the Republican Party, last week's surrender on the payroll tax cut extension for 160 million working Americans was an especially damaging one. While tried if untrue GOP talking points that "tax cuts pay for themselves" and "never need to be offset" were thoroughly debunked, new polling shows the large Republican lead on the tax issue has virtually evaporated.

All of which explains why Eric Cantor and House Republicans are now proposing the "JOBS Act," a package of anti-regulatory measures and a whopping 20 percent tax cut for small businesses. Sadly for Cantor, a mountain of evidence shows that customer demand, and not government regulations, is the biggest burden to small business hiring. And with the total federal tax burden having hit its lowest level since 1950, the GOP would deliver billions in budget-busting tax breaks to millions who need them least.

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When I talk about my work with my parents, they invariably ask, "Why do so many people vote against their interests?" And my response is that it's messaging. While progressives may have the moral and --dare I say it?--economic high ground, the fact remains that we suck at conveying those ideas. Conservatives not only win in their ability to shape easily digestible sound bytes that sound sensible until you subject them to a little scrutiny, but they also are fantastic at message discipline. You will hear the same phrase (we can't raise taxes on the job creators!) over and over again, until it becomes conventional wisdom. Add the daily talking points-mandated Fox News anchors and you have a messaging juggernaut.

Of course, it all comes crashing down when you have a conservative who won't play. Amato caught Ben Stein on one of his periodic appearances on The O'Reilly Factor and he steadfastly refused to play along with one of the benchmarks of conservative economic policy--that taxing the rich hurts the economy--to Billo's increasing chagrin.