I pointed this out yesterday on the air, but it is worth noting in Nealz Nuze.  It’s been a week, and Democrats, the Obama campaign and the administration have tried everything they can to make excuses for Obama’s debate performance (or lack, thereof).  They tried the attitude excuse.  They tried the “he was too busy taking care of America and the world and didn’t have time to concentrate on the debate” excuse.  Though, this doesn’t explain the fact that Obama spent days in Las Vegas with John Kerry, supposedly preparing for the debate, when he, himself, declared debate prep to be a drag and complained about having to do his homework.  But after getting blown away, suddenly it was because he was too busy to “do his homework” because he was saving the world from Armageddon!  And when that excuse didn’t work, then it was John Kerry’s turn under the bus.  John Kerry didn’t want to challenge Obama too much because he is still hoping to brownnose his way into the Secretary of State position.

So now we’ve landed on the ‘Romney lied’ narrative.  Obama would have rebutted Romney’s deceptions but he was too taken aback.  The aptly named Dick Durbin was out there spreading this narrative just yesterday: “Mitt Romney came on that set at the first debate and said things which completely contradicted what he said in the campaign before. I think it caught him a little bit by surprise.” 

And this is the “lie” that the Democrats want to believe really stumped Obama: Democrats say Romney wants to cut taxes by $5 trillion and Romney says that he doesn’t.  Romney insisted throughout the debate that this was not the case, explaining (though not particularly well) how his plan to lower rates but get rid of certain loopholes would be revenue neutral … meaning it is not going to “cost” anyone, if we are using liberal logic.  Democrats including Obama have glommed onto this one study written by Princeton economist Harvey Rosen.  The liberals read this study and then extrapolated that Rosen’s conclusion is that Romney’s tax plan is not revenue neutral and would cost $5 trillion.  Then the Democrats went on to fill in the holes, claiming that the only way it could be revenue neutral is to raise taxes … on the middle class. 

But is that what Harvey Rosen’s study actually said?  No, it’s not.  And that’s not my interpretation of the study; that comes right from Harvey Rosen himself!  He’s the one who wrote it, so I’m inclined to believe him.  In an email to the Weekly Standard, Rosen states the following:

I can’t tell exactly how the Obama campaign reached that characterization of my work.  It might be that they assume that Governor Romney wants to keep the taxes from the Affordable Care Act in place, despite the fact that the Governor has called for its complete repeal.  The main conclusion of my study is that under plausible assumptions, a proposal along the lines suggested by Governor Romney can both be revenue neutral and keep the net tax burden on taxpayers with incomes above $200,000 about the same.  That is, an increase in the tax burden on lower and middle income individuals is not required in order to make the overall plan revenue neutral. 

In other words, the Democrats’ interpretation of the study is incorrect.  It’s not Romney who is lying …. it’s Obama, the Democrats and their propagandists!  That’s what we are dealing with here, folks.  But most of you are not predisposed to vote for Obama, so none of this will come as a shock to you.  But for others who are not inclined to listen to talk radio or read conservative blogs … did any of the ObamaMedia report what this economist said?  Have any of them run stories about this economist stating that Obama was wrong and misrepresenting his study?  Not that we can find.

What’s their next excuse going to be?