2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney (Photo: Flickr/Gage Skidmore)

Mitt Romney, the GOP presidential candidate who edged out an eight-vote victory over Rick Santorum in the Iowa caucuses, has a long track record on education that includes standardized testing and accountability, charter schools and school vouchers.

Education Week writes:

Romney has a long record and a lot of ideas on education redesign. He’s a fan of standardized testing, and has credited the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 with providing a much-needed boost to accountability. In fact, he was one of the NCLB law’s biggest champions when he ran for president back in 2008. But this year, he has also emphasized the need to step up the state role when it comes to K-12.

The No Child Left Behind Act — signed into law in January 2002 by George W. Bush and supported by the Obama administration — mandated standardized testing that evaluates teachers by score results. In late 2011, the Obama administration offered states “waivers from the most onerous requirements of No Child Left Behind.”

Public school advocates who oppose mandatory standardized testing to determine teacher salaries and state and federal funding for public schools have called for a National Opt Out Day on Jan. 7.

Romney, according to Education Week, “also complimented President Barack Obama’s signature education reform program—Race to the Top—saying the program “had done some good things.”

Race to the Top, “a competitive grant program,” was launched by the Obama administration in 2009 to “encourage and reward States that are creating the conditions for education innovation and reform.”

The program provides funds to states that reform education in four areas: adopting standards and assessments that prepare students for work and college; building data systems that measure student growth and success; recruiting, training, rewarding and retaining effective teachers and principals; and turning around the lowest achieving schools.

Education Week adds that Romney has “called for getting rid of teacher salary schedules, but said he’d like to pay beginning teachers more. He also waded into the culture wars, saying he thinks students should be taught about the advantages of marriage.”

Education News reported last September that Romney also supports charters schools, school vouchers and “currently supports the federal government’s involvement in education and would keep in place the No Child Left Behind act created under President Bush in 2001.”

About 22 percent of Minnesotans said unemployment and jobs were the biggest problem, with another 14 percent pointing to the economy. The survey found that most respondents thought Democrats could do a better job with the economy, while they trusted Republicans to fix the budget.

Despite their trust in Republicans to fix budgets more than 54 percent of those surveyed blamed the Republican-dominated legislature for this summer’s government shutdown, with a little more than 18 percent laying full blame at the feet of DFL Gov. Mark Dayton. Event those who identified as Republicans blamed the legislature at a higher proportion, according to survey results.

About half of all respondents want to see state budget solutions that rely only on spending cuts, while a little more than a quarter of those surveyed want both.

The survey also found that U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann was the most unpopular figure of the 11 surveyed, with those surveyed giving her a rating of 33 out of 100. It also found that even in her home state, Bachmann would perform much worse in a hypothetical match-up against Pres. Barack Obama than either Herman Cain or Mitt Romney. Obama won in all three hypothetical match-ups.

Nearing the bottom of the pile is Herman Cain — only 25 percent of the former pizza chain magnate’s donations above $200 have come from women. Both Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul have collected less from women (about 24 percent and 16 percent, respectively). About 33.5 percent and 29.6 percent of Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s donations have come from women, respectively.

Fittingly, the tax proposals released by the leading GOP candidates — Cain, Perry and Romney — disproportionately affect women in the way they raise taxes on lower- and middle-income Americans, eliminate poverty aids and cut child-insurance programs, according to various analyses of the plans and expert input gathered by The American Independent.

Thus far, only Cain and Perry have revealed the most detailed plans, and because women are disproportionately likely to be single parents and to have lower wages, smaller pensions and more medical problems, they are expected to fare worse under these plans than their male counterparts.

The gender-wage gap and its relevancy to tax-policy discussions

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (PDF), in 2010, women who were full-time wage and salary workers earned 81 percent of what men earned (median weekly earnings for women were $669, and $824 for men). The female-to-male earnings ratio has hovered around 80 to 81 percent since 2004, up from 62 percent in 1979.

Last week, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report (PDF) showing women make up 49 percent of the total workforce but represent 59 percent of low-wage workers -– this despite the fact that more women than men finish high school and earn bachelor’s degrees. And according to a new report (PDF) by the Martin Prosperity Institute, women hold 52.3 percent of “creative class” jobs –- engineers, doctors, lawyers, journalists, teachers, etc. -– but in these jobs, earn an average of $48,007, while men earn an average of $82,009. Controlling for hours worked and education, creative class men out-earn creative class women by 49.2 percent.

According to the 2008-2010 American Community Survey, about 29.2 percent of families whose income in the past 12 months was below the federal poverty level were families headed by single women. It gets worse depending on the presence of young children: 38.1 percent of women-run households with children under 18 were below poverty; 46.1 percent of households with children under 5 were below poverty. In comparison, only 10.5 percent of all American families — and only 5.1 percent of married-couple families — in this survey were making below the poverty level. The aforementioned GAO report found single women with children had an average household income of about $27,000.

Income disparities do not stop at wages, however. Women tend to live longer, they are more likely to outlive their savings and less likely to have significant retirement plans or to have the type of jobs that incur significant pensions. Thus, they disproportionately benefit from Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

According to the Social Security Administration (SSA), women represent about 57 percent of all Social Security beneficiaries age 62 and older and about 69 percent of beneficiaries over 85. In 2008, women 65 and older received an average of $11,377, compared with $14,822 for men.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation (PDF), about 56 percent of all Medicare beneficiaries are women, and women are more likely than men to report having three or more chronic conditions.

How do women fare under ‘9-9-9’?

“The ‘9-9-9 Plan’ is a jobs plan! It is revenue, it does not raise taxes on those in need.” -- from the donation page on Herman Cain’s campaign website (AreFlaten, Flickr)

THE PLAN: ‘9-9-9’

With the nation’s attention focused on Cain’s old sexual harassment charges, scrutiny of Cain’s infamous “9-9-9″ Plan is stalled for the moment. According to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center, Cain’s plan would make those earning under $50,000 pay a few thousand dollars more in taxes, while those making between half a million and $1 million would pay nearly $100,000 less in taxes. According to an analysis by the left-leaning Citizens for Tax Justice (PDF), if Cain’s plan were to go into effect today, the richest 1 percent of taxpayers would pay $210,000 less in annual taxes, while the poorest 60 percent of taxpayers would pay $2,000 more in annual taxes.

At the same time, Cain’s proposed plan is expected to raise about the same -– or potentially less –- revenue as the current tax system. Still, a recent poll of likely Iowa Caucus-goers conducted last month shows the average American making under $50,000 annually doesn’t understand the plan and believes he or she would fare better under “9-9-9.”

Cain’s plan is actually a complicated three-step process. Replacing the current tax code with a 9-percent business flat tax (or value-added tax), a 9-percent individual flat tax and a 9-percent national sales tax is only the second step in the process. And as the Tax Policy Center summarizes, combined, the three taxes are equivalent to a 25.4-percent national sales tax, with adjustments for dividends paid to tax-exempt entities and charitable contributions.

The first step in Cain’s plan, explained by The Washington Post, would actually be to cut individual and corporate tax rates to a top-25-percent rate, down from the current high of 35 percent. The third step would be to replace all federal taxes with a national sales tax.

Cain claims under “9-9-9,” Americans who fall under the federal government’s poverty level would be exempt from paying the individual income tax; however, he would eliminate the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), designed to help the working poor, and the Child Tax Credit (CTC). Additionally, he would eliminate payroll tax deductions for employers (except in unspecified “Opportunity Zones”), which currently serve as a hiring incentive. Helping out the wealthy, Cain would get rid of the estate tax and capital gains taxes. His plan, according to Edward D. Kleinbard of the Gould University of Southern California School of Law, involves a “disguised one-time 9 percent tax on existing wealth.”

More from TaxVox, the Tax Policy Center blog:

A middle income household making between about $64,000 and $110,000 would get hit with an average tax increase of about $4,300, lowering its after-tax income by more than 6 percent and increasing its average federal tax rate (including income, payroll, estate and its share of the corporate income tax) from 18.8 percent to 23.7 percent. … In Cain’s world, a typical household making more than $2.7 million would pay a smaller share of its income in federal taxes than one making less than $18,000. This would give Warren Buffet severe heartburn.

EFFECT ON WOMEN

Cain’s plan would eliminate the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which is a refundable credit designed to offset federal payroll and income taxes for low- and moderate-income working people.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), this year, working families with children with annual incomes below $36,000 to $49,000 (depending on marital status and dependents) may be eligible for the EITC. Single individuals without children who make less than $13,600 annually and married couples making less than $18,700 annually would qualify for a small EITC. In 2009, the average EITC was $2,770 for a household with children and $259 for a childless household. According to CBPP, families mostly use this tax credit to pay for necessities, home and vehicle repairs and, sometimes, additional education.

Cain would also kill the Child Tax Credit (CTC), which helps working families pay for child care costs.

According to the Urban Institute, high-working, low-income families spend $3,135 annually, or 12 percent of their income. The Institute estimates that 69 percent of children under 5 with low-income working mothers are cared for regularly by someone other than a parent, and 39 percent of these children are in child care for at least 35 hours per week.

“It would be horrifying to lose [the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit],” said Elizabeth Lower-Basch, a senior policy analyst for the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP). “That would particularly affect women.

“We have a basically progressive tax code,” she told TAI. “If we go to a flat code, it would significantly hurt low-income workers.”

Joan Entmacher, vice president for Family Economic Security at the National Women’s Law Center, where she works at promoting policies aimed at improving the economic security of low-income women and their families, told TAI that Cain’s tax proposal appears to affect women worse than the other candidates because his plan is “much harder on lower-income Americans” in the way it would raise taxes on low- and middle-income earners.

Under Cain’s plan, millionaires would get a 17.9-percent tax rate, or a 22-percent boost after taxes. But a single mother earning between $20,000 and $30,000? Her tax rate would be 24.9 percent. In other words, a single mom making $25,000 a year will have to give 25 percent of her income, or $6,250, to taxes.

Cain has proposed creating tax benefits to certain geographic areas in what he calls “Opportunity Zones” (PDF), but he has not been specific about where these zones would be or how they would work.

“Overall, you’re going to be better off if you’re making over $1 million in income, better than single mom trying to raise kids on $25,000 per year,” Entmacher said.

Terry O’Neill, an attorney and professor who is the president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), told TAI that Cain is turning his back on women, many whom depend on the tax programs he wants to eliminate.

“When Mr. Cain wants to take away the Earned Income Tax Credit, he is punishing women who sometimes work two jobs full-time, minimum-wage jobs, just to pay for food and rent,” O’Neill said.

Perry’s postcard proposal cuts more than it balances

“American families deserve a system that is low, flat and fair. They should be able to file their taxes on a postcard instead of a massive novel-length document." -- from Governor Rick Perry’s "2020 Vision: Cut, Balance & Grow" (Gage Skidmore, Flickr)

During his speech at the Corner Stone Action Dinner in Manchester, N.H., on Oct. 28, Perry repeatedly waved a blank postcard in explaining his tax and economic-policy plan. Like Cain’s plan, Perry’s plan (PDF) is more complicated than he lets on in speeches. Where they differ is in Perry’s explicit details in how Americans would pay for the substantial tax breaks on the highest earners — by eliminating deductions and cutting specific entitlement programs that especially benefit lower-income earners, and women.

THE PLAN: ‘Cut, Balance & Grow’

Taxpayers would be able to choose whether to file their taxes under the current tax code or under a new 20-percent “flat tax.” What Perry has not emphasized is that taxpayers will have to spend time — and potentially money — calculating which plan benefits them more.

Like Cain, Perry has countered claims his plan will result in disproportionately higher taxes for lower- and middle-income families. As an example, Perry points to the provision in his 20-percent flat-tax plan, where families will be eligible for “generous” exemptions of $12,500.

In his proposal, Perry takes a dig at Cain’s proposal to introduce a federal sales tax and a business value-added tax, which he calls “highly regressive,” and uses the working poor to make his case:

When added to existing federal income taxes and state and local income sales taxes, a national sales tax would be highly regressive. Low-income families spend a much higher percentage of their incomes on food and gas than do those with considerable wealth. For example, a household earning $25,000 each year would spend roughly 40% of its income on food, utilities, and health care, while a household earning $130,000 each year would pay less than 15% of its income on those three items.

But because Perry would eliminate the EITC, lower- and middle-income earners would still pay more under his plan than they do now. Using calculations made by the Tax Policy Center, The New York Times estimates single parents with two children making $9,700 annually would pay no income taxes under Perry’s plan but would not receive the $4,885 tax credit they receive under current tax law.

Perry, like Cain, would eliminate the capital gains tax.

EFFECT ON WOMEN

To pay for the plan, Perry has suggested cuts in education and nutritional programs for poor children. He has offered various suggestions for reforming Medicare, which include gradually raising the age of Medicare eligibility, alongside a gradual retirement-age increase under Social Security; paying Medicare benefits on a sliding scale based on income; or by creating bundled premium support payments that would go directly to the individual. He has also proposed block-granting Medicaid payments.

Entmacher told TAI that under Perry’s plan, taxes would go up for the working poor and what she calls the “true middle class” — households making no more than $75,000 per year.

“The Perry plan is particularly hard on single heads of households,” Entmacher said. “They do worse than the working poor.”

The others

As for the remaining GOP candidates in the pack, the one expected to win the nomination, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, has a vague plan. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) have stated support for a flat tax, and all the candidates support eliminating the estate tax.

Romney’s main tax proposal is to end taxes on interest and dividend income for people who earn less than $200,000 a year, but otherwise keep the existing tax system in place. Romney does not support a flat tax or a national sales tax, stating they would largely hurt the middle class. He supports extending most, if not all, of the Bush-era tax cuts.

All of the experts TAI spoke with agreed the tax code needs reforming. With GOP candidates vying for shorter rules in the name of simplicity, Lower-Basch thinks what the tax code actually needs is more tiers and brackets to be more fair, reasoning that households making $250,000 a year should not be taxed the same as those making $1 or $2 million a year.

David Yepsen, a former political reporter who spent 34 years at The Des Moines Register, said there’s a very possible scenario in which Mitt Romney wins the caucuses, the New Hampshire primary and the Republican nomination.

A similar scenario played out in 1980, Yepsen said, when George H.W. Bush beat a field of much more conservative candidates in Iowa. Ronald Reagan eventually won the nomination after coming in a close second in those caucuses.

“That’s a different era but the same thing could happen,” Yepsen said. “Romney could win Iowa with a plurality because you have some other candidates carving up that conservative vote.”

Register political columnist David Yepsen

President Obama is vulnerable, Yepsen said, but Republicans won’t win if they nominate a candidate that offends women or drives away young voters, who are generally supportive of LGBT rights.

He warned candidates and the Republican Party in general against moving too far to the right, saying it’s important to appeal to the base but they need to leave themselves room to maneuver back to the center for the General Election.

“I have a lot of respect for social conservatives but if you drive the Republican Party so far to the right on social issues at a time when Americans care about jobs and economic development issues you’re going to lose,” he said.

Romney, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Herman Cain appear to have the “three tickets” out of Iowa this time, Yepsen said, and U.S. Rep. Ron Paul could also do well. But he noted the caucuses broke that mold in 2008, when U.S. Sen. John McCain did poorly in Iowa but won the nomination.

Yepsen was the keynote speaker Thursday evening for a series at the State Historical Museum, where an updated exhibit on the Iowa Caucuses is on display. He is now director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

Yepsen also weighed in on the national jockeying between states hoping to be the first or at least an early contest for presidential hopefuls. He said that jockeying actually makes Iowa more important because it compresses the schedule.

“Candidates who do poorly in Iowa and New Hampshire have no chance of wining in Florida,” Yepsen said. “Candidates who do well in Iowa and New Hampshire can raise money, they have media momentum for big states like Florida.”

Yepsen expects the caucuses to be held in early January, but he said to “keep that week between Christmas and New Year’s open.”

Romney visited the state early and frequently in 2008 and lost by nine points to Mike Huckabee, all while spending $238 per vote in Iowa. Eventual nominee, Sen. John McCain, on the other hand, largely ignored the state and came in fourth in the Iowa Caucus. He then won the New Hampshire primary for a second time, which became a springboard for the nomination.

Romney is also well-liked in New Hampshire. He has a double-digit lead in a recent New Hampshire Journal poll, and he was the governor of Massachusetts for four years, which has an overlapping media market in southern New Hampshire.

The case for him to devote minimal resources — in turn, lowering expectations — to Iowa and win in New Hampshire looks clearer from this poll. But his plans are unclear at this point. Romney last visited Iowa when he campaigned for then-gubernatorial candidate (now governor) Terry Branstad on October 26, 2010.

Newt Gingrich at the 2010 Value Voters Summit. (ZumaPress)

“Don’t let them put you in the back of the bus,” former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum (R) said to a full ballroom at the Values Voters Summit — organized by the Family Research Council — in Washington Friday.

[Congress1] He expounded on that idea to the crowd of about 2,000 Christian conservatives, saying they shouldn’t let “people come out and tell us that we have to put the values issues in the back of the bus, we have to have a truce on the values issues because the economic issues are paramount.” Santorum countered that “we can have no economic freedom unless we have good, virtuous moral people inspired by their faith.”

Beyond encouraging both the continued fight against the policies of the Obama administration and an ouster of Democrats in the midterm elections, conservative politician after politician declared to the attendees of the conference that amidst a recession and the largely economic-based tea party movement, values still mattered.

For instance, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) devoted the majority of his speech to the “straightening out” of a voter who was not a social conservative but a fiscal conservative.

Though no speaker mentioned him, Indiana governor and possible GOP 2012 presidential candidate Mitch Daniels is a source of this consternation. The next president “would have to call a truce on the so-called social issues,” he told The Weekly Standard. Even so, the vast majority of the GOP — including Daniels himself, who is still pro-life and favors reinstating “Mexico City Policy” — remains conservative on social issues.

Economics are morals and morals are economics, said many Republican politicians during the conference. As former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said, “The meltdown of Wall Street was not a money crisis, it was a moral crisis.” Sen. Jim DeMint said the same thing about fiscal policy: “One of the largest costs of the federal government is related to the values issues, to the dysfunctional society.”

Not everyone followed this theme. Mitt Romney, former Massachusetts govenror and CEO of Bain & Company, talked largely about a decline in economic freedom under President Obama. Possibly alluding to the fusion of economic issues and idyllic conservative values, Romney gave rambling anecdote about Christmas shopping at Wal-Mart, to show that the “founders (of those companies) have shaped the way those enterprises are.” The result: polite applause and laughter.

Same-sex marriage, not long ago the headlining wedge issue for social conservatives, did not receive the strongest reaction from the crowd, taking a backseat to ovation-inducing lines about Islam and the proposed Islamic community center in Lower Manhattan. Conservative pundit Bill Bennett said, “Muslims proclaim themselves the new victims, I’m sorry they are not.” However, he insisted, “As a people, we are not Islamophobic. We are right to have questions about Islam.” President of American Values Gary Bauer said of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, “Next time you want to give a speech on tolerance, try giving it in Mecca!”

Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), chair of the House GOP conference, also gave a barnstorming speech, connecting stem-cell research, abortion and marriage to fiscal issues. (“You want to find savings? Let’s cut funding to research that destroys human embryos in the name of science and let’s deny any and all funding to Planned Parenthood.”)

On the wings of this speech, Pence won the conference’s 2012 Presidential Straw Poll, beating out Huckabee by 11 votes, 170-159. The win will no doubt encourage speculation of a presidential run for Pence. However, it remains extremely difficult to win a nomination, let alone the presidency, from the House of Representatives, partly given to a low familiarity level among a general electorate. The only sitting House member to ever win the White House was James Garfield in 1880.

But Rep. Pence wasn’t the only politician to benefit from (or fall victim to) newfound speculation and unreasonable expectations. Social conservative activist Christine O’Donnell, who upset Rep. Mike Castle for the Delaware Republican Senate nomination Tuesday, gave a largely boilerplate speech against the “elites” and “D.C. cocktail circuit” who did not think she could win. (She remains 11 to 16 points behind in recent polls.) She did not take questions from the media.

Christine O’Donnell — a genuine insurgent candidate not endorsed by the national or state GOP in the primary — wasn’t the only one railing against “the establishment.” Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich appeared Saturday morning to announce, “the establishment is in a state of shock.” Gingrich — seemingly oblivious to his former position as a powerful and public three-term House speaker — said, “The grassroots is 7-0 over the establishment!”

Establishment leaders like Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (Va.) were rarely, if ever, mentioned.

Gingrich may have nailed the center of gravity in the Republican party: “I’ll let you decide whether it’s Palin-DeMint or DeMint-Palin,” he said of a potential 2012 ticket. He admired DeMint’s creation of the influential Senate Conservatives Fund PAC and Palin’s messaging prowess on Twitter and Facebook. Gingrich, who lives in the leafy Washington suburb of McLean, Va., said about the surprise win of Christine O’Donnell, who both Palin and Sen. DeMint endorsed, “I’ll go out on a limb and say no one in the D.C. establishment gets it.”

Sen. John McCain (WDCpix)

BIRMINGHAM, Mich.– Battleground no more.

For the past several months, the Republican and Democratic nominees for president have targeted this fading center of the Rust Belt, with its 17 electoral votes, as a winnable state — part of each party’s electoral strategy to take the White House.

Now, that plan for one ticket, that of Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin, lies in smoldering ruins. As early as yesterday afternoon, reports began to filter out that the McCain campaign had suspended its efforts here and would be cutting staff as well as advertising.

McCain was essentially giving the state that George W. Bush narrowly lost, by five percentage points or less in 2000 and 2004, to Sen. Barack Obama.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Before I traveled here, Debbie Dingell, the wife of the venerable Rep. John Dingell, talked with me about Michigan. A Democratic National Committee member, General Motors executive and political power in her own right, she explained why the state is so complicated and considered such a political prize:

“Michigan is the definition of a battleground state. It’s got a divided legislature. It’s gone back and forth on who its governors are. You’ve got two Democratic senators. But in a 15-member congressional delegation, six are Democrats and nine are Republicans. It’s a split state, and that’s what people forget. You have distinct urban agendas next to distinct rural agendas. You’ve got unions but also a strong religious community.”

To be certain, McCain’s move–or move-out–took all sides by surprise. As the darkened Detroit afternoon turned into a chilly night, political operatives and reporters alike were left a little like the characters in “Heroes” — disoriented and confused after the Haitian guy wipes away their memories.

For months now, Obama and McCain have been in a statistical dead heat — with the Democratic nominee only pulling ahead a little bit in the past few weeks. As a result, Michiganders have grown accustomed to frequent visits by the two candidates, who both promise to reroute the internal wiring of Michigan’s economic engine to make it a state that will thrive from the new, clean-energy-based economy. One half-expected McCain to ride out of Detroit in a Chevy Volt. As late as July, McCain told an audience here, “The state of Michigan, as it has in many elections in the past, will determine who the next president of the United States is.”

Now the Michigan GOP must travel alone — fighting in their leader’s name but without their actual leader. While polls over the past week have showed as much as a 10-point swing in favor of Obama, it’s precisely that volatility that made Michigan a state to stay in and fight for.

In a state where the Reagan Democrats were virtually born, there remains strong support for McCain despite recent events. But in the wake of the economic implosion, McCain has fallen behind Obama by an average of 7 percentage points in most polls.

McCain’s lack of authority on the economy and his fumbling response to the Wall Street meltdown have hurt him as the financial crisis seized the national psyche. He first said he would put his campaign on “hold” to help solve the problem in Washington, and then he returned to the hustings, which has led some voters to regard him as erratic. One report even cited that a fear among McCain campaign officials in Florida of a recent Obama surge in the Sunshine State contributed to the Arizona senator’s decision to quit Michigan.

But still, McCain defeated Bush in Michigan during their testy primary battle in 2000, and it is the home of a substantial number of white, working-class voters who Obama struggled to win over in the Democratic primary campaign. In short, this was a race McCain might have won.

“I certainly would have waited till after the debate tonight,” said Republican pollster Steve Mitchell before Sen. Joe Biden and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin faced off in Thursday night’s vice presidential debate. “If Palin did well, that would have moved up [McCain's] numbers drastically. It’s a mystifying decision.

“It’s my understanding that it costs $1 million a week to run a campaign in Michigan,” Mitchell continued, “so it’s a multimillion-dollar decision. But it just seems like a really premature decision based on a couple of bad polls.”

McCain, by one account, had spent $8 million in television ads before pulling out.

According to many political experts, what McCain did by saying “no mas” to Michigan was to abandon a winnable race. It’s true that, to date, he hasn’t run the most efficient campaign here. More so than in some other states, the Obama campaign has been successful in linking McCain’s record to President Bush’s here.

In addition, going back to the Republican primary here earlier this year, McCain, to many Michigan business and union leaders, never really decided how to engage the auto industry. One day, he was the castigator; the next, he was ready to feel their warm embrace.

But these were supremely fixable things.

As much as McCain had going for him, several factors were also in play against Obama. Chief among them — and perhaps the one thing that many people seem most uncomfortable addressing — is race.

Late Tuesday morning, I sat down with William Black, the Teamsters’ political director in Michigan, in his office on Trumbull Avenue in Detroit. It was a cluttered space decorated with a “Hoffa” movie poster signed by Jack Nicholson and a photo of the union leader with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm. Black was blunt about his biggest concern going into the November election.

“It’s the race issue,” Black said, leaning back in his chair, his arms folded over his chest. “It’s a concern for all of us. I don’t think it is for our age group — but it shows up in the older age groups.”

Black asked: “Will people put race over their pocketbook, over their financial well being? I think that’s the real issue here.”

Black had reason to worry. Two years ago, polls taken before the vote on a ballot measure that would have effectively eliminated affirmative-action programs in Michigan’s universities predicted a tight contest. The measure ended up winning 58 percent to 42 percent.

Moreover, Black said, the Obama campaign seemed at odds with itself. As the candidate of change who raged against the establishment, Obama had stormed into Michigan after not being present for the farce that was the Michigan primary, in which Clinton and Dennis Kucinich were the only candidates on the ballot. And his campaign hadn’t effectively used the machinery offered by the political establishment that has run Michigan for decades.

“[The Obama campaign] needs to do better outreach at the district level–I’ll tell you that right now,” Black said. “[It] needs to engage the John Dingells of the world and say, ‘John, what do you need?’ I’d like to see that. It’s not happening much, particularly down river or in Macomb County with the Reagan Democrats who need to be [targeted]. That would be the area I would be focusing on.

“John McCain is a guy you can never count out. Look at the Republican Party, look at what he did with Palin. I think he’s an amazing guy. I just can’t see him being president.”

But McCain is someone who many in Black’s own union ranks — a third of which he says are solidly Republican — could. That’s because they had seen the great promise of a young and energetic leader with limited executive experience who fizzled out as governor of Michigan.

Granholm stormed into office on the force of her personality and smarts and one term as state attorney general. In 2002, she ran for governor as the candidate of change, won and maintained a high approval rating as a new kind of Democrat.

Her approval rating remained strong until her first budget crisis. It’s been sliding with each subsequent crisis. With Michigan’s unemployment rate currently the highest in the country, Granholm’s approval rating hovers around 30 percent, equal to that of the Texan in the White House.

“[The McCain campaign] barely tied Granholm to Obama,” said Detroit News editorial page editor Nolan Finley when we sat down in his office late in the day Tuesday. “It ought to be doing that constantly. The Democrats have done a very good job of tying Bush to McCain,” added the influential conservative. “In this state, [the Republicans] could very well tie Obama and Granholm together — and do very well.”

As I’ve written before, one key reason that the presidential race remains close is that McCain is not Bush. His story–that of courage in combat, of standing against his own party when called for–has been effective when executed properly.

Indeed, given McCain’s image as a maverick, he could emphasize the idea of execution. Yes, he could say, the Bush tax cuts were a good idea, but they should have been followed by spending cuts. Yes, he could say, you hate the war in Iraq, but if I had been running things, we’d have been in and out.

“People aren’t looking for 10-point white-paper sheets,” Finley said. “They’re looking for a leader who can be confident. If he can come here and tell a story — his story — and show the confidence that he’s the guy who can lead them to a better place. He doesn’t have to come in here and say, ‘I’m going to do these six things, these eight things.’

Finley laid out how he would advise McCain to run here. “He shouldn’t give up on his foreign-policy issues just because of the financial crisis,” Finley cautioned. “He should remind people of that growing threat from Iran. Iran, Russia and other dangerous places are not going to go away.

“But he’s got to find himself domestically. One thing he could do today is say, ‘I’m going to appoint Mitt Romney as my Treasury secretary,’ and the people of Michigan would perk up and pay attention. He would have won Michigan if he’d put Romney on the ticket and said, ‘You take care of Michigan, Colorado and Nevada, and I’ll see you on Election Day.’ He needs Romney here. Whether Romney will do it or not is another question.”

Even without Romney on his ticket, McCain could still have advanced his position in Michigan with the GOP’s new political star, Sarah Palin. As Dingell has said, Michigan remains a divided state, a place where the Republican base still cares deeply about the issues that McCain holds dear–his stance against abortion, his opposition to gun control.

Palin would have drawn huge crowds from now until Election Day in the western part of the state, would have become a regular attraction on local newscasts and would have generated the kind of free publicity that a campaign relying on public financing needs. Gosh, golly, gee whiz, couldn’t you just see it? Wowzers!

But now that will not happen. The McCain campaign has all but shuttered its shop in Michigan, brushing off the state and conceding the ground that, only a few days ago, seemed one for the taking.

In coming days, McCain’s campaign advisers will explain their actions, provide a rationale that the climb was too steep, that resources were needed elsewhere. But should he lose on Nov. 4, the old soldier might look back at today as the beginning of the end, an opportunity lost. For once, McCain counted himself out.

But in a McCain campaign conference call with reporters this afternoon, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney may have offered up a better response to questions about McCain’s sagging poll numbers: “Remember where McCain was at this time last year.”

There’s an understandable interest in what polls show, and there is the inevitable sense that a poll is a very good predictor of what might happen.

I remember having succumbed to that sense in the summertime, and in the fall, of last year, concluding that John McCain was almost out of the picture, and that Rudy Giuliani was who we all needed to worry about. As a matter of fact, leading up to my debates – we had quite a few debates, but a number of them — my team said to me, “Look, don’t engage with McCain. Let him say whatever he wants to. You’ve got to engage with Rudy Giuliani, because he and you are the two battling for the lead here.”

Somehow, it didn’t work out like the polls suggested. Rudy Giuliani, who led dramatically, followed by Fred Thompson, and I think I was third at some point, and John McCain was way down the list. John McCain won. He defies expectations…At this stage, I’d say [to] the poll-watchers, look back to September or so of last year, and be careful not to write the same headlines.

Of course, as Romney was saying this — on a call that was meant to puff up McCain’s standing in Romney’s home state of Michigan — the McCain campaign is reportedly preparing to abandon the state to Obama, indicating that the campaign does take these polls quite seriously.

Nevertheless, saying something positive about your candidate’s tenacity has got be a better strategy than challenging the credibility of the nation’s leading pollsters.

Meanwhile, rumors are swirling feverishly as to who McCain will bring onstage with him. The most frequently mentioned names include former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and, most controversial, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.)

However, Pawlenty seems to have taken his name out of the running by telling a Minneapolis radio station that he will remain in Minnesota today to attend the state fair. From Politico:

“I will not be in Dayton, Ohio, so I think that’s a fair assumption,” [Pawlenty] added in an interview with the Twin Cities radio station, when asked
if this was an indication that he would not be chosen.

Fox News reports this morning that Romney is out of the running — and NBC’s Chuck Todd says Romney is not even going to be in Dayton today.

So where does this leave us? Politico’s Jonathan Martin reported yesterday that Lieberman is vacationing in Long Island, N.Y. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily take him out of the running.

On MSNBC, Mark Halperin just said that former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge was never fully vetted — indicating he is not the pick either.

The cable news networks are currently transfixed with a mysterious Gulfstream jet that arrived at a private airport in nearby Middletown, Ohio late yesterday from Anchorage, Alaska — the home of Gov. Sarah Palin, who was also mentioned as a potential running mate. From Marc Ambinder:

Thanks to the readers who pointed me to the journey of a sturdy
Gulfstream 5 with the [tail] number of N22GY. Anchorage, Alaska to Hook Municipal Field in Ohio. Nearby Dayton. 30 miles away. And the plane was in Flagstaff, AZ recently. [McCain reportedly met with potential veeps at his residence near Sedona yesterday.]

And where was the plane registered? To an entity called Gypsy Two LLC. It shares an address with a tax exempt organization called the Dean Weidner foundation. Dean Weidner is a Republican donor.. and a guy named William Weidner, the CEO of Las Vegas Sands corp, is a McCain bundler.

Palin, a young, pro-life governor with a reputation as a reformer — she came to prominence as a whistle-blower in a state famous for corruption and patronage — would be the dark horse of dark horses. If she is selected, it could indicate the McCain campaign is looking to pull some moderate women — namely former supporters of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton — to his column. She may prove a solid middle ground choice in McCain’s efforts to court moderates and pro-life conservatives. However, she could also undercut McCain’s message of experience versus youth — a first-term governor who is younger than Obama would be one step away from the presidency.

Of course, this is all hearsay and conjecture. We’ll be eagerly monitoring this situation and will let you know as soon as we learn anything new.