"For years, Mitt Romney has been telling Americans "I love data." As he bragged to the Wall Street Journal:
"I used to call it 'wallowing in the data.' Let me see the data. I want to see the client's data, the competitors' data. I want to see all the data."
But the man who would be America's 45th President doesn't want voters to see any of his. In early 2007, the Massachusetts Governor's aides scrubbed his administration's computer records as he was heading out the door in Boston. Determined to avoid becoming the poster boy for gaming the IRS, Romney's tax returns remain a mystery because, as he put it, "I don't put out which tooth paste I use either." As for own tax plan, Romney boasts that "it can't be scored" because the "details will have to be worked out with Congress." As for which tax breaks he would end to offset the $5 trillion in revenue his tax cut scheme would drain from the U.S. Treasury, Mitt Romney won't name a single one in public. Otherwise, he told the Wall Street Journal last year, "you're gonna get hit by the demagogues in the general election."
But what Mitt Romney calls demagogues, most Americans call "voters." And despite Romney's perpetual--and perpetually cynical--efforts to keep his data secret, on the eve of the 2012 election there are some things we do know. Here, then, is Mitt Romney by the numbers."
