Questions for the Republican field

For Mitt Romney: One day recently you said, “I’m not for tax cuts for the rich. . . . I want to make sure that whatever we do in the tax code, we’re not giving a windfall to the very wealthy.” The next day you said you support the Bush tax rates. Would making the Bush rates permanent constitute a tax cut? Who is “rich” or “very wealthy”? Does allowing people who make lots of money to keep lots of it constitute a “windfall”? In 1996, you called a 17 percent flat tax “a tax cut for fat cats.” Have you always used epithets like “fat cats”? What annual income or net worth defines “fat cat”? Are you one? Should economically successful Americans generally be stigmatized?…

For Jon Huntsman: You, who preen about having cornered the market on good manners, recently tweeted, “I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.” Call you sarcastic. In the 1970s, would you have trusted scientists predicting calamity from global cooling? Are scientists a cohort without a sociology — uniquely homogenous and unanimous, without factions or interests and impervious to peer pressures or the agendas of funding agencies? Are the hundreds of scientists who are skeptical that human activities are increasing global temperatures not really scientists?

Your chief strategist, John Weaver, says the “simple reason” the GOP is “nowhere near being a national governing party” is that “no one wants to be around a bunch of cranks.” Do you share your employee’s disdain for the party? Although you say the country is “crying out” for a “sensible middle ground,” you have campaigned for three months on what you say is that ground and, according to the most recent Gallup poll, your support among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents is 1 percent. Are the other 99 percent cranks? Should the cranks be cranky when the Democratic National Committee distributes your attacks on Republicans under the headline “Don’t Take Our Word For It”?