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DENVER — An invigorated Mitt Romney brought his A game to last night’s presidential debate, fiercely fighting back against President Obama’s attacks on Romney’s “trickle down” tax plan and hitting Obama for the nation’s economic troubles.
For much of the debate, Obama, who was sitting on a lead in the polls, didn’t take the fight to Romney with his sharpest attacks — failing to raise Romney’s “47 percent” remarks or bring up Romney’s time at Bain Capital.
Romney, whose advisers have been promising a turnaround for his campaign after the debate, said that on taxes he would “take a different path — not the one we’ve been on, not the one the president describes as a top-down, cut taxes for the rich.”
The candidates sparred for 90 minutes on topics such as:
* Taxes: Obama slammed Romney’s tax plan as a $5 trillion budget buster. Romney defended his tax plan, vowing, “I will not add to the deficit with my tax plan.”
* Dodd-Frank banking regulations: Romney slammed the banking law as an overreach, calling it “the biggest kiss that’s been given to New York banks I’ve ever seen. He vowed to repeal and replace it.
* Energy: Romney insisted that he, too, likes green energy — just not to the tune of $90 billion in subsidies that Obama has handed out.
* ObamaCare: Romney continued to vow that on his first day in office he would eliminate the president’s health-care overhaul, while Obama countered that Romney won’t show his cards on how to replace it.
* Medicare: Obama attacked Romney’s plan to turn Medicare into a “voucher.” Romney hit back, accusing Obama of taking “$716 billion” out of Medicare to pay for ObamaCare.
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But taxes, the centerpiece of both campaigns, dominated the early action, with Obama attacking Romney’s plan to lower tax rates for almost all income groups.
“And he is saying that he is going to pay for it by closing loopholes and deductions,” the president said. “The problem is that he’s been asked over a hundred times how you would close those deductions and loopholes; he hasn’t been able to identify them.”
But Romney shot back: “I don’t have a $5 trillion tax cut. I don’t have a tax cut of the scale that you’re talking about.
“I will not add to the deficit with my tax plan,” he vowed.
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Obama said it was “not possible” to find enough deductions without either raising the deficit or hitting the middle class. “It’s math. It’s arithmetic,” Obama said.
“At some point, the American people have to ask themselves if the reason that Governor Romney is keeping all these plans secret is because they’re too good,” the president quipped.
The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center concluded that a 20 percent across-the-board tax cut like Romney is offering would cost $5 trillion over 10 years.
Romney said he’d put all kinds of government programs on the chopping block.
“ObamaCare is on my list. I apologize, Mr. President. I use that term with all respect.”
“I like it,” Obama responded.
“OK, good. So I’d get rid of that,” said Romney.
Romney, who performed well in several Republican-primary debates but has been criticized for being stiff on the campaign trail, even scored a point after Obama congratulated his wife, Michelle, on their 20th wedding anniversary.
“Twenty years ago I became the luckiest man on earth because Michelle Obama agreed to marry me,” the president said at the top of the debate.
“Congratulations to you, Mr. President, on your anniversary,” Romney said. “I’m sure this was the most romantic place you could imagine here — here with me.”
During the debate Romney seemed more energetic, turning more often to look toward Obama. The president when he wasn’t speaking often looked down toward the podium or away from Romney.
At times Romney cut off moderator Jim Lehrer and talked over his time limit — something Obama also did, getting chided at times by Lehrer.
After Obama described Romney’s tax plan to keep in place Bush-era tax cuts as “trickle down,” Romney described them more as Robin Hood.
“We ought to provide tax relief to people in the middle class. But I’m not going to reduce the share of taxes paid by high-income people. High-income people are doing just fine in this economy. ,” Romney explained.
“The people who are having the hard time right now are middle-income Americans. Under the president’s policies, middle-income Americans have been buried,” he added — quoting a line that Vice President Joe Biden uttered Tuesday in a campaign-trail gaffe.
Romney described Obama’s philosophy as “trickle-down government,” and called the sluggish economy an “economy tax” on the nation.
Twice Obama invoked Bill Clinton as a lifeline. “Bill Clinton tried the [economic] approach that I’m talking about. We created 23 million new jobs. We went from deficit to surplus,” he said.
At one point Romney even mentioned how he may need “to get a new accountant” — and Obama didn’t interject anything about the 14 percent tax rate Romney made on millions in income last year as the debate moved onto another section.
Obama grew more focused as the debate wore on. After Romney said he’d replace ObamaCare, banking regulations and other policies, Obama again hit him for hiding the ball.
“Governor Romney says ‘We should replace [ObamaCare], I’m just going to repeal it, but — but we can replace it with something,’ ” said Obama. “But the problem is, he hasn’t described what exactly we’d replace it with, other than saying we’re going to leave it to the states.”
“The president was either not prepared or meandered,” said Romney senior adviser Ron Kaufman afterward.
“He stuttered a whole bunch. It’s almost like he didn’t know where he wanted to go.”