GOP lacks incentive to provide details PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE Avoiding specifics suits GOP goals, experts say

At one point during last week's vice presidential debate, moderator Martha Raddatz asked Republican Paul Ryan, "Do you have the specifics" about how the GOP ticket would finance its proposed 20 percent across-the-board tax-cut plan? Ryan didn't.

And it is unlikely voters will hear more details during Tuesday's second presidential debate between Mitt Romney and President Obama. In fact, they're not likely to hear any details from the GOP until after election day.

With two debates down and Romney surging into a tie in the polls since the first debate, analysts say there is little incentive for the Republicans to offer fine points about their tax plans or foreign policy proposals. Nor are they apt to even mention immigration, housing or the environment, some of the many issues that haven't surfaced in the first two debates.

On each of those issues, Obama has a record of four years in office to critique. The Republicans have proposals, but some are so vaguely sketched that analysts can't even deconstruct them.

Some political strategists believe that details are simply not smart to divulge this close to election day.

As former Romney adviser and longtime GOP consultant Mike Murphy said on NBC's "Meet the Press" this month when asked why Romney wouldn't explain what loopholes he would close to pay for his tax cut: "Why? Because you'll attack him for doing it. You attack him for not giving you a little target ... and then you attack him when you get the target."

Analysts like Edward Haley, a professor of international studies at Claremont McKenna College, said the pattern of not offering specifics has "been a hallmark of this whole campaign. They punt on the details."

Any differences?

Romney has said that under Obama, the U.S. relationship with Israel has deteriorated and the nation hasn't been forceful enough in preventing Iran from ramping up its nuclear capability. But the Romney camp hasn't explained how it would be any different on those issues.

"In foreign policy it's a little easier to do that. When Nixon ran during the Vietnam War (in 1968) he said he had a plan to end the Vietnam War. But you never got the details of the plan," said Haley, a Middle East expert who heads Claremont's Center for Human Rights Leadership. "But these guys are trying to get away with it on domestic and economic policy."

During the first presidential debate, Romney said - inaccurately - that his tax plan would not favor the wealthy.

In its analysis of the plan, however, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center said that Romney's proposal would create a "net tax cut for high-income tax payers and a net tax increase for lower- and/or middle-income taxpayers."

During the first debate, Romney cited "six studies" that supported his plan. What he didn't mention was that two of those studies were written by people at conservative think tanks. Another "study" is a Wall Street Journal opinion page essay and follow-up blog post from a former Reagan administration official turned Harvard professor. A fifth was a white paper written by Romney's economic advisers.

'Doesn't add up'

A common problem with analyzing Romney's tax ideas is that he has declined to say what deductions and loopholes he would close, said Alan Auerbach, a professor of economics and law at UC Berkeley who directs the Robert D. Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance.

"There's a deeper problem, because if they preserve a lot of these middle-class deductions (like the mortgage tax deduction), and they also say they're going to avoid lowering taxes and raising the deficit and they're also not going to raise taxes on savings as investment and capital gains," Auerbach said, "then they've boxed themselves in such a way that they can't meet all their objectives."

"Something has to give. But it's clear that it doesn't add up," Auerbach said. However, at this point in the campaign, Auerbach said, "I seriously doubt you're going to get any more details."

A visit from Santa

"The only time that things get specific is when politicians are giving you something for free. George W. Bush was specific about the tax cuts he was going to give everybody in 2000. Well, that's easy. Santa Claus is coming to town," Auerbach said. "But if you're doing something that costs money, and you have to specify how you're going to pay for it, then it's not so easy and you don't want to be so exact."

Romney has been equally silent on immigration. Latino voters favor Obama over Romney by a 67 percent to 23 percent margin, according to a Latino Decisions poll released Monday. But that gap closed slightly after Romney's performance in the first debate, said Stanford University political science Professor Gary Segura, a co-founder of the Latino Decisions polling firm.

Immigration issues

Segura said his research shows that many Latinos oppose Romney because of his hard-line positions on immigration - he supports the concept of "self-deportation" - and his opposition to the Dream Act, a federal measure that would have offered a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children and had fulfilled certain requirements. It was blocked in Congress.

"Republicans would do better among Latinos if they said nothing at all," Segura said. "Because if the alternative is saying hostile statements, then silence is actually improving the quality of their content."

In the first debate, Segura said Obama didn't forcefully defend his positions on health care, the environment, same-sex marriage and women's issues like contraceptive care.

"If you want to talk about why the president did so poorly in the first debate, essentially every core Democratic constituency group hasn't seen any of their issues talked about," Segura said. "He's been playing on the other guy's ground."