I once asked a guy who does focus groups where he thought the gap was largest between the views of policy types and ordinary people. He decided it was probably about the federal budget.

Most people just aren't that interested. He said the people who hire him ask about things like Bowles-Simpson (the fiscal commission that proposed sweeping deficit reduction) while the people he interviews mostly think it's a stomach condition.

Hard to know, then, if the wider public noticed the spat over a nonpartisan budget think tank's finding that for Mitt Romney's tax plan to avoid increasing the deficit, it would need to raise taxes significantly on the middle class. Researchers for the Tax Policy Center, a project of Brookings and the Urban Institute, found that Romney's plan would cut taxes for individuals by about $4 trillion over the next 10 years, on top of the costs of extending the Bush tax cuts, by cutting rates by 20%, abolishing the estate tax, and abolishing the Alternative Minimum Tax, among other things.

Mr. Romney declared the study "garbage." This editorial page condemned it for leaving out other exemptions that Mr. Romney could, theoretically, try to eliminate.