Romney camp promises real policy details'eventually

Mitt Romney, apparently talking about the height of the trees. Mitt Romney's campaign has apparently decided that the "trust us, we have a plan" line isn't going to carry Romney/Ryan through the next two months of the campaign, so they're preparing to start talking policy specifics. That's where the problems will begin.

According to his advisers, Romney will offer more detail on how he proposes to pull off the delicate balancing act he proposes: cut income taxes by 20 percent and corporate taxes by 10 percent but maintain current levels of defense spending. All adding nothing to the $15 trillion national debt.

The shift to offering more policy information ' which could include tricky topics like eliminating the beloved mortgage interest and charitable giving deductions ' is not universally viewed as a great idea by Republicans. But amid criticism that the nominee has been too vague, his campaign is getting ready to say more.

'Voters are not looking for detailed budget blueprints. They want to know what your principles are,' senior Romney adviser Kevin Madden said. 'But he will offer some more specifics in the debates ' which is often where these things come out ' under direct questioning on specific issues.'

Voters actually are kind of interested in details, something concrete that Romney actually stands for. You can hardly blame them, since Romney often can't decide himself what he stands for, often within the same speech. So voters seem to be looking for something real, which is probably why more people are interested in finding out what's in the Republican platform than in Romney's big speech tonight.

And when they start getting those details, boy howdy. How Romney is going to pull of explaining how he can get a balanced budget, tax cuts for the rich, and no cuts to defense without spilling the beans on what else happens will be very fun to watch. How he's going to avoid talking about the fact that the rest of us are getting a tax hike and that he'll be slashing $2.4 trillion from Medicare and $134 billion from food stamps will take more contortions than a Cirque de Soleil acrobat can manage.

Of course, he could also just resort to what he and Ryan have done so far: flat-out lie. It's gotten them this far.