Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: Mitt Who? Edition

Huffington Post's pollster.com, all polls included, on high sensitivity to reflect recent changes

Joan Walsh checks out the only thing that damages GOP hopes more than a week of Democrats dominating TV... a weekend where Romney and Ryan dominate the tube.

If Mitt Romney loses the election in November, he lost it over the weekend. The Democrats followed a lackluster Republican National Convention with a festival of unity in Charlotte... President Obama got the convention bounce Romney did not, but Republicans still hoped a disappointing jobs report might slow his momentum. It didn't; in fact, GOP incompetence since Charlotte turned Obama's small bounce into a leap forward, with Gallup today showing the president 6 points ahead of Mitt Romney; a week ago, they were tied.

Dana Milbank reveals the tragic growing memory loss so rampant in the GOP. They've already forgotten their last president and scrubbed most of a decade from their minds. Now they've forgotten their candidate.

There was one thing House Republican leaders did not mention in their statements to the cameras after Tuesday morning's caucus: Mitt Romney.

They uttered 1,350 words in their opening remarks at the news conference but made no reference to the party standard-bearer who would be at the top of their ticket in just 56 days. ...

That Romney would go on 'Meet the Press' and say that last year's bipartisan spending deal was a 'mistake'' never mind that Romney had applauded Boehner for negotiating the deal at the time ' made clear that the GOP nominee does not wish to run on the record of congressional Republicans.

That House Republicans would not so much as breathe Romney's name makes clear the sentiment is mutual.

The Washington Post challenges Romney to reveal the secret plan.

Mitt Romney is specific about how much he will cut income tax rates for every American: by one-fifth. But he is vague about how he'll pay for this, though he insists he can cut rates without losing revenue.

The danger is a repeat of 2001 and 2003, when President Bush and Congress enacted tax cuts that plunged the nation into debt. Mr. Romney says he can prevent a repeat by closing loopholes. But the 'loopholes' that cost the Treasury most are deductions and other provisions that Americans have become rather attached to ' for example, measures that promote homeownership, charitable giving and employer-provided health insurance. ...

 Mr. Feldstein showed that the Romney math might work if you strip all households with taxable income of $100,000 or more of every dollar of deduction for charitable giving, state and local income tax and mortgage interest. Does Mr. Romney favor such a plan?

Cathrine Rampell focuses the Economix blog on teacher salaries.

In most rich countries, teachers earn less, on average, than other workers who have college degrees. But the gap is much wider in the United States than in most of the rest of the developed world.

The average primary-school teacher in the United States earns about 67 percent of the salary of a average college-educated worker in the United States. The comparable figure is 82 percent across the overall O.E.C.D. For teachers in lower secondary school (roughly the years Americans would call middle school), the ratio in the United States is 69 percent, compared to 85 percent across the O.E.C.D. The average upper secondary teacher earns 72 percent of the salary for the average college-educated worker in the United States, compared to 90 percent for the overall O.E.C.D.

American teachers, by the way, spend a lot more time teaching than do their counterparts in most other developed countries. ...  Given the opportunity costs of becoming a teacher instead of using your college degree to enter another, more remunerative field, are the psychic rewards of teaching great enough to convince America's best and brightest to become educators?

Leonard Pitts looks at two scenes from the revolution.

Apologies to Sam Cooke, then, but a change has come... things being as they are, one finds it difficult to worry overmuch about a bunch of people who think buying chicken sandwiches can forestall what seems increasingly inevitable. Every revolution has its dead-enders who bring up the rear, fighting for the lost cause.

But the trajectory of this particular revolution seems clear. So the headline here is not the old news that Dan Cathy opposes this human right, but the pleasant surprise that Brendon Ayanbadejo does not.

Jim Walter delivers a personal story that strikes me right where I've been living the past year.