Perhaps most discouraging, the Romney campaign’s conscious refusal to provide specific details on health and tax policies allowed Romney to play rope-a-dope regarding crucial matters. He redefined core tax proposals on the fly, and presents a plan whose mathematics can’t add up. Yet without specific details to grab onto, independent observers such as the Tax Policy Center have to guess in filling in the details. It becomes easy to wriggle out of any specific criticism by suggesting that these observers got things wrong. One Romney line exemplified this approach: “Now, you cite a study. There are six other studies that looked at the study you describe and say it’s completely wrong.”