GOP still using ‘Romney math’ to argue fiscal cliff

>>> noticeably absent from the fiscal cliff debate is the man who until just a month ago was the face of the republican party , willard mitt romney . his awkward lunch visit to the white house aside, "the washington post " reports the former gop standard bearer is now detached and in sec collusi seclusion. there's no aide to make his peanut butter and honey sandwiches. romney has told friends he has little interest in helping the republican party rebuild and rebrand itself. for more let's bring in goalldie taylor and karen finney. romney was plan "a" for winning the fiscal cliff. do they not have a viable plan "b"? we have had this counteroffer today but it doesn't seem to go anywhere.

>> i saw a couple reports about how ann romney specifically is taking this loss. you know, no candidate ever plans to lose. you know, we don't plan to pack up and go home. we plan to head to congress. you plan to head to the city council . we plan to head to the white house . so they really did not have a plan "b." as for the gop , well, neither did they. they didn't expect that this president was going to come out with as strong of a proposal as he did. they thought first term obama was going to show up again, and clearly that wasn't true. you know, the plan that they presented today just isn't serious. it isn't serious if we say you're not going to raise the rates on the top wage earners. it's not serious if it says you're going to make significant cuts and try to tie entitlements to this so-called fiscal cliff which isn't a cliff at all. just like mitt romney wasn't a serious candidate, this is not a serious plan.

>> karen, the president's plan includes talk not just of taxes, but also extended unemployment insurance . there doesn't seem to be any thought in the gop plan. did the gop just literally wake up today and think, right, i know, let's get erskine bowles ' recommendation to the super committee and throw it out there.

>> i think it's worse than that.

>> you think it's worse?

>> i do. because just in the same way -- we learned last week that romney 's pollster was relying on bad math based on bad assumptions, and i think here again you have the republican party doing the same thing. what are we talking about? closing loopholes to try to fix the gap. we already had that conversation in the context of the election, and a number of economists said that that wouldn't work, which is part of the reason that the president is insisting on this conversation about the rates set for the top 2%. what do we hear about? the job creators. time and again. governor romney was not able to convince a majority of americans that by protecting the job creators and trickle down economics, we were going to solve our problem. 53% of americans thought he favored the rich and wasn't going to help the middle class for the poor. i think it's a deeper problem. most of the rhetoric sounds a lot like the romney plan.

>> and, goldie , to that point, romney obviously is no longer in the picture, but paul ryan and his budget still are. take a listen to what boehner said last week about that.

>> well, you could look at our budget from the last two years and there are plenty of specific proposals, most of which were part of the conversation that the president and i had two years ago or a year and a half ago.

>> goldie , he's talking about the paul ryan budget. so i assume that plan "b" is now exactly the same as plan "a."

>> you know, they've got to wake up in the morning and understand that they lost this election, that this president was re-elected, that the vast majority of americans do believe that the rates ought to be raised on this nation's top wage earners, that we don't want to see cuts to deductions dealing with charitable contributions or to, you know, home mortgage -- you know, tax relief. you know, they've got to understand that the election really is over --

>> but goldie , paul ryan says he has a mandate because the electors sustained a republican majority in the house. he's the one with the mandate.

>> they sustained that majority through gerrymandering. if you look at how many votes house democrats got across the country, they beat republicans in terms of the sheer number of popular votes in the house. and so really the house gop is nothing more than a collection of local party officials.

>> paul ryan 's ideas, they did try that in a national election. it's one thing as goldie points out, ger ji manderred congressional election, not the same. in a national election, the paul ryan ideas went down in flames just as they did frankly the first time he proposed the ideas when a majority of americans didn't support them. i know the republicans don't like facts and they don't like data that doesn't go along with their narrative, but here we've got 60% of americans are perfectly fine letting those bush tax cuts expire for the wealthiest and that includes 63% of independents. so the numbers are just not there, and they're just continuing to ignore it.

>> john boehner says -- la la la la la la thank you both.

>>> coming up, fox news continues