The House passed a Republican-sponsored bill (H.R. 8) this afternoon that would extend all the Bush tax cuts for one year, including those on income above $250,000 — and fast-track “tax reform.” Almost all House Republicans and a 19 Democrats voted for the measure. The bill would also actually raise taxes on about 25 million Americans because it reduces some tax credits. But as the Center for American Progress Director of Fiscal Reform Seth Hanlon notes, U.S. service members and their families would be part of that group:

A corporal (E4) in the Marines with four years of service, who is married and has two children would see a tax increase of $448 under H.R. 8

A military police staff sergeant (E5) in the Air Force with eight years’ service, with a spouse and three young children at home, would see a tax increase of $1,118 under H.R. 8

A private in the U.S. Army (E1) in his first year of service, who is married with an infant child, would see a $273 tax increase under the Republican plan

“These are just three typical military families who face a tax increase from H.R. 8’s failure to extend important tax benefits for working families,” Hanlon writes. “Many families with similar incomes, military and nonmilitary, would face similar tax increases because of H.R. 8’s failure to extend the child tax credit and earned income tax credit improvements.” See the full report here for more details.

Despite Mitt Romney insulting the British, demeaning the Palestinians, irritating Polish Solidarity, and ignoring the traveling press corps, Romney’s campaign and its Republican allies are hailing the presumptive GOP presidential nominee’s recent trip abroad a smash hit. “I think it was a great success,” Romney adviser Stuart Stevens said.

However, the National Journal, reporting that GOPers say the bad trip isn’t that big of a deal, got some veteran Republican operatives on record acknowledging the obvious:

“It comes under the heading ‘seemed like a good idea at the time,’ ” assessed John Pitney, a former Republican National Committee aide and now a political-science professor at Claremont McKenna College. “If the plan was to burnish his foreign-policy credentials and remind people of his leadership at the Winter Olympics, that was a very sensible idea on paper, but in practice it didn’t work out as the campaign had hoped.”

Republican strategist Ed Rogers, a former Reagan aide and a veteran of the Bush-Quayle campaign, awarded the trip a 4 on a scale of 10. “The question always is if you had to do all over again and get the exact same results, would you do it again?” he said. “Well, in this case, no. But it’s not that big of a deal.” [...]

Republican consultant John Feehery, a former House GOP aide, said that the problem boils down to the Romney campaign being unprepared for an unforgiving international spotlight. “The media is throwing fastballs at Mitt Romney’s head and he’s got to do a better job at ducking them,” he said. “What they didn’t anticipate was how hot the media glare was going to be. They wanted to go over there and not make any news and they ended up making some.”

When former Romney rival Rick Santorum, who endorsed the former Massachusetts governor back in May, was asked if Romney’s trip was a success this morning on CNN, he twice dodged the question. “I think the long-term take from this is one that we can go out and make the differentiation between, what a world under Mitt Romney and a Republican administration would be versus the tattered relationships that we have with some of our best and longest and strongest allies,” Santorum said.

Mitt Romney took a lot of flak for his comment that the disparity between Israeli and Palestinian economic prosperity could be chalked up to “culture” (and God and a “few other things” that went unspecified). Perhaps chastened, Romney initially denied he was talking about Palestinian culture, though he plainly was. Then, true to form, he reversed himself.

Romney doubled down and, before long, penned an article in the National Review titled “Culture Does Matter.” The presumptive GOP presidential nominee placed his comments about Israel squarely into his flawed Freedom Agenda. He wrote:

Like the United States, the state of Israel has a culture that is based upon individual freedom and the rule of law. It is a democracy that has embraced liberty, both political and economic. [...] Israelis, Palestinians, Poles, Russians, Iranians, Americans, all human beings deserve to enjoy the blessings of a culture of freedom and opportunity.

Leaving aside that modern Israel was founded in part by collectivist farmers (Romney cancelled a meeting with their political descendants), the trope stems from Romney’s apparent interest in two books he’s read — but didn’t read very carefully.

But what Romney left out almost entirely on his trip to the Mideast — unlike his father, who visited Israel in 1967 — was the Palestinians. Tom Friedman wrote in the New York Times that, “Much of what is wrong with the U.S.-Israel relationship today can be found in that Romney trip.” Were Romney to bother, he would have seen he was wrong:

[H]ad Romney gone to Ramallah he would have seen a Palestinian beehive of entrepreneurship, too, albeit small, but not bad for a people living under occupation.… In short, Romney didn’t know what he was talking about.

Indeed, as many commentators have noted, the World Bank blames Palestinian economic woes in large part on the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

As for “freedom” as a stand-in for cultural traits that lead to prosperity, Altantic writer Robert Wright noted that, “I’m sure many Palestinians agree they could use more freedom, and that this would have economic benefits”:

I mean, leave aside the left-right argument about whether Israeli or Palestinian leaders are more responsible for the failure to reach a two-state solution back when that was still possible. Do you have any idea how offensive Romney sounds to the vast majority of Palestinians who definitely can’t be blamed for this failure to seize past moments?

Romney did find some support for his statement, though. Former House Speaker and failed Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich seemed to accept that Romney was indeed ripping Palestinian culture — despite belonging to a non-existant people — as inferior to Israel’s. It’s no surprise that they would find synergy on this. In a December debate, Gingrich said of the Palestinians, “These people are terrorists.” Romney responded: “I happen to agree with most of what the Speaker said.”

In a very matter-of-fact television interview earlier this month, President Obama said Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez’s authoritarian machinations have “not had a serious national security impact on us.” Hard-pressed to find points of divergence between his own national security policies and Obama’s, Mitt Romney — focused on Chávez’s “military ties with Iran” — blasted the president as “simply naïve,” and called his comment “disturbing.”

One wonders if Romney feels the same way about Air Force General Douglas Fraser, who, as the head of Southern Command, has responsibility for U.S. military operations in Latin America. Asked by the Associated Press if Venezuelan arms purchases and weapons development posed a threat to the U.S., Fraser said:

From my standpoint, no, I don’t see it that way. I don’t see them as a national security threat.

…As I look at Iran and their connection with Venezuela, I see that still primarily as a diplomatic and economic relationship.

The experts side with Obama and Fraser on this question. Riordan Roett, who directs Johns Hopkins’ Latin American Studies Program, said Chávez “poses no security threat to the United States or anyone else.” Roett dismissed Romney’s outrage as “just pure electoral politics.” Another expert said in 2009, “They just don’t have the stuff that could pose a serious threat to the United States.”

On Afghanistan, Romney was for listening to the generals before he was against it. Maybe he should lend them his ear, at least for a while, on Latin America, too.