Romney Shouldn’t Release A Single Tax Return
August 6, 2012 8 Comments
Over the weekend David Axlerod declared that everyone would stop speculating about Romney’s taxes if only he would release his tax returns. Whether this is a coordinated attack between the Obama campaign and Harry Reid remains to be seen, in some ways it doesn’t even matter. Reid claims he has a super secret witness, a Bain investor no less, who claims that Romney didn’t pay taxes for a decade. According to the Democrats the only way for Romney to prove he’s innocent is to release his tax returns. In other news Harry Reid has secret Swiss bank accounts and the only way for him to prove otherwise is to release all of his personal financial data. Ridiculous? Obviously.
While the Democrats are doubling down on guilty until proven innocent, Karl Rove wonders why Mr. Hope and Change isn’t repudiating the tone in Washington. Rove makes a legitimate point, Obama came into office declaring himself post-partisan, he said he was going to be the guy to change the tone in DC. There’s nothing that changes the tone less than personal smears like Harry Reid’s on Romney. The truth though is that Obama was never post-partisan, at least not beyond his fantasy where Republicans just go away because he as elected President. Apparently Obama has an extreme dislike of Romney bordering on outright anger. If this is true, a pure Chicago campaign is what Obama will follow and it will get ugly. Really ugly.
George Will perhaps had the best observation of the weekend concerning Harry Reid and the Democrats. Will says it’s essentially modern McCarthyism. Sen. Joe McCarthy you’ll recall claimed to have a list of 205 communists when in fact he had no such list. Reid is no different. He has no source but he’s going to whip up public outrage anyway. Interestingly, Reid claims he could never vote for someone who cheated on his tax returns or didn’t fill them out in an honest way. Yet Reid voted to confirm the current Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, despite the fact that he failed to property fill out his tax return for years. The double standard here is obnoxious.
So what should Romney do at this point? He shouldn’t release anything more at this point. To do so would look weak, as though he could be cowed into doing something with a bunch of meaningless threats. He’s going to lose anyway, he might as well lose with an amount of personal integrity. The notion that we need to look at candidates tax returns is nothing short of ridiculous. The Bush’s have more money than Romney yet neither of them released tax returns before they took office. There is zero evidence that Romney’s cheated on anything in his life, so what exactly do we need these tax returns for? Romney should try to turn this issue around by pointing out that Obama is simply attacking the successful. It should be tied in with ‘you didn’t build that.’ No matter what though, Romney shouldn’t release anything.
About Steven
I agree. Democrats are just shamelessly desperate to find something… aside from Romney being really generous to charities. Democrats will “find” something even if there is nothing incriminating or unlawful. They will only try to create an issue where one does not exist. It’s clear desperation.
Romney seems to be squeaky clean. Obama and the Democrats are really showing us their socialist leanings as they assume that a businessman must be unethical. That seems to be their baseline assumption, which is of course ridiculous.
I agree 100% with the commentary and Karl Rove’s addition. When Obama releases his college applications and records from EVERY universary and every passport and every ss# that he has used over the years with a detailed report of how, when and where he has successfully paid to have all of these records closed to public scrutiney, then and only then should Romney consider releasing any personal information.
I agree with you though likely for different reasons. Obama was a private citizen when he was in college and when all of the records you want were created. In my opinion we aren’t entitled to view them because Obama has committed no crime and to make him hand those things over suggests he’s guilty until proven innocent. Likewise, Romney’s tax returns are private information that we simply are not entitled to. The fact is the Constitution does not make one of its qualifications for President that they release every last document about them.
‘Sen. Joe McCarthy you’ll recall claimed to have a list of 205 communists when in fact he had no such list. ‘
That’s factually incorrect, and I’m very surprised Ann Coulter–sitting alongside George Will on ABC’s This Week–didn’t bite his head off. McCarthy knew exactly what he wanted to say in Wheeling that night, and carefully wrote it out beforehand.
Which was that he had a list of 57 communists working then in the Federal government. He wasn’t the only one to have such lists, as the State Dept’s security forces had such, and the FBI too. Less than two weeks after giving the speech in Wheeling, W VA, he gave the Senate the names of 81 such ‘security risks’.
Btw, McCarthy even mentioned some of the 57 in Wheeling, including Gustavo Duran, Julian Wadleigh, Mary Jane Keeney, and John Stewart Service. All of whom were exactly what McCarthy claimed.
Service had even arrested by the FBI on espionage charges in 1945 for turning over secret documents to the communist editor of the magazine Amerasia. Without Service (and his communist colleagues Harry Dexter White, Sol Adler and V. Frank Coe) Mao would never have taken over China. Just one example of how dangerous McCarthy’s enemies actually were.
George Will made a fool of himself.
I tend to be a McCarthy defender. I didn’t realize Coulter was sitting next to Will, I’m sure you know she wrote a book defending McCarthy. The term McCarthyism has come to mean something much different than what McCarthy did. It includes actions taken up by the progressive creation the House Un-American Activities Committee. Fair or not, McCarthy gets the blame for a committee he never served on and in a Congressional chamber he never was part of.
That said, Will’s point is that the Democrats are making up claims about Romney and in popular culture that’s what McCarthy did. It’s a valid point, even if it may not be factually correct.
At this point in the campaign, I seriously doubt Mitt Romney will be able to win the back and forth about his tax returns. He is going to be accused of wrong doing, no matter if he releases them or not.
That may be. The question is whether the electorate is swayed by Reid and Obama’s insinuations or whether they find them appalling. I’m not sure which direction independents are leaning on that right now.