I would have more sympathy with this line of thinking if the Romney campaign hadn’t used this tactic you decry (insinuating that there is something to hide) when their opponent in the 2002 Senate race refused to release her husband’s tax returns. Or maybe they had good reason to insinuate that, seeing as how they know a lot more about campaigning and releasing tax returns than I do. They might have had good foundation for their suspicions at the time. I should perhaps abide by their judgement.
In this case, seeing that Mr. Romney thinks the adverse press he is receiving on the issue is not as bad as releasing his tax forms, I am still of the opinion that there is something bordering on illegal that he is hiding in there.
That’s sort of a vague tautological principle. What is unreasonable about such demands? I’ve given you reasons why I think it is not at all unreasonable. You have seen that Romney didn’t seem to think it was unreasonable to demand more from an opponent in a previous campaign!
There is no evidence whatsoever to support your hypothesis that he is making some sort of principled stand and every reason to believe he is doing what he thinks is in his own narrow self-interest despite higher principles that would suggest doing the opposite. And, the fact that he believes it is in his self-interest despite all the flack he is taking strongly suggests that he must be hiding something pretty bad.
Here’s what people suspect that Romney may be hiding by refusing to release details of his prior tax returns. Note, they suspect that this is why he’s not releasing them. Nobody is sure, and there is no proof Here they are from least to most likely:
So there were 17,000 US clients that hid $20 Billion. It is not crazy to suggest that Romney may have been among these 17,000, and then “came clean” to avoid criminal prosecution. If true, this would lead to the total destruction of his political career.
Romney has an IRA, just like many Americans. Not many Americans have IRA’s valued at 21 to 102 million dollars though. This would seem to be pretty hard to do, even with a high-contribution SEP-IRA (30K - 50K annual limits). There are a few theories Most likely is that
How would this technique look to your average voter?
3. Romney may simply have paid a Federal Tax rate that was much below 13% for one or more years in the last 20. The fact that his “summary” of taxes was averaged over many years suggests that this was done to disguise the fact that one year was particularly low. If he paid a very low rate in a year (let’s say for the sake of argument 1%), this would look very very bad politically, even if it was all done legitimately.
Romney has every right to withhold his tax history. It doesn’t mean he is being dishonest. It does mean we can exclude him from a job because of it. One candidate is offering a more honest history of their taxes than the other.
If someone applying for an entry level job sure they could take a principled stand and say ‘I’m going to leave the past employment part blank because it’s an entry level job’ that means I don’t have to have a work history relevant to it.
The other guy fills out his past employment.
When I see the huge blank spot on the first guys resume I’m going to decide not to interview him because he doesn’t even have the basic customs of job application down.
Yeah, like I said, you can spin it away. It took people months to understand the basics of securitization and credit default swaps. You think people are going to understand enough of the tax law to see that Romney was pulling a fast one?
The principle of shut up, I want to talk about something else. No not Bain. No not my governorship. No not Romneycare. I’d like to focus on the fact that we aren’t at full employment because Obama hates America.
Yeah but I don’t have to ignore my suspicions either. You make it sound like this is some sort of birtherism. If Romney released his tax returns so that i could see if he filed the form taking advantage of the amnesty and the schedules for his IRA contributions then I would cease to suspect him. I wouldn’t need to ask for the long form or anything like that.
Not if you have given me every reason to believe that you have engaged in tax shananigans.
I think it might make some people more comfortable voting for him.
If so, then the aggregated average he released probably resulted from years of paying little to nothing and one year of sucking it up financially in order to buy off the risk of going to jail.
Not trying to be snarky, but Mitt has obviously done the math and decided that “taking a principled stand (but prevaricating about it) is more advantageous than how his tax returns will be perceived by the general electorate.”
One can choose to
take a principled stand from the very beginning (and probably get no where fast but pigs can fly occaisionally
more or less follow the conventional norms or
c) not put oneself under the spotlight of a presidential campaign.
And, while one isn’t your father, having one’s father set a high standard certainly adds pressure. I mean Romney Sr with 12 years of returns set the gold standard for Presidential candidates. It’s not exactly *fair *to be tarred with your father’s brush but…
That is, in fact, quite notable. Which makes Mr. Reid’s attack rather nasty and dare I say, effective. It has tied Governor Romney’s campaign up for quite a while now.
You’re ignoring another perfectly plausible explanation. That the campaign knows that even if everything is 100% perfectly fine, that low life’s like Harry Reid and Stephanie Cutter will just point to something and say, “Aha, what about this?!!” And this? And THIS?!!! From now until election day, preventing the campaign from focusing on the issues. That’s their game.
GOing after the tax returns of a POW old doddering man would have just seemed mean, and Obama was doing just fine with a positive campaign that focused on abstract endorphine high slogans and/or attacking Bush (yeah def some neg stuff there.
Romney is a financier who’s pitch is how good he is with money who moved to France to dodge the draft and courts birthers. He’s an appropriate target for these criticisms. Deny it all you want. Romney is lame and his politics are lame.
Balzac got it right 150 years ago: “Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.” In Mitten’s case, maybe just great shenanigans. In either case, if his tax records come to light he’s toast.