How? It can’t be substantated until Mitt releases his returns. Is Reid supposed to break into Romney’s study and fish them out of his safe?
I’d say the bolded bit of the definition quoted below is what he had in mind:
Suggesting the economy is like an atherosclerotic* artery: hardened, narrowed by plaque buildup, thus with diminished flow creating ill health.
- “Atherosclerotic/osis” and “arteriosclerotic/osis” are alternative forms for the same concept and equally correct; “arthrosclerotic/osis” is an abomination before God and all right-thinking proofreaders.
OK so to be fair make Romney file financial disclosure forms after he becomes President and forget about tax forms before the fact.
The point is that the interesting things are always before you’re elected to national office. You know how Harry Reid made all his money? Neither do I but I believe the state senator in Godfather II is modeled after Reid.
McCain’s team saw his returns and then picked Sarah Palin. Enough said.
We ask posters on this board to provide a cite for their claims all the time.
So when making a claim of this sort I think Reid should cite his evidence - name names of his source(s).
Stepping forward and making a claim of this sort reminds me of the Birthers making outrageous claims about Obama’s citizenship without providing evidence to back up the claim. Reid should not stoop so low. In short, yes, he should put up or shut up.
Yes. And those birthers yelped and howled that the whole thing could be cleared up by Obama releasing his birth certificate – which he did.
Can you possibly point to any threads in the past where you admonished the birthers in the same way? Just want to make sure your outrage is consistent.
No, what Romney’s people are demanding is this:
Which Reid is plainly not going to do. Lyndon Johnson quotes to the contrary, it’s not ethnical to make unsubstantiated allegations against people and they demand they prove you wrong. That’s not a reasonable request because it starts a series of cascading accusations and demands that never stops and everybody knows it. I agree Romney has no standing to complain about this kind of thing after, among other things, the “If we keep talking about the economy, we’ll lose” lie. And after four years and counting of Birther-dom it’s certainly sauce for the goose as far as the GOP goes. So it’s hard not to smirk at all this, but it really is a bullshit debate tactic.
It* isn’t* a debate tactic, Marley23. The world outside is not the SDMB.
It’s a *campaign *tactic. A good one, too.
This all makes sense as part of a larger strategy to use Romney’s thin skin, as he revealed in the primaries, to disqualify him in the minds of enough of the electorate. They’ll keep goading and goading until he explodes for us, on camera, and that’ll be the end. Meanwhile, the approach keeps a lid on his support levels, a lid that gets tighter every day. Really, how do the upsides and downsides for the 2 candidates compare? Romney has no upside available to him; he can only hope that something bad blows up for Obama. He can’t hope for an Obama explosion, because the guy’s so cool he’s made of liquid nitrogen.
Meanwhile, Romney is using a defensive strategy, talking only to Fox etc., that is a guaranteed fail for a guy who’s behind. Obviously he’s chosen the stonewall approach to his taxes because he thinks that’s less damaging than the truth.
Doesn’t the AMT prevent individuals from avoiding taxes altogether past a certain income level? How would it be possible for Romney to not pay taxes at all some years? And if he could do that, why do we have an AMT?
It is a good strategy. John mcCain is my hero, but that’s how Bush beat him. The attacks on him were dirty as hell, but completely absurd. I doubt those were what beat him. What beat him was him losing his cool and giving that “agents of intolerance” speech. Rove got McCain to lash out at the very base he was trying to win.
One thing about Obama, he gets miffed, but never loses his cool in public. He can’t be rattled.
Romney is actually very arrogant, IMO, which is probably based on a lifetime of wealth and privilege. He assumes that he gets to set his own narrative, but of course in an election you can try, but chances are you will fail.
And strategically it’s probably smart. But if you notice, a few people in this thread have asked what’s wrong with Reid making the accusation and demanding Romney release the returns to prove him wrong. It’s fair to point out that that’s not considered a reasonable argument around here, and certainly nobody thought it was valid when people were making up stupid shit about Obama being born in Kenya.
Obama was supposed to be a new, better kind of President. Good thing he has the old scumbags of his party to pitch the sleaze so he can pretend to be above it all.
Regards,
Shodan
I don’t think the two situations are really analogous. People making up stupid shit about Obama was stupid because Obama there was already overwhelming evidence that Obama was born in the US. People that were claiming he was born in Kenya had to weave bizarre conspiracy theories.
Had that evidence not existed, had Obama refused to show any birth certificate, had the gov’t of Hawaii been unwilling to vouch for his records, and there been no birth announcement in Hawaiian papers, had Kenya not been a warzone at the time his mother was supposed to have traveled there to give birth, then I don’t think it would’ve been wrong for people to speculate that he might be hiding something.
I don’t want to drill down six layers in analyzing the comparison- that’s usually not productive. The point I’m trying to make here is that it’s a very dodgy tactic to say ‘If you won’t tell me what I want to know, I’ll just start accusing you of stuff until you prove me wrong.’ I’d like to know what’s in the tax returns, but generally speaking we already know why Romney won’t release them: he feels that whatever is in there will hurt him politically. And we already know he’s extremely rich and not paying a whole lot in taxes.
Meh, that’s why politicians release things, to head off accusations that they’re doing something wrong. If there wasn’t the possibility of such accusations, they wouldn’t release anything.
Yea, but that’s really general. And its kind of unreasonable to expect people to leave it at “there’s something in there that will hurt him politically” and then not try and figure out what “something” is.
I don’t think that’s why presidential candidates release their tax returns. It’s not to head off accusations they’d done something wrong so much as it is to let people get a sense of their finances and how they make their money and what they do with it. Have we talked up the fact that George Romney started this tradition in 1968, by the way? That makes this whole thing more than a little ironic.
I’m not expecting people to leave it at that. But Reid didn’t just try to figure it out, he’s making public pronouncements about what he believes Romney did even though we know he hasn’t seen the returns.
Why are you distorting what Reid is saying. Here it is, from the link in the OP
Reid is not claiming that he knows Romney paid no taxes. All he is saying that a Bain investor told him this. Even if Reid releases the name, it would prove nothing. If the investor confirms the story, it would just confirm Reid’s statement but still say nothing about the taxes. So don’t claim that Reid is claiming he knows anything about the taxes.
As for Kenya, if Romney release the returns and people start claiming they were faked then the situations would be analogous.