CSotD: Trust, but verify
Skip to comments
Jim Morin apparently didn't get the memo about it being "Biden Gaffe Week," went all rogue and did a cartoon about something else. Boy, is he gonna be in trouble!
Meanwhile, however, this business of Romney refusing to release his tax returns is becoming a fascination, and not the kind a well-run campaign should welcome. Certainly not the kind a well-run campaign should be feeding.
I don't make much of the fact that it was his father who pioneered the long-term disclosure, but, whether it was started by his own father or a complete stranger, it's such a well-established practice by now, that not only is it not impolite or a gimmick or a ploy to ask to see them, but nobody should have to ask.
And it's not like the phrase "If you've got nothing to hide …" has never fallen from Republican lips.
We have bipartisan snooping, mind you, but it's a Republican who is hiding his personal finances, so, unless his party is about to unveil a plank that restores personal privacy to all of us, it's worth observing that they are the ones demanding to see birth certificates not just from the President but from all registered voters.
It's also relevant to observe that taxes and finances and personal income are very much on the table in this election, as they were in the last one, when the GOP made a cultural icon out of a guy who lied about his job, lied about his income and lied about his plans for the future.
Maybe "Joe the Plumber" — who wasn't a plumber, didn't net $250,000 a year and wasn't planning to start his own business — tested so well they decided to go that route with their nominee: Have him campaign based on his ability to handle finances and then not show how well he's done at it.
After all, they're doing a bang-up job promoting the theory that major employers hire workers out of their personal income rather than with the proceeds of the business, though I suppose installing elevators for your car or training your wife's horse to dance does require hiring people.
But, then again, so does replacing an eight-year-old car or buying a pair of shoes for a growing kid, which would suggest that tax cuts could be good for the economy down here among the peasantry, too.
In any case, it's not like we're gonna find out he's rich. We've figured that out and, if we hadn't, we at least know he made a boatload of money over the past two years because he did release those forms.
So the question is, why is he refusing to release the others? Is he waiting for Rosemary Woods to make copies of them?
I figure Harry Reid was just blowing smoke with the claim that Romney had paid no taxes in those missing years, making the accusation so that Romney would release his tax forms and prove him wrong.
The Republicans responded with wounded horror, accusing Reid of lying … but they didn't say, "See! This proves it!"
And you have to wonder if nobody went to Romney for a little come-to-Jesus conversation about putting this damn fire out. Maybe the Republicans are in such disarray that there is no delegation of senior party members who can speak with any weight.
Or maybe the meeting took place and the candidate showed them something that shut them up.
John McCain, who has seen the forms, says there is nothing "disqualifying" in them.
But it seems obvious that there's something in them that Romney doesn't want to share with the public, or he would have released them simply to end the conversation and move on.
So whaddaya think's in'em? Here are some nominees:
1. Harry Reid is right. He paid no taxes.
2. The forms clearly don't reflect his actual income, which he was stashing overseas.
3. He was making illegal contributions to his 401k.
4. He has misstated the timeline in his employment with Bain Capital and was still in command when jobs were outsourced.
5. He made significant contributions to groups such as Planned Parenthood that would be anathema to conservative voters.
6. He voted in Massachusetts while a legal resident of California.
7. He's a very private individual working his hardest to move into the world's largest fishbowl.
8. His list of dependents reveals that he's a lot more Old School than even the folks in Utah knew.
9. He's afraid someone will demand that he give back the cocker spaniel.
10. All of the above.
Any others?
Whatever the case, Romney is proving as inept on this issue as he was on his recent foreign policy tour: He has managed to shift the question from a fairly routine "What did you make?" and "What did you pay?" to a much more interesting question of "What have you got to hide?"
Smooth move, Mitt.
(not sure this clip is entirely applicable, but I
certainly wouldn't want you to miss it.)
Comments 7
Comments are closed.