Mitt Romney’s reluctance to release additional tax returns could be costing him politically and handing ammunition to President Barack Obama’s reelection team.
More and more influential Republicans — including Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour — are urging Romney to produce the additional information now and get it out of the way.
Polls suggest controversies over Romney’s taxes and tenure at Bain Capital are hurting his poll numbers when voters are asked how he’s running his campaign.
If the past is any guide, the pressure will keep building
President Richard Nixon famously tried but failed to shield various financial transactions from Congress. And President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton fought a losing battle to prevent the release of financial documents from their failed Whitewater real estate investments.
Obama’s campaign is waging an advertising blitz in battleground states seeking to “define” Romney as a former corporate raider who reduced his tax liability through complicated, murky overseas transactions. His stubborn stance on tax returns just feeds that narrative.
Romney, who has released two years of tax information, says he won’t hand the Obama team more ammunition to “pick over” and use against him, noting that John McCain only released two years of returns in 2008, as did John Kerry in 2004.
But Kerry previously released returns during Senate runs. And McCain might not be the best example. Some of the same allegations leveled against Romney — including hiding the extent of his wealth — were used against McCain.
McCain’s inability to remember how many houses he and his wife Cindy owned became a staple of late-night TV comedians.
It also doesn’t help that George Romney, the candidate’s father, released 12 years of returns in his 1968 presidential run.
Romney held a town-hall rally Wednesday in northwestern Ohio. Obama was briefed on the nation’s widespread drought and was attending a campaign fundraiser.
Romney has hundreds of millions of dollars, and a shady history at Bain, which seems to be a classic corporate raider: take over a business, ratchet up stock prices by slashing jobs and feeding China, then abandon the carcass of the victim.
He insists he left Bain before the bulk of that sort of thing happened, but the evidence is very strong that he is lying. In fact, he seems to be an expert at changing masks and stories to impress whoever he is trying to seduce.
He seems, in other words, to care about nothing but advancing his own power, and will say whatever it takes, untroubled by any serious resistance from his conscience, if he indeed possesses one.
Show your tax returns!!
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Since 1987, I lost one job to the Japs, two to the Chinese, and one to the Singaporians! I have no problem helping this “modern CEO” lose his job. Payback! Maybe , after he loses, he will sit back and think about what he has done, but I doubt it.