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EDITOR OF REDSTATE

On Mitt Romney’s Taxes

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  July 19th, 2012 at 04:46 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

I am a bit put off by the number of people on the right fighting amongst themselves over whether Mitt Romney should or should not release more tax records.

As I said back in January, it was abundantly clear then that Barack Obama could just make Romney’s taxes an issue all the way to November. That the campaign hasn’t come up with a credible way to deal with it is appalling. A friend of mine noted in email yesterday, “Remember, the things the campaign is unprepared for are the things staff cannot directly challenge the candidate on.” The hang up here is probably candidate driven and the most plausible speculation I’ve heard so far comes from Josh Green at Bloomberg that it has to do with investment losses.

In any event, let me just cut to the chase on this so we can move on. Mitt Romney is going to release those tax returns. You know it and I know it. Mitt Romney caves every time when the pressure mounts exponentially. With National Review on one side and the Washington press corps on the other, both pushing him on this issue, he is going to cave. We all know it. We also all knew in the primary this would be a problem and the Romney team put their head in the sand way back then.

I just wish before Mitt Romney caved he would tie release of his tax returns to Barack Obama releasing the Fast and Furious documents or his college transcripts or more. Romney might as well try to score some solid points on this before taking what will be spun, rightly or wrongly, as a hit.

But we all know he’s going to cave.

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COMMENTS

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  • reddestred

    He can’t take a position and stick to it, unfortunately. He won the primaries because he was the least offensive, not the most inspiring. Too bad.

  • sowa1

    will destroy this Country further and all you and others can do is complain.

  • haumea

    …having to forego the pleasure of primary season I-told-you-sos.

  • hayekwasright

    He should dramatically express his willingness to open his records… as soon as Obama opens his school records. This should be obvious. It would either rob the “fair and open” argument from those demanding the release of Romney’s tax records or finally get Obama’s school records out in the open. I don’t see much of a down side.
    But alas, you are right, he will cave and not capitalize on the opportunity.

    I hope we are both wrong

  • commonsenseobserver

    No way. Fast and Furious would be a much better deal. Just don’t mention anything about birth certs.

  • gmscan

    Yes, Romney will tie his tax returns to Obama’s school records. Obama will refuse. But here’s the thing — ROMNEY ALREADY HAS Obama’s school records. He will release them in October and they will be devastating.

  • mixplix

    The left is puling the same stunt they pulled on Palin, charge them through the legal system and they need a lawyer to defend them and the gullible public thinks there has been a crime committed. There is no ruling that Mitt needs to show his tax returns. Although innocent the defense costs money and that’s the reason Palin quite the Governors job because of the unheard of cost to defend herself costing the State of Alaska in the millions. We really need some men in Congress where half of them qualify to be Vienna Choir Boys.

  • satchman3

    I hope he doesn’t release any additional tax records. There’s no benefit. If he releases records the left will nit-pick them and complain about them. If he doesn’t the left will complain about that.

    Obama continues to get away with not releasing his college transcripts and despite some complaints from the right there’s really no consequences as far as I can tell. I think Mitt is doing the right thing by not releasing anything and to cave on this issue would offer no benefit and make him look weak.

  • commonsenseobserver

    His current tax returns are enough for Americans to understand his finances.

    And we’re merely pointing out Obama’s hypocrisy on the transparency issue.

  • skip1982

    would find fault with all the Republican Primary candidates tax returns. They would be outraged that Herman Cain or Newt Gingrich didn’t donate half their income to the Red Cross etc.

  • katem

    Anyone who seeks the highest office in the country should disclose several years of tax returns. Republicans who are calling on Romney to release more tax returns are right. Romney’s refusal to release more returns is insulting to voters.

    This issue should have been pressed even more than it was during the primary season. And a candidate who has been running for president for as many years as Romney has should have known that he would have to disclose numerous tax returns.

    I don’t think it would be wise for Romney to tie his further release of tax returns to Obama’s school records (are Romney’s school records public?) or fast & furious documents. A candidate’s release of tax returns is an issue that should stand on its own. It’s the right thing to do.

  • tnfriendofcoal101368

    and no one is going to polls saying darn that Romney – he didn’t show me his taxes so I am going to vote for the joker who wants to raise my taxes and gets stumbling over the economy putting my job at risk.

    Barack Obama shouldn’t be trying to hide from me why his White House ok’d running guns to Mexican Drug Cartels nor why he covered it up so absolutely Romney should say taxes for drug cartel documents or Department of Energy e-mails to Steve Westly. Transparency works both ways especially as Fast and Furious/Solyndra are indicative of how Barack Obama has conducted his White House/Romney’s taxes are how he conducted his finances as a private citizen (which I am guessing because convicted tax cheat, Tim Geitner, hasn’t sent the IRS storming down his doors, has been within the rules).

  • MrAleGuy

    I don’t know about you, but my iTunes downloads are ALREADY taxed.

  • APA Guy

    What wouldn’t be wise is for Romney to give Democrats legitimate and legal tax information – only to have them twist and turn his legal personal dealings into something to spin into an attack ad.

    Romney’s rich…terrific…most of our presidents are, including the Socialist-in-chief. The IRS evidently found nothing wrong with his returns of the past or we would have heard about it. Time to move forward and attack Obama on his record (as Romney is wisely doing in splendid fashion these past few days).

  • uncmike

    All that would do is give the left even more things to paw through for fodder to keep the news cycles focused on this issue, and not on Obama’s absolutely terrible economy and Marxist rhetoric. Who cares what Rich Lowry over at National Review thinks. He spends so much time on the in-side-the-Beltway circuit of talking heads, he cannot think independently for himself. And not everyone at NRO accepts Lowry’s push for Romney’s records. I say Romney should stay on the attack against Obama–that is the best way to put the tax release BS to bed and keep the heat on O and his lying ways.

  • dad1011

    If Mitt releases his tax returns that will be all the press talks about from now till the election. We could post video of Obama torturing little bunnies and discussion of this would a “distraction from Mitt’s tax returns”. Unless the dominant media is neutrilized, why arm them?

  • Common_Cents

    Perry was asked a question about it and he said candidate should release more information. Doesnt he get that the media is just trying to pit Republicans against each other? sheeesh

    This isn’t just Perry.

    ATTN: all Republican IDIOTS! the left and the media has declared WAR on you. Wake the eff up and watch out for these obvious traps!!!!!!!!!!!! They are not interested in the truth, they want to trap you in sound bites to nail another Republican. I’m just a dumb gun totin bible clingin ‘Merican and I can see it 10 miles away!

    When will Republicans have some coordinated messaging and learn to deal with a hostile media that has declared war on them? when?

    Gingrich was assaulted by Leno last night about it too. Gingrich laid a good smack down. When Gingrich was confronted about his calling for more tax info in the primary, he said Romney did release a couple years after his comments and that was good for him. Gingrich went on to laugh at the insanity of the left that its just a distraction from the poor economy. He asked how much is enough? 20 years?

  • tnfriendofcoal101368

    The only convicted tax cheat I know of in the Government is Timmy Geitner, the guy he put in charge of the IRS…just saying…tax cheating must not be all that important to King Barry.

  • dajeeps

    For one, because he has been a private citizen for most of his career. It’s not like he’s spent his life in politics and should have some explanation for his wealth.

    But the largest reason I don’t care about it is that where are not talking about a presidential race where there are similarities between the candidates. Even my cat would make a better president than Obama and so Romney’s tax returns hardly matter. I don’t know how we can possibly be worse off with Romney than with 4 more years of Obama, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out.

  • oldbuzzard501

    Swap the tax returns for the Fast and Furious and school records. Mitt could bring them in a big box on stage and say”Here’s mine, where are yours.”

  • alaskaescapeartist

    Red State and National Review agree on this?

    Yikes.

  • kipling

    During the primary, Perry called for Romney to release his tax returns. According to pjmedia.com, a reporter recently asked Perry if Romney should release his tax returns.

    “Perry said candidates for public office should be ‘as transparent as you can be with your tax returns and other aspects of your life,’ but he wouldn?t directly answer whether Romney should produce more than the two tax returns he has promised to give the media.”

    Instead Perry pivoted and turned the question on Mr. Obama. ?I certainly think it is inappropriate for the president of the United States to not [make] his college transcript and his law school transcripts public, that he should make those available,? Perry said. ?I?m all about transparency.?

    http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/07/17/breaking-news-rick-perry-doesnt-much-care-about-mitt-romneys-tax-returns/

    Most of the media have misreported the story. They either do not quote Perry directly or heavily edit a quote and remove it from context.

  • Common_Cents

    all the more reason for Republicans/conservatives to devise a plan to alinsky the media. they need to be held accountable for twisting and downright lying about the intent of the answer to the question.

  • tnfriendofcoal101368

    looked Robin Roberts in the eye and said (by the way Ann Romney having stared down cancer and MS isn’t scared by Chicago thugs or media crack addicts).

  • tnfriendofcoal101368
  • teaforme2012

    The Bloomberg story is accurate. I paid no taxes in 2009 precisely for those reasons. This is one of the things that concerns some of my friends in the NY banking world, no matter where they stand politically: the lack of revenue from losses and carried interest. There’s an abundance of very wealthy people who paid no income taxes, and Romney is nowhere near the worst, since he released his 2010 return.

    I’d like to see Romney get out front of this issue and point to needed reforms, once the public learns that in the height of the recession, when Americans were struggling, the super wealthy were paying no taxes at all. There’s no reason he can’t try to pin this on Obama.

  • teaforme2012

    I hope we aren’t pinning on hopes on “devastating” school records. This is turning into a clown show. Hopefully, Romney is smart enough to figure out some way to end this nightmare rather than demanding Obama’s transcripts.

  • acat

    Most voters don’t care about school records or tax returns, unless there’s something really strange/wrong in ‘em.

    Obama’s school records will not be an “october surprise”. Neither will Romney’s taxes.

    The point isn’t to get the school records, the point is to reinforce the hypocritical nature of the Obama administration.

    Mew

  • Vegas_Rick

    Perhaps if Erick, right wing blogs and gutless “Conservative” politicians had Romney’s back on this instead of reinforcing the lefty narrative that there MUST be something to hide, he would feel a little more comfortable sticking to his guns.

    I hope he does.

    He’s rich, so what? Get over it already.

  • hayekwasright

    It properly should come out anyway as a matter of due process (not that that has been working correctly lately). But using it s a bargaining chip cedes the ground of it being something they can properly choose or choose not to release.

  • hayekwasright

    I lay no real hopes on the release of school records or what may be found therein. However, they seem to have worked awfully hard to hide something there. The point is: offering tax records for school records takes camp Romney away from running for cover and puts them back on offense.

  • writescribe

    katem on this one. Romney should have been pressed harder during the primaries for more disclosure regarding his tax returns and finances. Yes, there was some back-and-forth on it at the time, but it quickly quieted down when Romney shot back with the “stop attacking capitalism” defense.

    Let me be clear: I support capitalism and free markets unequivocally. However, this issue is one that could have been mitigated (it would have been difficult to defuse altogether) during the primaries if Gingrich and/or Perry would have pressed it more vigorously. In this limited respect, the primary process didn’t fully do its job, i.e. screen the candidate, fully vet an issue so it does not become or becomes less of a problem during the general election.

  • tnfriendofcoal101368

    Barack Obama will not in a million turn over those documents. As Dick Morris so rightly pointed out, “four months before an election, a President doesn’t assert the priviledge to protect his perogative, he does it to save his skin.” Issa will have to sue Obama in court to get those documents and that will go all the way to the Supreme’s which won’t happen in 4 months. It is my belief those documents proved that the highest levels of the Obama administration knew and approved of a scheme to provide guns to Mexican Drug Cartels and what the objectives were. No way, Obama turns those over for Mitt Romney’s taxes – NO WAY. That is what we get politically, Obama publically refusing to share the information with the electorate i.e. not being transparent.

  • fightnright

    the way they use the birther controversy?

    As we get closer to election crunch time, the media wing of the Dem party would love to make another headline-dominating distraction out of Repubs looking for mud in the zerO’s academy years, anything other than the economy and jobs.

    And if the school records show nothing of significance, we hand the enemy another airtime triumph.

  • despondent1

    Mitt Romney could offer the following: “I will release my tax returns as soon as President Obama un-seals his college entrance records at Harvard, the Harvard Law Review articles Obama authored, the Columbia college entrance records, all of his college transcripts, the immigration records from the port of Hawaii that are missing from the 60 day period immediately prior to and after his supposed his birth in Hawaii, and the real birth certificate – now that it’s been clearly established (by Sheriff Joe Arpaio) that the one posted by the White House was clearly a fraud.”

    Let the Washington Post chew on that one and demand that Obama release those records. Romney needs to change the game. Let Obama dance to the beat of Romney’s frontal assault for awhile.

  • elenchus

    lol

  • elenchus

    On the other hand I paid taxes in 2009 on my only income that year which was unemployment. Working people don’t get tax breaks.

  • writescribe

    This school records salivation is ludicrous. Think back to one’s own school records – the only thin mine showed is that I was a mediocre student. Look, I know we’re all supposed to be cheerleaders for our guy at least to some extent, but with all due respect the insistence on getting decades-old school records resembles more self-reinforcing group-think than rational thought.

    If Romney doesn’t want to release the returns, don’t release them and take whatever comes your way. However, tying the returns to a quid-pro-quo exchange for (likely useless) school records belittles Romney and his campaign.

  • rightlane1111

    I believe I heard on Rush yesterday that President Reagan only released two years of tax returns. HOWEVER….

    What Sheriff Joe announced and his proof should enrage us all. Over $1 million spent to hide his past. Romney does not have to go the birther route…but I want to know about his SS # from a dead man that was born in the late 1800′s with no surviving relatives. SS #’s are important these days….I can’t get my license without it (which BTW IS FACIAL RECOGNITION PHOTOS..will comment on that later).

    While Obama is calling Romney a felon…isn’t there a legitimate question about identity theft? Obama with his Alinsky tactics…repeats and repeats until people believe that Romney is a felon…and besides…HE’S RICH…something Obama set in motion the day he was sworn in.

    Romney is not playing a kindergarten game…he’s playing with Chicago style politics…worse than what we have in DC.

    The more Romney caves into Obama…the weaker he appears. We all know he is “playing” to the Indies…however, it’s time to show that he can put on his big boy pants and go after Obama.

    Obama wants to talk about $$$ Romney made, Romney needs to ask…show me the original.

    There are so many unanswered questions about this guy…and yet…we are not “permitted” to ask them. Excuse me…there’s enough evidence here that somebody ought to be asking some questions of His majesty.

    http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-07-18/arizona-sheriff-obama-birth/56296272/1

  • littlehouse18

    and other scandals that reflect on Obama’s betrayal of the public trust. These are part of the record of his administration and very rightfully should be part of the debate.

  • kipling

    I caught this one yesterday. The MSM will completely prostate themselves to get Obama re-elected.

    I agree completely that we need to devise a way to keep the media accountable. Barring members of the press who willing lie would be a good start.

  • fightnright

    I give you high fives littlehouse for your response, but as I said in my comment t’other day, I am so frustrated by the Dem’s fifth column daily setting the *terms* of the debate.

    A little more noise and fury please, Mitt & Co., to help replace the keywords from ‘tax returns’, ‘Bain’, ‘millionaires and billionaires’ and ‘vulture capitalists’ to ‘Fast and Furious’, ‘Obamacare pricetag’, ‘exploding debt’, ‘rising unemployment’, and ‘bankrupt US cities’.

    (although Mitt’s latest ad is tops, and there is positive movement in the latest polls to our side, so he must be doing something right to overcome that media handicap =) )

  • casini

    Romney should tell them to go pound sand and treat this issue the way Obama has treated his school’s transcripts, his phantom trip to Pakistan with an unknown passport, his Rezko real estate deal, and his associations with Bill Ayers and Rashid Khalidi.
    When Obama comes clean on all the above, then Romney should say he’ll consider it.