Mitt Romney Haunted By Missing Tax Returns As Campaign Draws To Close
WASHINGTON -- As the GOP presidential candidate faced pressure over the past year to release more financial information, it was widely presumed that at some point he would buckle and follow a tradition started by his father, who released 12 years of tax returns. People who knew him, however, warned that there was no chance he'd release the returns.
They were right. Mitt Romney made it. But the journey has left him broken and battered.
For the first time in presidential politics, the words "Cayman Islands" and "Swiss Bank account" became campaign catch-phrases. President Barack Obama's team produced a blistering ad featuring tropical locations and press clippings of stories about Romney’s aggressive tax avoidance. Did Romney receive amnesty under an IRS program for UBS tax cheats? Did he illegally manipulate foreign tax credits? Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid claimed to have been told by a source who invests with Bain Capital that Romney did not pay federal income taxes for a decade. Bain Capital executives told HuffPost that Romney never would have run for president if he'd thought he'd have to release his tax returns. As the pummeling continued, Haley Barbour, Michael Steele, Rick Perry, Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), and other prominent conservatives said Romney should just release some earlier tax returns and end the abuse.
"The cost of not releasing the returns are clear,” conservative columnist George Will said on ABC’s "This Week" in July. “Therefore, he must've calculated that there are higher costs in releasing them.”
The public never learned what those higher costs may have been caused by. In the final days of the race, Romney's pre-2010 tax returns are still nowhere to be seen. But while he escaped releasing them, the still-secret tax returns haunt Romney on the eve of the election. The Obama campaign, bucking the advice of the pundit class, bludgeoned Romney for his secrecy and for his offshore investments. Top Obama aide Stephanie Cutter even floated the possibility that Romney had committed a felony by giving false information on a previous disclosure (a charge that was deemed silly by reporters and dismissed by the Romney campaign, but which was based on the plain fact that his returns and his disclosure differed in meaningful ways).
The focus on Romney's offshore investments and his missing tax returns -- heightened by Reid's incendiary charge -- drove the former private equity executive into the ground, defining him at a crucial period before Romney had a chance to redefine himself after the primary.
As predicted, the Mitt-Flopper didn't release them... And as George Will so astutely pointed out, "He must've calculated that there are higher costs in releasing them.” So, we can assume that if he HAD released them, the information there would have been so damaging that it would have been even MORE of a blowout.
The vulture-contortionist rolled the dice... And it looks like he's going to lose anyway... But EVERYBODY will still be wondering what it was that was so bad that he had to hide...
It just proves the [lack of] character of the man...
Hey, Mitt-Flop/Mittens/Gov Etch-a-Sketch: Don't let the door hit ya on the way out....
WHEN Mitt-Flop loses, they're going to try to point to the hurricane "interrupting the campaign", and the "Christie schmoozing with Obama" and any number of lame, irrelevant reasons... But the REAL reason? He blew it when he started down that path of "Chrysler moving all Jeep production to China"...And when he was called on it again, and again, and AGAIN, by industry execs, and the moron doubled-down and kept running the ads?....He just lost his main constituency in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin... the old, angry white guys--that work in the auto industry. They KNOW BETTER... and in that group, he just lost their vote, because they know a stinking liar when they see one...
