Mitt Romney’s Harry Reid Problem: The “Didn’t Pay Any Taxes” Allegation Is Churning Up The Tax Return Issue
Talk of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s allegation that Mitt Romney had not paid any taxes at all for 10 years dominated the Sunday talk show circuit as Republicans denounced the (still-unsubstantiated) charge.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus called Reid a “dirty liar,” noting that the top-ranking Democrat in the Senate had still not made public who allegedly told him about Romney’s tax history. (Romney, for his part, has said he paid taxes every year.) Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, the head of the Republican Governors Association, called Reid’s allegation a “reckless and slanderous charge”.
The amping up of Republican rhetoric amounts to a recognition that no matter how unfair they believe Reid’s charge is (and they believe it is incredibly unfair), the allegation is churning up the tax return issue and needs to be pushed back on — hard.
At its root, the problem for Romney on this matter is that he and Reid are simply not playing by the same set of rules. Here’s why:
1. Reid isn’t up for re-election until 2016 (if he even decides to run again, since he will be 76 years old that year).
2. His allegation against Romney only strengthens his hand among his Democratic colleagues — in and out of the Senate.
3. He’s not running for president and, therefore, isn’t subject to the same sort of transparency demands that Romney is.
4. He’s far less well-known than Romney, meaning that by engaging Reid, the Republican presidential nominee is punching down in a big way.
“He’s fearless and shameless,” said Jon Ralston, the leading political journalist in the state of Nevada and a man who has watched Reid’s career closely. “The most dangerous man is one who does not care.”
The shaming of Reid, which is clearly what Republicans — Romney included — are now set on doing, then, likely won’t work. Several close Reid allies insist he simply will never reveal the alleged source of the Romney tax information and, they argue, politically speaking he won’t ever have to, since the allegation — as we noted above — does little harm to Reid’s political career.
In politics, a charge unanswered is a charge believed. It’s why Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry’s (D) slow response to charges regarding his service in Vietnam — allegations Kerry clearly believed were beneath contempt — wound up playing a major role in his defeat in the 2004 presidential election.
“I just believe that this hurts Romney more,” said one senior Republican strategist who follows Nevada politics closely. “If he doesn’t produce his tax returns, this will probably continue. If he finally relents, then Reid just says ‘thank you.’”
Reid is among the most Machiavellian politicians operating today (or ever). He picked this fight with Romney on purpose, knowing that the Republican nominee was — due to the rules of politics — fighting with at least one hand tied behind his back.
And it’s why, whether you like what Reid is doing or not, he’s created a problem that Romney and the Republican Party have to figure out how to handle — and quickly.
By: Chris Cilliza and Aaron Blake, The Washington Post, August 6, 2012
“Dirty Liar Harry”: Republicans Have Just About Had It With Harry Reid On Romney’s Tax Return Story
Good afternoon: It’s Sunday, August 5th, 2012, and Mitt Romney has still not released more than two-years’ worth of tax returns. Why is that? Only Mitt and Rafalca know for sure. The rest of us poor souls must continue to sit here and speculate, potentially forever. As you are perhaps aware, Harry Reid has floated one improbable explanation for the secrecy surrounding the documents, which is that Romney did not pay taxes for a decade. The candidate has, of course, denied this, but Reid keeps pushing back, forcing Romney’s surrogates to attack him and thereby ensuring that the story — and the general tax return theme — remain in the news.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus got particularly feisty on ABC’s This Week, calling Reid a “dirty liar who hasn’t filed a single page of tax returns himself, complains about people with money but lives in the Ritz Carlton here down the street.” Senator Lindsey Graham called Reid’s accusations “out of bounds,” while Virginia governor Bob McDonnell said they were “reckless and slanderous.” McDonnell added that, “People don’t care about Mitt Romney’s tax returns. They are [worried] about their own tax returns,” which would probably be mostly true in a world in which Mitt Romney had released more tax returns.
Meanwhile, the Democrats did their best to contain their glee over the situation, with varying degrees of success. Former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell gently peer pressured Romney to share his filings, saying, “We all do it. It’s become commonplace in American politics…Mitt, go ahead and do it.” Obama campaign adviser Robert Gibbs suggested that Romney “go to Kinko’s,” where he could “put this to rest” by making copies of the documents for “a nickel a page.” (Gibbs was nice enough to offer to send him the nickels.):
“The whole world would know exactly what loopholes he’s taking advantage of,” alluding to Romney’s having placed some of his money in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands.
Asked repeatedly whether the Obama campaign in Chicago had told Reid to stop making those tax claims, Gibbs would only reply: “I don’t think anybody controls Harry Reid.
Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wassermann Schultz was more subdued: “This question is not just generated by Harry Reid,” she said. “It’s been asked by countless reporters, by voters that want to know more about Mitt Romney’s finances.” And David Axelrod stuck to what has become an Obama campaign mantra, asking, “Why don’t they just put this to rest? What is it that he’s hiding?”
Finally, Reid himself weighed in once again via a statement sent to Talking Points Memo this morning which read, in part, “It is sad that the most secretive candidate since Richard Nixon has forced his party to defend his decision to hide the truth about his tax returns.” Sad is one word for it.
By: Caroline Bankoff, Daily Intel, August 5, 2012
“Circumstantial Evidence”: Harry Reid Gets Under Mitt Romney’s Skin
Harry Reid has always been an unusual character. He’s often dismissed as a lightweight by Republicans (Senator Tom Coburn recently called him “incompetent and incapable”), but he is also an adept legislative maneuverer who has notched some extraordinary victories, perhaps none more notable than getting every Democrat in the Senate, even ones like Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman who live to make trouble for their own party, to vote for the Affordable Care Act. He’s very soft-spoken, speaking most of the time in a near-whisper, but he’s also willing to wield a shiv with an enthusiasm few in his party can muster.
And now, Reid is doing the kind of work that surrogates are supposed to do for presidential candidates: go out and make the kind of biting, maybe even questionable attack on the opponent that the candidate himself doesn’t want to be seen making. Reid has charged that a source at Bain Capital has told him privately that Mitt Romney didn’t pay any taxes for 10 years, and that’s why Romney won’t reveal his tax returns. When asked for concrete evidence beyond the word of an anonymous source, Reid says, “I don’t think the burden should be on me. The burden should be on him. He’s the one I’ve alleged has not paid any taxes. Why didn’t he release his tax returns?” Romney replied that Reid should “put up or shut up,” and offered an unsubstantiated charge of his own: “I’m looking forward to having Harry reveal his sources and we’ll probably find out it’s the White House.”
This episode gives us yet another case study in how different Republicans and Democrats are. If the parties were reversed, I guarantee you that you would not be able to find a single Republican to criticize what their colleague was doing. They’d meet the “McCarthyism!” charges with a laugh. But Democrats are conflicted, as they usually are about hardball politics (Jon Stewart tore Reid a new one over it). So let’s take a moment to sort through just how we should feel about this.
As a general principle, people shouldn’t toss around explosive charges without having evidence to back them up. And everyone is assuming that what Reid is saying is false, but there is at least some possibility that it’s true. It’s highly unlikely, but it’s possible. We can probably also assume that Reid didn’t make this up out of whole cloth—somebody did tell him this, though whether the person ought to be believed is something we can’t know.
Is this really akin to the birther controversy, as some have charged? It might be, if Romney had already released his tax returns and everyone knew what was in them. Remember that Obama released his birth certificate during the 2008 campaign, not to mention the fact that there were birth announcements in Hawaii newspapers. There was never any question but that the birthers were nuts, and Obama was never hiding anything. In this case, however, Romney is hiding something. His argument is that even though he will certainly demand to see multiple years of tax returns for his nominee for Secretary of Agriculture, and even though he’s certainly demanding to see multiple years of tax returns for the people he’s considering to be his running mate, the public doesn’t get to see his tax returns for more than one year. The absolute gall of his position—that he wants to be president of the United States, but doesn’t think he should have to give a full accounting of his finances—is really something to marvel at.
So just like it’s possible for the police to frame a guilty man, Reid is making what’s probably a false charge about a matter that Romney is improperly concealing from the electorate. If Romney wanted to, he could refute the charge and humiliate Reid tomorrow, just by releasing his returns. But it’s obvious that those returns contain something (or maybe multiple somethings) that Romney believes would be so damaging to his candidacy if voters knew about it that he’s willing to suffer all this bad press, and give the Obama campaign all this ammunition, to keep anyone from finding out.
And frankly, Mitt Romney has run his campaign in a manner so disreputable—constantly questioning Barack Obama’s patriotism, twisting his words out of context at every opportunity, running up a record of mendacity that stands out even among modern campaigns—that it’s hard to feel any sympathy for him when someone hits him a little below the belt.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, August 3, 2012
“Put Up Or Shut Up”: Mitt Romney Had The High Ground And Somehow Managed To Cede It
Sometimes, it’s possible to gain and lose the moral high ground very quickly.
When reporters shout intemperate questions at a candidate near Pilsudski Square in Warsaw, the candidate has gained the high ground. When the candidate’s aide tells the reporters, “Kiss my ass” and “Shove it,” the candidate has lost the high ground.
Similarly, Mitt Romney had the high ground when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) made unfounded allegations about the Republican’s tax returns. And yet, he somehow managed to cede the high ground soon after.
For those unfamiliar with the story, Reid claimed he’d heard from a Bain Capital investor that Romney hadn’t paid income taxes for 10 years. Which investor? Reid didn’t say. Why should anyone take the claim seriously? Reid couldn’t say. He heard a rumor, and he’s passing it along.
Team Romney was furious and they had a point. The discourse can’t work this way — prominent officials need to be responsible when making attacks, and not just throw around second-hand innuendo, as if presidential candidates have a responsibility to respond to every unsupported rumor.
Romney had the high ground against a cheap shot. And then he gave it away.
“It’s time for Harry to put up or shut up,” Romney said on Sean Hannity’s radio show. […]
“Harry’s gonna have to describe who it is he spoke with because of course that’s totally and completely wrong,” Romney said Thursday in the radio interview. “It’s untrue, dishonest and inaccurate. It’s wrong. So I’m looking forward to have Harry reveal his sources and we’ll probably find out that it’s the White House.”
Is that so. Does Reid have any proof that Romney failed to pay taxes for 10 years? No, it’s just an unsubstantiated allegation that Reid carelessly pushed in the media. And does Romney have any proof that the White House is Reid’s secret source behind the attack? No, it’s just an unsubstantiated allegation that Romney carelessly pushed in the media. High ground, lost.
As for “put up or shut up,” is this really the phrase the guy who has been hiding his tax returns wants to use?
In recent weeks, Romney and his campaign spokespersons have claimed he always followed the law when paying his taxes and never paid an income tax rate of 0%. Romney also told a national television audience he’d be “happy to go back and look” to see how many years, if any, he paid a rate under 13.9%.
But these boasts are as dubious as Reid’s irresponsible claims — Romney has effectively told Americans we’re simply supposed to take his defense on faith. He could bolster his own rhetoric about his tax history with documented proof, but for reasons he can’t explain, Romney doesn’t want to.
The message: just take his word for it. And what about his willingness to happily go back and look at his paid income tax rates? Apparently, Romney intends to break this commitment just days after making it.
This is not how one keeps the moral high ground.
For Reid’s part, the Senate Majority Leader issued a statement last night that stands by the original allegations.
“There is a controversy because the Republican presidential nominee, Governor Mitt Romney, refuses to release his tax returns. As I said before, I was told by an extremely credible source that Romney has not paid taxes for ten years. People who make as much money as Mitt Romney have many tricks at their disposal to avoid paying taxes. We already know that Romney has exploited many of these loopholes, stashing his money in secret, overseas accounts in places like Switzerland and the Cayman Islands.
“Last weekend, Governor Romney promised that he would check his tax returns and let the American people know whether he ever paid a rate lower than 13.9 percent. One day later, his campaign raced to say he had no intention of putting out any further information.
“When it comes to answering the legitimate questions the American people have about whether he avoided paying his fair share in taxes or why he opened a Swiss bank account, Romney has shut up. But as a presidential candidate, it’s his obligation to put up, and release several years’ worth of tax returns just like nominees of both parties have done for decades.
“It’s clear Romney is hiding something, and the American people deserve to know what it is. Whatever Romney’s hiding probably speaks volumes about how he would approach issues that directly impact middle-class families, like tax reform and the economy. When you are running for president, you should be an open book.
“I understand Romney is concerned that many people, Democrats and Republicans, have been calling on him to release his tax returns. He has so far refused. There is only one thing he can do to clear this up, and that’s release his tax returns.”
The issue isn’t going away.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 3, 2012
“Dear Leader” Boehner And House Republicans Cave In Payroll Taxcut Fight
This morning, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and other leading officials from his caucus told reporters that House Republicans would stick to their guns when it comes to extending the payroll tax break. If Democrats wanted to avoid a tax increase on the middle class, they would have to cave and make Boehner and his cohorts happy.
Not quite six hours later, Boehner and his cohorts threw in the towel.
House Republicans on Thursday crumpled under the weight of White House and public pressure and have agreed to pass a two-month extension of the 2 percent payroll-tax cut, Republican and Democratic sources told National Journal.
The House made the move after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., agreed to appoint conferees to a committee to resolve differences between the Senate’s two-month payroll-tax cut and the House’s one-year alternative.
Reid, you’ll remember, made this offer on Monday, and soon after Boehner said this morning that the deal wasn’t good enough, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) endorsed Reid’s solution. President Obama backed the same approach shortly thereafter.
The House will reportedly make some technical changes to the Senate bill, and the Senate will approve that final bill by unanimous consent.
With nine days to go, it appears all but certain that the payroll tax break — as well as a clean extension of unemployment benefits — will be extended for two months. Between now and then, a conference committee will be tasked with working on a deal for a full-year extension.
What changed Boehner’s mind? Or more accurately, what changed Boehner’s mind again? The Speaker, as recently as Saturday, wanted to pass the Senate compromise and send his caucus home for the holidays. They rebelled and the leader quickly became the follower.
By some accounts, this happened again today. House Republicans —- Wisconsin’s Sean Duffy, Arkansas’ Rick Crawford, Pennsylvania’s Charlie Dent, among others — started breaking ranks after getting an earful in their local districts. GOP lawmakers who wanted to fight the Senate Braveheart-style came to the conclusion, “Maybe that Senate bill isn’t so bad after all.” When his members reversed course, the Speaker again took his cues from them, rather than the other way around.
If Boehner were a stronger, more effective House Speaker, this fiasco could have been easily avoided. He could have told his caucus this was a fight they were likely to lose, so passing the Senate bill quickly was the smart course of action. But he couldn’t — Boehner takes orders; he doesn’t give them.
It’s what helps make this story a disaster, not only for Republicans in general, but also for John Boehner personally. As he surrenders this afternoon, Boehner becomes The Speaker Who Has No Clothes.
He stuck out his neck, vowing not to cave, knowing he’d likely have to cave anyway. Boehner than waited until the pressure became unbearable — after he’d lost face and friends — and walked away with his tail between his legs.
Neither party has had a Speaker this feeble in modern times. His instincts told him to take the deal over the weekend, but Boehner allowed himself to be pushed around by his unhinged caucus, then get pushed around by Democrats, then get pushed around by his allies, then get pushed around by Senate Republicans.
How big a disaster was this for Boehner? Keep an eye on whether Eric Cantor’s travel schedule changes over the holidays.
By: Steve Benen, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, December 22, 2011
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