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
“An Exercise In False Equivalency”: It’s Not “Swift Boating” If It’s True
Outlining the growing controversy about the timeline of Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital career, CNN’s Jim Acosta recently asked the candidate if he believed he was “being swift-boated in this campaign.” Later that same evening, reporting on Anderson Cooper 360, CNN’s Tom Forman forged a tighter connection, suggesting “Republican analysts fear Mitt Romney could become the second politician from Massachusetts swift boated out of the presidency.”
Here’s how Forman described the Swift Boat affair [emphasis added]:
FORMAN: He’s talking about the Swift Boat campaign, in which President Bush’s challenger John Kerry was demonized over what his campaign considered an attribute. His decorated service as a soldier in Vietnam. The Swift Boat ads, backed by a group of pro-Bush veterans, questioned the Democratic challenger’s conduct in the war, his anti-war activities later and his patriotism.
Kerry was slow to respond and never very effective in refuting their claims even though his critics offered little in the way of proof. He lost the election of course. And for many Democrats, swift-boating became a catch-all term for any unfair, untrue, personal assault on a candidate.
Trying to tie contemporary questions about Romney’s Bain past with an infamous GOP smear campaign is an exercise in false equivalency. “The Swift Boat campaign was completely a lie,” Esquires’ Charles Pierce recently reminded readers. “Nothing the Swifties said about John Kerry was true.” And yet, despite the cavernous gap between the Swift Boat affair and the ongoing Bain story, the comparison continues to gain currency.
The conservative Washington Examiner editorial page on Monday lamented the “Swift-Baining of Mitt Romney.” What had the Obama campaign done that was so unfair to the Republican candidate? It had “seized on reports by liberal websites Mother Jones and Talking Points Memo — and later by the Boston Globe — citing Securities and Exchange Commission filings that listed Romney as the CEO of Bain after he was said to have left for the Olympics.”
Quoting news outlets that cite government documents regarding Romney’s employment record now constitutes a smear campaign?
Let’s stipulate this fact going forward: A candidate having his résumé or biography examined during the course of a presidential campaign does not constitute being “swift boated.” Enthusiastic “vetting” of candidates’ backgrounds is a routine aspect of general elections.
The distinguishing feature of a Swift Boat smear campaign, of course, was that virtually every single war-era allegation made against Kerry’s military service proved to be false, leaving the assumption that the entire point of the coordinated, deep-pocketed attack was to purposefully spread as manly lies as possible. And not just small fibs, but truly unconscionable lies about a serviceman’s record during the unpopular Vietnam War.
That’s what being Swift Boated is about. Prior to 2004, modern campaigns had never seen anything like it. And in the two White House campaigns that have unfolded since, nothing has approached the radical brand of prevarication that epitomized the lowly Republican attacks on Kerry.
By contrast, there’s no dispute regarding the fact that 2002 SEC documents indicate that Romney was listed as Bain’s chairman, managing director and CEO years after he claimed to have left the company. The only debate is regarding what that means. Romney suggests the titles were symbolic and that he had no influence over the management of the company during those three years. Skeptics suggest it’s not likely that a company’s president, managing director and CEO would remain permanently out of the business’ loop for three years (while still drawing a salary).
Either way, the dispute hardly rises to the level of a smear campaign, let alone a Swift Boat-like assault on Romney’s honor. Note that government documents support the claims about Romney’s ongoing links to Bain until 2002, whereas government documents in 2004 routinely undercut right-wing fabrications about Romney’s war record.
Meanwhile, this clumsy Swirt Boat comparison remains in play. From the New York Times:
Conservatives have lit up talk radio programs across the country, worrying whether Mr. Romney’s business record has been ”Swift Boated,” referring to attacks waged against Senator John Kerry’s military record in 2004.
So conservatives fret Romney’s being “Swift Boated,” yet conservatives insist to this day there was nothing unethical about what Swift Boat veterans did to Kerry.
Previously, from Michelle Malkin:
A reminder to conservatives: “Swift-Boating” does not equal smearing. Swift-Boating means exposing hard truths about corrupt Democrats.
From Rush Limbaugh:
[Swift Boat Veterans] were right on the money, and nobody has disproven anything they claimed in any of their ads, statements, written commentaries, or anything of the sort.
In truth, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth smear campaign represented a singularly awful chapter in American politics. Let’s not pretend every time a candidate has to answer uncomfortable questions about his past that the Swift Boat Vets are riding again.
By: Eric Boehlert, Sr. Fellow, Media Matters, July 17, 2012
“Convoluted Excuse”: Romney Campaign Revives Misleading Claim About Kerry’s Tax Returns
When the it comes to the contentious topic of Mitt Romney’s tax returns, the Romney campaign has invoked precedent, defending their decision to release just two years worth of returns as the standard set by the campaigns of John McCain and John Kerry. The Romney campaign renewed this argument on Sunday.
In fact. Sen. Kerry (D-MA) had released 20 years of tax returns when he ran for president in 2004.
On Sunday, Romney senior adviser Ed Gillespie promised that Romney would release a total of two years worth of tax returns, following in the footsteps of McCain and Kerry.
“He is going to release them, Candy, we’ve made that clear,” Gillespie said to host Candy Crowley on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “And that’s the standard that Senator McCain, Republican nominee in the last election said was the relevant standard. It’s the standard that Senator John Kerry as the Democratic nominee said was the standard.”
In April, Romney himself held up Kerry as an example, telling CNBC that “John Kerry released two years of taxes.”
During the Republican primary, Romney released his 2010 tax returns and an estimate of his 2011 returns. Though Gillespie’s language was somewhat vague on Sunday, he seemed to be referring to fact that Romney would release his 2011 returns, bringing Romney’s total to two years of returns.
While McCain did release two years of returns, Kerry released more. As the Huffington Post and ThinkProgress previously reported, Kerry made it a habit to release his returns to the Massachusetts press during each of his Senate campaigns. The reason Kerry only released a few years worth of returns in 2004 is because his past returns had already been released.
Kerry spokesperson Jodi Seth chastised the Romney campaign for the false allegation.
“Months ago, the Romney team began making this false and convoluted excuse — the media investigated it and promptly reminded them that as a presidential candidate John Kerry had released twenty years of tax returns,” Seth said in a statement to TPM. “Still, months later they’re falling back on this same disproven excuse. In fact, if the Romney standard was the same as the Kerry standard for disclosure, the media would have the chance to review twenty years of Romney tax returns. Ed Gillespie should know better.”
By: Pema Levy, Talking Points Memo, July 15, 2012
“He Who Must Not Be Named”: Republicans Dissatified The Word “Romney” Has Passed Barack Obama’s Lips
Go ahead, name him.
As I mentioned the other day, reporters are both repulsed by and attracted to negative campaigning, and I think that probably goes for most of us as well. On one hand, we want to say, “Tut, tut, you shouldn’t be doing that.” On the other hand, not only can’t we look away, but we desperately want our own favored candidate to go negative, so we can get the visceral satisfaction from watching our disfavored candidate get assaulted. It’s analogous to the way we feel when watching a movie or reading a story: if the bad guy doesn’t get killed in the end, we’re left feeling unsatisfied.
But we also have a series of campaign conventions regarding what kind of behavior is acceptable that have little or nothing to justify them. One that has always mystified me is the idea that it’s impolite to mention your opponent by name. Instead, you’re supposed to say “my opponent” and speak of “the other party,” as if to make clear whom you’re talking about is somehow rude. This is supposed to be doubly true for the president, for whom it is perfectly acceptable to criticize the guy running to take his job, but unseemly to do so by saying the man’s name. So today The New York Times dutifully rounds up a bunch of people expressing their displeasure that the word “Romney” has passed Barack Obama’s lips in such a vulgar fashion:
But some veterans of past campaigns, particularly Republicans, questioned whether it would take some of the sheen off Mr. Obama’s stature as president. Rather than appearing above the fray, Mr. Obama may look like just another officeseeker.
Sara Fagen, an adviser to President George W. Bush during his 2004 campaign against Senator John Kerry, and later the White House political director, said the campaign was conscious to avoid that. “He almost never mentioned him and certainly not this early,” she said. “President Bush understood it diminished the office by going after his opponent directly.”
That does not mean Mr. Bush’s campaign went soft on Mr. Kerry. But the president largely left it to others to be so direct until summer. Vice President Dick Cheney opened the debate with a sharp speech criticizing Mr. Kerry in March 2004 at the same time the campaign began airing its first negative advertisements. When Mr. Bush criticized Mr. Kerry, he generally used phrases like “my opponent.” Only in July did he start naming him regularly.
That was the case for previous presidents like Ronald Reagan in 1984 and Bill Clinton in 1996.
Oh please. Here’s the thing: this is a democracy. If the president wants a second term, he has to campaign for it. And the idea that the “stature” of his office is intact if he says “My opponent is wrong,” but terribly damaged if he says, “Governor Romney is wrong” is just ridiculous. Nobody ever explains why one is supposed to be preferable to the other, and there is not a shred of evidence that voters react negatively to the president using his opponent’s name. No one out there in the country thinks it’s weird or beneath the office. The only people who ever say that are people from the other party pretending to disapprove. Voters may be stupid, but they aren’t that stupid.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, May 25, 2012
“A Disagreeable Human Being”: Mitt Romney, The Unlikable Presidential Candidate
It’s been a long time since the country elected a man as personally unappealing as Mitt Romney. Will Americans overlook their deeply held conviction that he’s a jerk?
Very few votes are going to be cast on the basis of what Mitt Romney did or didn’t do to John Lauber in 1965. So that, per se, isn’t Romney’s problem. But this is: The story lands as another brick on pile of evidence amassing that he’s just a disagreeable human being. A few days ago I wrote about Barack Obama’s biggest problem, which is that despite all the many areas in which Americans rate him higher than Romney, the one on which they give Romney the edge happens to be pretty important: handling the economy. Now we get to Romney’s biggest problem. The likability factor. He ain’t got it. And he ain’t got much of a way to get it.
Historical question: When is the last time the clearly less likeable candidate beat the clearly more likeable one for the White House? The answer is, a long time. I put the question to Gallup, which didn’t have historical numbers at hand. But doing some noodling around on my own suggests that you have to go back to 1968 to find such a result.
In 2004, George W. Bush generally led the likeable category. Pew emailed me some numbers—they had Bush leading John Kerry on likeability by 47 to 36 percent in September 2004. Interestingly, Kerry caught up and even went ahead after the first debate. But even so, voters judged both very likeable—70 percent for Kerry, and 65 percent for Bush. In 2000, Bush usually topped Al Gore, but not by massive margins. An October 2000 poll gave Bush an 11-point margin. Pew had a nine-point margin for Bush around the same time.
Before then, numbers get a little harder to come by. But crusty old Bob Dole was surely not considered more likeable than Bill Clinton in 1996. The 1992 Clinton-George H.W. Bush matchup was probably close. But just think back over the elections. The “wooden” Michael Dukakis in 1988 wasn’t exactly radiating intense bonhomie. Ronald Reagan was extremely likeable on a personal level to most people. Jimmy Carter had that big smile in 1976. Et cetera. As I say, I would imagine that it’s 1968, when the surly Dick beat the Happy Warrior, although by just a half million votes out of more than 70 million cast. But even Nixon was probably not clearly less likeable than Humphrey. After all, he’d been the vice president, he’d been on the national stage for nearly 20 years; the man definitely had his backers.
Romney, though? This is the biggest washout of modern times, folks. Gallup just this week put the likeability ratings at Obama 60, Romney 31. It’s not that Obama’s number is unusually high. Look back at those Kerry-Bush numbers. Americans are an open-hearted lot, at least presumptively, so they want to like the guy who’s going be the president. But they Do. Not. Like. Mitt. Romney.
It would be more interesting for all of us if there were some great mystery here, but there isn’t. He reeks of privilege. Every time he says something off the cuff he says something obnoxious. Corporations are people, pal. I like firing people. Where on earth did you get those Godforsaken cookies?
He also—and this actually is interesting, because it’s something our normal public discourse does not like to admit or allow for—is way too rich. We’re constantly told that Americans don’t have any class envy, and compared to some European nations they don’t. But even Americans have limits. A few million, even $50 million; okay. But a quarter billion dollars? A house with an elevator . . . for the cars? It also matters to people how the money was made. It’s okay to be worth a gajillion dollars if you’re Bill Gates or Steve Jobs and have made everyone’s lives more interesting and cooler. But what’s Mitt Romney done? Helped give us Domino’s Pizza.
Even so, Romney might still pass muster, but he has no grasp of the one crucial reality of class in America: you can be filthy rich as long as you don’t look or act like it. Gates doesn’t comb his hair, much. Jobs wore sneakers. Romney just looks too pressed. Even when he’s wearing those jeans. You can look at Romney on television and practically sense how he smells—of costly ablutions whose brand names the rest of us probably don’t even know. And he acts relentlessly rich.
And this brings us back to the Cranbrook School incident. We might have learned from The Washington Post this week that Romney gallantly interceded on poor Lauber’s behalf. Or even, maybe, that he did the awful deed, but a few years later he got in touch with Lauber to say, “Gee, old scout, went a bit overboard there.” Or even that he acknowledged to one of his confederates that he regretted the incident. In other words, we might have learned something that showed he knows he behaved like an asshole. But all we learned is that he behaved like an asshole and is now pretending to forget it. A jerk is one thing. But a jerk who takes no responsibility for his jerkitude is pretty much the definition of an unlikeable person.
No human being is one dimensional. I’m sure there are plenty of people in the world for whom Mitt has performed kindnesses. I expect we’ll be getting to know every single one of them in these next few months, too, in heavily filtered television ads in which the men wear proletarian flannel and the women’s St. John blazers are kept safely in the closet. All I can say is they’d better be more likeable than their candidate—for his sake. In the meantime, there’s something very reassuring about this country reposing in those numbers, that the black guy with the weird name who’s been called everything under the sun is twice as likeable as the rich white guy. This is the America that drives the wingers crazy, but that the rest of us—the majority—live in, and love.
BY: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, May 13, 2012
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