Will Mitt Romney Go Down in History as a Joke?
Posted: July 16, 2012 Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, Media, Mitt Romney, U.S. Politics | Tags: Bain Capital, David Frum, George Romney, John Cassidy, Josh Marshall, ridicule, tax returns, the NEW York Times, Vietnam War 26 Comments
It’s beginning to look that way. Mitt’s dad, George Romney, was ridiculed because of an offhand remark he made about being “brainwashed” by the military on a trip he took to Vietnam. By the time he ran for President in 1968, George had decided the Vietnam war was a mistake. He explained his change on mind on the war by explaining that in hindsight he realized he had fallen for propaganda.
Ironically, George Romney’s change of heart apparently was an honorable one: he had changed his mind and wasn’t afraid to admit that he had made a mistake previously. As we’ve heard endlessly over the past couple of weeks, George Romney also released 12 years of his tax returns, because he believed it was only fair to let the American people see what he had earned and what he had paid in taxes over an extended period of time. But George Romney is mostly remembered for the “brainwashing” comment and the ridicule surrounding it.
Now George’s son Mitt Romney is following his father’s footsteps in running for President. Mitt Romney, too, has become known for changing his mind–not just one issue, but on practically every issue. And after a bruising couple of weeks of damaging articles about his career at Bain Capital, he is facing more and more questions from the Obama campaign and from the media about his personal finances and why he will not release his tax returns. Even Republicans like Bill Kristol, George Will, and Matthew Dowd have called for Mitt to get it over with and release more years of returns.
People are beginning to speculate about why Mitt is being so stubborn about refusing to release any of his tax returns before 2010. George Will suggested on ABC’s This Week that that Romney is fearful that whatever is in his returns will make him look worse than he does in insisting on keeping them secret.
“The cost of not releasing the returns are [sic] clear,” Will said. “Therefore, he must have calculated that there are higher costs in releasing them.”
Also on This Week, Matthew Dowd was, if anything, harder on Romney than George Will was.
Political strategist and ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd said “there’s obviously something there” in Romney’s tax returns that he doesn’t want to release publicly, adding that Romney’s refusal to produce his prior returns was a sign of “arrogance.”
“There’s obviously something there, because if there was nothing there, he would say, ‘Have at it,’” Dowd said. “So there’s obviously something there that compromises what he said in the past about something.”
“Many of these politicians think, ‘I can do this. I can get away with this. I don’t need to do this, because I’m going to say something and I don’t have to do this,’” Dowd added. “If he had 20 years of ‘great, clean, everything’s fine,’ it’d all be out there, but it’s arrogance.”
Now it’s the beginning of a new week, and Mitt Romney is still stubbornly refusing to expose his tax records to examination by the press and the public. This is killing his candidacy, and yet he won’t give in. What is he hiding?
At the New Yorker, John Cassidy offers four possible reasons:
1. Romney’s income before 2010 was “extremely high.”
2. “More offshore accounts” beyond the ones we already know about.
3. “Politically explosive investments”
4. “A very, very low tax rate.”
(You can read the details of Cassidy’s speculation at the link.)
Could it be any of those reasons? We already know Romney is very wealthy, and we know about a lot of his offshore accounts. We already know that Bain invested in Stericycle, a company that disposes of aborted fetuses. Might Romney have more embarrassing personal investments? I suppose it’s possible that Romney could have paid no taxes for several years, and that is what he’s hiding. But I think it has to be something more. Why else would Romney and his staff allow him to sustain so much damage his campaign–especially because the questions won’t end until he release the returns. What is it that he doesn’t want us to find out?
Even The New York Times editorial chastised Romney today.
After three days of Mitt Romney complaining about attacks on his record at Bain Capital, it’s clear that President Obama has nothing to apologize for. If Mr. Romney doesn’t want to provide real answers to the questions about his career, he had better develop a thicker skin.
Mr. Romney’s descriptions of when he left Bain have been erratic and self-serving. In 2002, when he needed to show he was still a Massachusetts resident, he denied he had quit in 1999, saying he had taken a leave of absence to run the Olympics committee. A series of documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Committee show that Bain certainly didn’t describe him as absent after 1999.
There’s only one way to deal with this.
The right way to respond to Mr. Obama is to release his tax returns from that period, or open up Bain documents. But Mr. Romney told CNN he would not release more than the one year’s return he has already released and the one for 2011 when it is finished. “That’s all that’s necessary for people to understand something about my finances,” he said. It’s not even close.
I think it’s likely that Romney has longed to run for President in order to achieve the goal his father failed to reach. I’m sure that Mitt wanted to avoid the kind of ridicule his father suffered for an offhand comment. But let’s face it. Mitt’s situation is much more embarrassing than what happened to his father. Mitt looks incredibly weak at this point. He’s starting to become a joke. The Obama campaign has successfully painted him as an out-of-touch rich guy, a tax evader who may have committed perjury in SEC filings. As John Marshall wrote on Friday, in a post titled “Weak, weak, weak,”
There’s a meta-politics Obama is playing by slashing at Romney with suggestions he might be a felon. He’s wounding Romney, who is clearly rattled and angry about the charges, but just as clearly can’t defend himself or strike back. As I’ve noted many times, a thick layer of presidential politics (in a way that’s distinct from US politics at really every other level) resides at the brainstem level of cogitation — with gambits to assert power and demonstrate dominance. Obama looked in control of this situation; Romney didn’t….
This is and will remain a low single digit race. But the President’s team is making Romney look shifty and silly and weak. (I half expect them to start goosing surrogates to call him Slick Willard.) And they’re well on their way to defining him in a way that will be difficult to undo.
Romney supporter David Frum responded to Marshall’s column at The Daily Beast:
Marshall’s column is titled “Weak, weak, weak,” and it puts its finger on a core weakness of Romney as a candidate. It’s not just his arguments that are weak. For the past year, we have watched him be pushed around by the radical GOP fringe. He’s been forced to abjure his most important achievement as governor, his healthcare plan. In December, he was compelled to sign onto the Ryan budget plan after months of squirming to avoid it. Last fall he released an elaborate economic plan. On the eve of the Michigan primary, he ripped it up and instead accepted a huge new tax cut – to a top rate of 28% – that has never been costed (and that he now tries to avoid mentioning whenever he can). Romney has acknowledged in interviews that he understands that big rapid cuts in government spending could push the US economy back into recession. Yet he campaigns anyway on the Tea Party’s false promise that it’s the deficit that causes the depression, rather than (as he well knows) the other way around.
Frum originally had high hopes for Romney as someone who could help reverse the descent of the Republican party into ultra-right wing craziness:
A big majority of this country is rightly frightened and appalled by what the congressional Republican party has become over the past four years: a radical cadre willing to push the nation over the cliff into utterly unnecessary national default in order to score a political point.
But Romney has simply capitulated on every issue. Weak.
Late last night, Josh Marshall wrote that Romney is in serious danger of simply turning into a joke.
The Obama campaign is hitting this so hard to take a series of associations and embed them so deeply into voters’ consciousness that they become inseparable from the mention of the phrase ‘Bain Capital’. Those are ‘joke’, ‘liar’, ‘felon’, ‘retroactively retired’, ‘SEC filings’, ‘Caymans’, ‘whiner’, ‘buck stops here’, ‘hiding something’.
You can spin these out forever. But beyond all the specific accusations, they’re painting a picture that makes Romney look ridiculous, like a joke. They’re making Romney look stupid and powerless on the front where he believes he’s one of the standouts of his generation. And that’s plain lethal for a presidential candidate.
Marshall says it they haven’t quite succeeded yet, but they’re getting there. I agree with him. Whatever is in those tax returns must be very bad. The only other alternative I can think of is that Mitt Romney is incredibly stupid and arrogant.
What do you think?
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Why is it that all of our recent presidents and president wannabes seem to have Daddy issues?
I don’t know, but that’s one more reason why it’s time for a woman President.
AMEN
What BB said!
Tru Dat!
Why yes there is that theme.
How far back does it go? 0bama front and center — GWB’s daddy. Clinton — sort of — dad died raised by step dad. poppy Bush? Raygun — probably. Carter? Ford — perhaps not — don’t know. Nixon — generally all around FU. Both 0bama and Nixon climbed on the backs of women politicians to gain office to start their political careers. Back stabbing is probably a political trait that all the penises winning the White House have.
Interesting connections in Presidents past and present — lots to think about.
Off topic — Some third world countries have better rural transportation systems than many rural places in the states. In the west it is impossible to get from point A to point B without car. I knew this before my car’s transmission just stopped dead (stick shifts or standard transmissions are superior). When our car got stuck in the sand on the Navajo Reservation in NM (That reservation is truly a 3rd world nation within the so called richest Nation in the world).
Rural USA for the most part is like a third world country. 0bama made some very negative remarks about rural America in 2008 — yet this is where many of us choose to live — not being cut out for urban or even suburban life.
Romney isn’t any better — I don’t even think he’s bothered his little mind about rural American to even make a negative remark about rural America.
Thank you again BB — for bringing us all the news about Mittens, organized in one place.
Yes I do believe he will become a joke, a tiny footnote in history.
Bush was a joke. Palin is a joke. Christie is a joke.
Why would Mitt Romney rate any differently? But one has to keep in mind that a much of a joke as they are, there are still those out there who would love to see any one of them as POTUS.
Which easily means that the “joke” is on us.
GWB was a joke!!!!!!!!! The cartoonist loved GWB — I liked the UK cartoonist who drew him as a chimp. No disrespect to real chimps.
I stole this from RalphB on Facebook.
yes………………
Sam Stein has found some problematic connections in the SEC filings.
Seems like a direct link to “outsourcing” American jobs. In other words people who were putting money back into the economy because of the jobs they had before Romney came along like a vulture — are now part of the unemployed. And thanks to the hard work of the outsourcing capitalists a whole lot of college graduates can’t find jobs or jobs that pay a living wage. I’m reading stuff which says that the underemployed young people won’t ever recover from the pounding they are taking from the lack of jobs and this depression. Huff Po has been doing a good job of reporting on the economic of Mitten’s company.
Now I really understand the meaning of — Vulture Capitalist. The picture in the dictionary next to “Vulture Capitalist” will be that of Romney — Mittens Romney.
Grass roots — reminder of the importance of electing and keeping pro women’s human right legislators in office on all levels over the GOP Christian taliban.
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/07/13/516677/the-gops-effort-to-pull-out-of-medicaid-is-part-of-its-war-on-women/
The article is about the GOP’s war on women — and how badly women will suffer. Facts and Figures and charts — short and easy to understand.
Again — Romney stands with the wacky women haters — yep hep would close down all Planned Parenthood clinics.
Thankfully I don’t feel obligated to vote for 0bama — but I do not begrudge anyone who does in the end vote for yet another MCP in the White House — he’s no different than any of the other penises who came before him. Respect my decision as I respect yours.
Romney’s church is responsible for the death of the ERA. Has a reporter asked him if he supports the ERA? That was a joke.
And still another document turned up by HuffPo:
Andrea Saul sounds like a broken record:
She is the good obedient servant playing the proper behavior of women — just say what the men folk want you to say. She gives a new meaning to the words — mouth piece, or puppet.
If the Romney camp needs to have one token woman — PR spokesman works.
Oh I’m sorry BB – I did not realize that Mass did not have the telephone, or fax or teleconferencing way back in 2003. I’m now wondering if Mass was paying for the phone calls etc. from Romney to Bain? It would be easy for Mittens to CEO while playing at being Governor. No wonder so many hard disks were terminated for Romney. I was wondering what he and his staff was hiding.
Andrew Sullivan has a good point about our press corps.
David Gergen, Part Of The Bain Clique
David Gergen is whore. Sorry, but it’s true.
I hope you didn’t mind my stealing your photo.
Hi I shamelessly stole it, so we should pass it on 🙂
Both.
On Hardball, Howard Fineman, who says he talks to Romney’s staff all the time, says that they believe they can continue to stonewall on the tax returns all the way till November. They’re nuts. Romney is already damaged goods.
Imagine what the writers on Saturday Nite live will do with the raw comedy material coming out of the Mitten’s campaign — and the other comedians as well. Those Romney folks are writing the material for even the laziest comedians.
Retroactive retirement — what else will Mittens Keystone Kops think of?
About Mitt’s eyes when he “smiles” — the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. For an example of a smile reaching the eyes — see this photo of Marissa Mayers — new CEO of Yahoo. His eyes have always bothered me — or the lack of something about his eyes and the lack of wrinkles around his eyes.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/16/marissa-mayer-yahoo-ceo_n_1677491.html?utm_hp_ref=business&ir=Business
Too bad Jon Stewart and Colbert are part of the mess with DirecTV I could just imagine what they would say…
So, the ONLY reason Romney won’t release more tax returns (presidential candidates historically release at lease 12) is because things in there will lose him votes. Whether it’s proof he worked at Bain after 1999, off-shore hidden accounts, or even that he made so much money it would disgust some people…whatever it is, right or wrong, dont the American people have a right to as much information to make an educated vote?! It is what it is, Mr Romney…let us decide on facts rather than hearsay and speculation. And it’s outrageous that conservatives will vote for someone without being given a “background check.”. The fate of their lives are in the balance.