What's he hiding?

I've noticed that it is now officially, conventionally wise to speculate on cable news or in cyberspace that Mitt Romney's refusal to release more tax returns is likely because he paid little to no taxes in some year, or several.

Unwisely or not, I dissent. My guess? His returns, the release of which should properly extend to 1999, will show that he was intimately associated with Bain well after the date he has bellowed in his public protestations. And that, as they say, will be that. The End.

Anyone with active, still-firing synapses already strongly suspects that Mitt Romney is a ruthless liar. But his tax returns--again, the release of which must rightly extend to 1999--would prove it. Zero taxes he could explain; hell, that's a shiny badge of honor among the superrich, who enjoy plenty of poor dupes' admiration. But he could never reconcile personal Bain profits during those years in which he has repeatedly and vehemently denied any and all involvement.

That revelation would, quite simply, spell 'lights out' for the Romney campaign.

Comments

[Susan Zoon]

This can be easily settled. One Question: If Mitt Romney was not running Bain from1999- on... who was? Why does no one ask the Romney surrogates this basic question?

[Turgidson]

PM: "Unwisely or not, I dissent. My guess? His returns, the release of which should properly extend to 1999, will show that he was intimately associated with Bain well after the date he has bellowed in his public protestations. And that, as they say, will be that. The End."

My response: Can't it be both?

His intransigence about releasing this stuff almost makes me think there are dead bodies in there. Something in there must reallllly stink.

[Josh]

I think something related to Bain that he doesn't want out there could explain why it wasn't anything he could clean up after 2008, or even 2007, when it was obvious he was running for president the first time.

Still, surely he had to understand somehow that he was going to have to release tax returns. In 2008, 1999 was considerably closer to the present than it is now, thereby making it more likely that it would have come under direct scrutiny.

Is the man really that arrogant?

[W Caulfield]

synopses should be synapses.

That's about as complicated a "spellchecker wouldn't catch it" situation as I've ever seen.

I'll also add to the the speculation: what's hidden in the tax returns is that "Mitt Romney shot a man in Reno just to watch him die."

[PM]

Terribly sorry. Thanks, WC.
--PM

[dr.e]

In answer to Josh: Yes. Plus his script isn't playing out as he envisioned, so he's desperate.

[melsouza]

I'm convinced Obama and Co. know exactly what's in those tax returns, and all this baiting about "what's he hiding" is just the prelude to the inevitable release of those returns, with or without Romney's permission. We're dealing with a very rough, ruthless Chicago operation (and I say this in a good way, it's been long overdue..), in the age of Wikileaks--where nothing is really private. Someone, somehow, will get a hold of those returns. And then--and I agree fully with PM--it will be the end of the Romney candidacy. P.S. When have the tax returns of a Presidential candidate ever been so potentially damaging to a candidate? We've had many Presidential candidates, some of them very wealthy, who have all released several years, even decades of tax returns without fear of these documents making them vulnerable to attack. Nevertheless, Ann Romney basically admitted that releasing their tax returns would open her and her husband up for attack. This is an admission of guilt, and one, to my knowledge, unprecedented by a Presidential candidate.