What Does Mittens Have to Hide? Part Deux
If Mitt Romney’s senior adviser Ed Gillespie had told only NBC’s David Gregory that Romney had “actually retired retroactively” from Bain Capital after 1999 when he went off to run the U.S. Olympics, it might have been dismissed as a misspeak or a gaffe.
But since Gillespie also told CNN’s Candy Crowley that Romney “took a leave of absence and, in fact, Candy, he ended up not going back at all and retired retroactively to February of 1999,” well, you gotta figure this is what you call one of your “talking points.”
That’s a pre-planned argument that the campaign (i.e. Romney himself) decided to use to explain why Mitt can’t be held responsible for any job losses, outsourcing or bankruptcies that might have occurred after he “retired” from Bain – even though he signed SEC statements as the managing director, president and CEO of Bain Capital during that time.
What makes this so galling is not that it’s such a transparent lie (or, as one of our Calbuzz sister wives noted, a lousy use of the flux capacitor). The problem is that it’s one more example of Romney saying the rules don’t apply to him. He is an over-indulged, ultra-privileged, special case who, if he so chooses, gets a do-over — on anything, including sworn statements to the feds.
The buck stops nowhere in his universe. Except maybe a bank account in the Cayman Islands.
GOP Fellow Travelers: That the Obama campaign is making an issue of Romney’s callous treatment of actual human beings through Bain and his claim of special circumstances for an American job-creator as fine and decent and patriotic as himself should come as no surprise.
It wasn’t long ago that commie pinkos like Huey P. Newt and Rick (The Red) Perry were eviscerating Romney as a vulture capitalist and worse, a Massachusetts moderate – a precious moment in time Calbuzz memorialized in “What Does Mittens Have to Hide” back in January. Not to mention Barry Bennett’s devastating 28-minute take-down documentary “King of Bain: When Mitt Romney Came to Town“ that George Condon of the National Journal reminded us of on Tuesday.
Now, we have to agree with DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz that Mittens needs to put on his “big boy pants” and defend Bain’s activities when he was the company’s top officer.
Meanwhile, back at Tax Gulch, Romney seems to have decided — for now — that whatever is in his prior tax returns is worse than the beating he’s taking for failing to release them. Must be something gawdaful because he’s getting even those little-boy knickers knocked off on just about a daily basis.
We don’t know if he’s hiding lions and tigers and bears, but you know he’s got a problem on his hands when he’s getting pressure from Barbour and Kristol and Will (oh my!).
Romney’s problem is not just what his tax returns would show. This whole kerfuffle is more important because it reveals his significantly flawed character. His decision-making is not the kind we need running our country.
And let’s note that if Romney was the top choice of the Republicans, considering Obama’s litany of “disappointments”, it doesn’t say much about the candidates the GOP had to offer. A great many Democrats would have voted for a quality Republican.
Please Tony, show me a quality Republican. I’m old enough that I remember that now-extinct species. But I haven’t seen one in many a year. Now that they all have to pay homage to the TP in order to make it through a primary, most of the decent ones have thrown in the towel.
It’s possible that Romney paid zero taxes in 2008 or 2009. That would be pretty hard to spin.
Personally, I hope he never releases more than the 2 years he promised. It will be a pure gift to the Obama campaign. They can whip him with it from now until November. And the more often he asks for an apology, the more of a wimp he looks like.
I guess it’s okay to bully a classmate until he cries and have a couple of guys hold him down to cut his hair. But it’s not okay for somebody to tell the truth about poor little Mittens. Double standard indeed!