Mitt Romney, Class Warfare, and The Rosetta Stone of Taxes
It isn't true that Romney "owes it" to voters to release more tax returns than he has and has said he would. In politics only two things rule: the law (a very forgiving standard) and your image. If Romney doesn't release more than two years of federal tax returns and he wins, ergo, he didn't owe anybody anything. And if he loses it will be difficult to impossible to assess the extent to which opaqueness contributed to defeat. But Romney has a bigger problem. Emphasis on the word "Big." Clearly, Romney has calculated that — at this moment in time, anyway — it is better to hold his ground than to give way. This may change, of course, which would present new challenges (is Romney, yet again, cowering to pressure in a very unpresidential way? Is this just another head-spinning flip-flop?). A host of conservative commentators and at least one two elected officials have urged Romney to just do it. The most recent is the National Review, whose editorial