Teresa Didn't, Why Should I?

I learned today that Mitt Romney’s latest defense of not releasing more tax returns is that Teresa Heinz Kerry didn't in 2004 saying on Fox and Friends, Heinz Kerry “has hundreds of millions of dollars, [but] she never released her tax returns. Somehow, that wasn’t an issue.”

Really? Did anyone tell Mr. Romney that John Kerry, not Teresa, was running for president?

Later on, Ed Gillespie, a former RNC Chairman and Romney surrogate, said on Meet the Press and CNN that Romney need only release two years of tax returns, in line with the precedent set by former presidential nominees John McCain and John Kerry. “It’s the standard that Sen. John Kerry as the Democratic nominee said was the standard,” Gillespie said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Really? Did anyone tell Mr. Gillespie that Kerry actually released 20 years of tax returns? “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 20 years of tax returns,” Kerry spokesperson Jodi Seth told TPM in a statement. “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 20 years of Romney tax returns. Ed Gillespie should know better.”

On CNN, Gillespie also stated,  “It's standard for the last Republican nominee, the last Democratic nominee.”

But according to the Washington Post Fact Checker, “In fact, McCain is really the exception. John Kerry in 2004, Al Gore in 2000, George W. Bush in 2000, Bob Dole in 1996, Bill Clinton in 1992 and Michael Dukakis in 1988 all released many years of tax returns when they ran for president against the incumbent, either at the time or because they had routinely released tax returns while in public office.  (There was no incumbent in 2000.) Dole, in fact, released tax returns for a whopping 30 years.”

Why is Romney so intransigent on this issue? What is he hiding?

Even Republican politicians and conservative pundits are questioning his position. George Will on ABC’s This Week: “If something’s going to come out, get it out in a hurry”, Will said, adding, “Therefore, he must have calculated that there are higher costs in releasing them.”

And Robert Bentley, Alabama’s Republican governor said Romney would do well to release more tax returns, as Democrats have demanded  in recent weeks. “I think he ought to release everything. I believe in total transparency,” Bentley told reporters.  “You know if you have things to hide, then you may be doing things wrong.”

So, Will wonders that it might be that not releasing the returns might be less risky than releasing them because of what might be in them. And Bentley wonders if there’s something in them that Romney might want to hide.

And Romney? In the National Review today he said, "I’m simply not enthusiastic about giving them hundreds or thousands of more pages to pick through, distort, and lie about." Not enthusiastic? Well guess what Mr. Romney, the American people are enthusiastic about learning as much as they can about the man running for President of the United States. If everything's clean, no harm, no foul. If not...