What, Pray Tell?
You’ve probably heard that Harry Reid, a Mormon, is not a buddy of Mitt Romney:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has what he says is an informed explanation for why Mitt Romney refuses to release additional tax returns. According a Bain investor, Reid charged, Romney didn’t pay any taxes for 10 years.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Huffington Post from his office on Capitol Hill, Reid saved some of his toughest words for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Romney couldn’t make it through a Senate confirmation process as a mere Cabinet nominee, the majority leader insisted, owing to the opaqueness of his personal finances.
“His poor father must be so embarrassed about his son,” Reid said, in reference to George Romney’s standard-setting decision to turn over 12 years of tax returns when he ran for president in the late 1960s.
Saying he had “no problem with somebody being really, really wealthy,” Reid sat up in his chair a bit before stirring the pot further. A month or so ago, he said, a person who had invested with Bain Capital called his office.
“Harry, he didn’t pay any taxes for 10 years,” Reid recounted the person as saying.
“He didn’t pay taxes for 10 years! Now, do I know that that’s true? Well, I’m not certain,” said Reid. “But obviously he can’t release those tax returns. How would it look?
“You guys have said his wealth is $250 million,” Reid went on. “Not a chance in the world. It’s a lot more than that. I mean, you do pretty well if you don’t pay taxes for 10 years when you’re making millions and millions of dollars.”
(click here to continue reading Harry Reid: Bain Investor Told Me That Mitt Romney ‘Didn’t Pay Any Taxes For 10 Years’.)
Restrained Moral Judgements
And of course, if Willard released his tax returns, this whole Harry Reid broo-ha-ha would vanish…
Logic tells us that Reid couldn’t possibly have heard this from multiple sources, so he’s just blowing smoke. And yet, even if it’s a lie, Reid’s put Romney on the spot, because what he’s saying sounds plausible to a lot of people.
Y’know, it’s a bit like saying that the current president is a secret Muslim socialist who lied about his U.S. birth and has a fake Social Security number and is secretly plotting to take away all privately owned guns if he’s reelected, either before or after he finishes the job of deliberately destroying American capitalism. It’s also a bit like saying that the previous Democratic president was a drug dealing serial murderer and rapist whose lesbian wife had her male lover killed when she wasn’t hanging sex toys on the White House Christmas tree.
It’s almost like that. The difference is that Romney’s not facing an ever-expanding list of accusations, most of them truly grotesque and preposterous, many of them of a felonious or treasonous nature, spread by multiple prominent rumormongers over the course of years, and believed in every particular by roughly a third of the country. Hell, what he’s being charged with isn’t even illegal.
But still, welcome to our world, Mitt. Now you have a vague sense of how Democrats feel all the time.
(click here to continue reading No More Mister Nice Blog.)
Ha Ha You Were Drowning
Harry Reid is a honey badger…
So lets game this out a little further.
Fox News will deploy their in-house “Democrats” and “liberals” to deplore the ugliness of the Reid “smears”. Expect to see Kirsten Powers looking like she is in the process of passing a kidney stone while Juan Williams says that he thinks that Mitt Romney should release his tax returns … but that he also thinks that Reid should not be involved. Evan Bayh will also make his usual cameo appearance as a brighter than usual mannequin, but will have nothing to add, perking up only when he receives his check. Also, Jon Stewart will be cited many times (“Even Jon Stewart says…”) because he is the Get Out Of Jail card of last resort when it comes to Republican panic.
Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen will pen an editorial for either the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post urging Harry Reid to step down for the good of the country. The ole Perfesser will link to it pointing out that Caddell is a “Democratic pollster”.
The Romney campaign is already squealing like a stuck pig and they will blame the White House of conspiring with Reid on the story, calling it “unseemly” and “undignified”. In an effort to illustrate this unholy alliance between Barack Obama and a sitting senator of the same party, the Romney campaign will deploy Senators Rubio, Ayotte, and Portman, as well as Governors Jindahl and Christie and also sad sack unemployable intern Tim Pawlenty to dispense rage burgers made up of equal parts disgust, anger, and denial.
Harry Reid is the honey badger; he doesn’t give a shit. He has the advantages of being the Senate Majority Leader which comes with a bully pulpit that can’t be ignored, he’s not some bomb-throwing back bencher, and he is a fellow Mormon who, like Jon Huntsman, seems to harbor a white-hot hatred of all things Mitt. Reid is most likely serving his last term in the senate and he’s is plainly tired of fucking around with Republicans and fully intends to bury their standard bearer which can have down ticket implications if depressed Republicans decide to stay home on election day because their top of the ticket prospects look like they are deader than Bob Dole’s dick.
Republicans have to be in a panic (see above). They haven’t even nominated their guy, they don’t trust him, he’s a terrible campaigner, his wife may be worse, everyone hates him, his campaign staff is a clown car chock full o’ bumblers, stumblers and maladroits, his foreign tour was a disaster, the media (which he ignores) is growing to loathe him more than the general public does, and the Republican convention is only four weeks away at which time Republicans are expected to formally tie the knot with him despite the fact that his unreleased tax returns are undoubtedly a ticking time bomb loaded with tax avoidance maneuvers, overseas accounts, and financial 3-card monte.
And this is all so unfair because Democrats aren’t supposed to punch back.
(click here to continue reading Harry’s Game | TBogg.)
Oppression
Not to mention:
But, of course, as even Steve M. acknowledges, Reid’s charges aren’t really anything like the kinds of crap the right slings at Democratic leaders every day of the week. Let me try to give an illustration of my point.
Mitt Romney isn’t really a Mormon. He’s an atheist who only went along with his father’s faith so he could duck the Vietnam draft. He didn’t actually try to convert anyone when he was in France either. In reality, he spent all his time in Monte Carlo gambling and buying high-end hookers. When his daddy found out what he was doing, he made him come home and marry his high school sweetheart. Actually, he only made him marry her after the second time she got pregnant. The first time, they got an abortion. Then Romney started using some of the mafia connections he had made in Marseilles to import heroin. By the time he became governor, they were flying it straight into a secret airport they set up in the Berkshires. When one of the pilots started to talk, Romney had him killed.
Now, if we started telling these stories to people, and a substantial percentage of the population started to actually believe these stories, and if congressmen humored and even encouraged the people who believed these stories, and if media figures talked about these stories, and if Congress actually had hearings about some of these stories, then Mitt Romney would know what it’s like to be treated like a Democrat.
(click here to continue reading Booman Tribune ~ A Progressive Community.)