Mitt Romney Should Air His Tax Returns Now, Not Later

About Brad Bannon:

Brad Bannon is president of Bannon Communications Research, a political polling and consulting firm which helps labor unions, progressive issue groups, and Democratic candidates win public affairs and political campaigns.

Like father like son? Not in this case. George Romney pioneered the release of tax returns for a presidential candidate, but his son is being dragged to the disclosure altar kicking and screaming.

Romney's failure to release his returns is not based on principle. The former liberal and conservative and wannnabe moderate doesn't have any. So there must be something bad in his tax history. But whatever is in the returns can't be as bad as the pasting he's taking every day about what he might be hiding.

He will release all the tax returns eventually, so why not do it now? If there are bad things in the returns, air them out now and not later. The cover-up is always worse than the crime. Anyway, Americans already know that he filled his Cayman Island coffers by using Bain to buy companies, strip mine them, and then fire the employees or send their jobs overseas.

[See a collection of political cartoons on the 2012 campaign.]

I suspect the need to keep his tax returns undercover has something to do with the loot he made at Bain and when he made it. Romney's the guy who wants to fix the economy, but his business experience has become more of a liability than an asset.

Romney is already on the defensive in the Battle of Bain. The jobs report that came out on July 6 should have made President Obama's life miserable. But lately, the focus has been on the GOP nominee, not the president. Romney and his surrogates haven't been able to talk about the economy since the Boston Globe article on his tenure at Bain appeared last week. If the former Bay State governor also gets bogged down in a battle over his taxes, he'll never get back on message.

Look for Romney to announce his running mate choice within the week to change the subject away from Bain and taxes. The GOP nominee would rather admit that Romneycare was the father of Obamacare than release his tax returns.

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tax returns,

2012 presidential election,

Barack Obama,

Mitt Romney