Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: Romney gets pounded on taxes

^{Visual source: Newseum}

WaPo editorial board:

A president often has to decide how much to disclose about events or decisions that are not particularly pleasant. We've long argued that openness and transparency are critical in building public confidence and in the functioning of democracy. If Mr. Romney is not willing to open up his tax returns, what does that say about his instinct for leveling with the American people from the Oval Office? His refusal to release the names of his chief campaign bundlers compounds the concern.

First Read:

Here's the problem for Romney: Either today, tomorrow, or next week, another Republican will probably also call on him to release more returns. National Review summed up Romney's dilemma this way: '[H]e's a politician running for the highest office in the land, and his current posture is probably unsustainable. In all likelihood, he won't be able to maintain a position that looks secretive and is a departure from campaign conventions. The only question is whether he releases more returns now, or later ' after playing more defense on the issue and sustaining more hits. There will surely be a press feeding frenzy over new returns, but better to weather it in the middle of July.'

Dan Balz:

'I don't anticipate seeing any big movement or that we're going to bust something open,' said one of Obama's top advisers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy. But, he added, 'we have challenged the central premise of his candidacy, and it's going to make it a lot harder for him to grow. In that sense, I think it's been very effective.'

Jennifer Rubin:

Romney gets his groove back.

Reading her makes me ponder CERN and the Higgs boson. She's like an anti-matter Ezra Klein, only with negative IQ points.

Lincoln Mitchell:

In the bigger picture, the troubles Romney is encountering in his presidential campaign this week around both his unwillingness to release his tax returns and his record at Bain indicate that the businessman turned politician model is not going to be as successful as many in the Republican Party hoped. For years, the Republican Party searched for the non-politician businessman who could deliver his pro-business message without being viewed as simply another politician. Romney, despite his one term in elected office, fits this description well.

The problem for the Republicans is that the American people, particularly after 2008, are less enthralled by the magical powers, and more suspicious of the true methods, of business success than they have been in decades. Romney would have made a good candidate in 1980, 1988 or even 2000, but today his wealth and strong ties to the finance world, are on balance, negatives. The concern around tax returns may only be the tip of the iceberg of how Americans are beginning to view their politicians differently, and Romney is the first victim of this.

If the landscape has changed, some thanks and a hat tip needs to go to Occupy Wall Street.

Ed Kilgore:

Ah yes, The Vetting, that charter mission of Breitbart.com, reflecting the amazingly widespread right-wing belief that John McCain would be president today if only he had dug into and/or screamed about Barack Obama's sinister background.

Michelle Malkin greeted the story by posting a video of a performance of Handel's Halleluhah Chorus. The PJ Tatler commented: 'It's four years past time he was vetted.' Hot Air suggested (accurately, no doubt) that this will get a lot of positive attention from the restive 'base.' No word yet from the Breitbart site itself, or from fellow vetting enthusiast Sarah Palin, but they may be waiting to see if the Romney campaign dials it all back.

If they don't (and I do not view Sununu's own half-apology for just a small portion of his rant as a dial-back), the genie will soon be out of the bottle, and the Romney campaign will find out it's juggling dynamite. Anything less than a full-fledged, vein-popping, borderline-birther, full-scale commitment to 'the vetting' will be greeted with howls of rage and accusations of betrayal from the noisiest elements of the Right.

Greg Sargent:

As far as I can tell, this goes directly to what tax experts told me yesterday: It's likely that Romney has paid a far lower tax rate in multiple years, and that this could help explain why Romney won't release his returns. If he paid nothing in any given year, of course, that would be even more politically toxic. But even a far lower rate would be hard to explain. And as the experts told me, the returns could also reveal how Romney reduced his rates ' whether he relied on 'aggressive sheltering,' which would be politically very problematic, or more standard techniques, which would still be hard to explain, depending on how much lower his rate ended up being.

Edward D. Kleinbard and Peter C. Canellos:

So, what are the issues?

The first is Romney's Swiss bank account. Most presidential candidates don't think it appropriate to bet that the U.S. dollar will lose value by speculating in Swiss Francs, which is basically the rationale offered by the trustee of Romney's "blind" trust for opening this account. What's more, if you really want just to speculate on foreign currencies, you don't need a Swiss bank account to do so.

Jacob Weisberg:

Both positions in this argument'that Obama doesn't believe in capitalism, that Romney doesn't care about workers'are distortions. But after a week of skirmishing, Obama has the upper hand for reasons that go beyond the campaign-season truism that when one guy wields the hammer, the other guy looks like a nail. Here are five reasons why the Obama campaign wants this subject'what Romney did at Bain, when he left, what he had for lunch when he worked there'to stay front and center for as long as possible.

Jim Manley:

There is a part of me (the part that wants Obama win in November) that wants to see Romney continue to stubbornly refuse to bend to obvious and release the damn thing. But as a professional spinner it pains me to see someone screw something like this up so bad.

I mean the way they have handled this is just pathetic. Ed Gillespie may be a smart guy, but anytime you are using words like "retroactive retirement" you know you are in a bad, bad place. All I can say is when - not if - but when they are released, I can't wait to see what he has been hiding.

NY Times/The Caucus:

'He is determined not to release more, and they support him,' the adviser said of Mr. Romney and his aides. 'Plus, there is no evidence that voters care about this. They think they know enough about Mitt Romney's finances.'

But that answer has not satisfied a growing number of Republicans who have said that Mr. Romney's refusal to release more of his tax returns threatens to do him lasting political damage as he nears the final stage of the presidential campaign.