Warring over tax returns

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eugene-robinson-warring-over-tax-returns/2012/08/06/73fa40ec-dff6-11e1-8fc5-a7dcf1fc161d_story.html

By Eugene Robinson, Monday, August 6, 6:11 PM

The Washington Post Mitt Romney’s defiant secrecy about his personal finances looks like a cross Republicans will have to bear all the way to Election Day. To put it mildly, the burden seems to chafe.

Apoplexy is not the tone politicians generally seek to project. Yet there was GOP chief Reince Priebus on ABC’s “This Week,” calling Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid a “dirty liar” for his claim about how little Romney may have paid in taxes. There was Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on CNN’s “State of the Union,” saying of Reid, “I think he’s lying.” There was Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” decrying a “reckless and slanderous charge by Harry Reid.”

It was a coordinated Sunday morning display of righteous indignation, a pageant of scenery-chewing. But in making such a show of denouncing Dirty Harry’s foul calumny, all Republicans succeeded in doing was draw attention to Romney’s stubborn refusal to release more than a year’s worth of tax returns (okay, one year and sort of a second) — and guarantee more coverage of Reid’s claims. snip

But they can’t prove it’s an untrue attack unless Romney does what conservative commentators and Republican insiders have been urging: Release the tax returns, as Americans have expected of every presidential candidate since, well, since Romney’s father set the standard in 1968.