No Tax Return? No Vote!
After watching Monday’s FoxNews debate, I have some pointed advice for voters in the upcoming South Carolina Republican primary: If a candidate will not disclose his tax returns before you vote, consider him ineligible. You have no need for a candidate whose dirty secrets will be aired only after you’ve voted for him. Mitt Romney talks about April, but I want to see them now, before any of us have voted(other than Iowa and New Hampshire, whose residents have already voted.) You have every right to demand this sort of disclosure from the candidates, and if they won’t meet your expectations, you have every right to withhold your vote. The suggestion of at least one of the candidates who hem-hawed this issue in Monday night’s debate is that you have no need to see them until after he thinks he’ll already have the nomination.
I want right now to pause and suggest to you that this is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. It ranks right up there with Nancy Pelosi’s infamous:
“We have to pass this bill before you can find out what is in it.”
Ladies and gentlemen, if you accept this from Mitt Romney or any of the candidates, you have no right to complain when Nancy Pelosi pushes through a monstrous health-care bill, or any bill, before anybody has had time to read it. The voters of South Carolina, and every subsequent state, all have a right to demand this of somebody asking for their votes. If you let Mitt Romney sneak by you with this one, it’s just the beginning, but I don’t care which candidate offers you this lie, because you must reject it, and you must do so by withholding your vote.
I am going to walk even further out on this limb: I will not vote, either in the Primary, or in the General Election in my state for ANY candidate who has not disclosed his tax returns before the date of the primary. I will not buy a pig in a poke, and neither should you. No tax returns? No vote!
Actually he did not agree to show his tax returns. Romney said it was traditional to show them after April, and he might. You are right, if someone is hesitant about transparency… there is something wrong. We are pretty sensitive about this with the present person in the White House.
I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that I misunderstood his obfuscation to be…less obfuscatory…LOL But you're quite right, and everybody should focus on this now. Why not, Mitt?
what bulls***..Romney should not release them until he is the candidate…
Why is that, Stella? Isn't he a candidate now? Are you suggesting that he should show them only once Democrats ask to see them, but the Republicans he hopes will make him the nominee should pound sand? Really?
So what you're really saying is that whatever is on those tax returns, it might be shocking to everyone, not just Democrats?
Well too damn bad, as we've had enough of unvetted candidates. Obama went without thorough examination in '08. Nobody goes by without it this time.
I can't believe what I heard. ONe of these SuperPACs needs an add that says, "Are we really ready to elect another President who won't show us the documents of his background?"
Good point also on issue that he is flipping off SC and every state in the primary saying they aren't good enough to know the real truth.
Romney MUST be stopped.
In SC.
This is the most important issue this week, Jim. It really is. I am going to talk about this as frequently as possible, because people must know that Mitt can't simply tell us to buy a pig in a poke and expect us to follow blindly. Those days are OVER.
There is no "People's right" to see someone else' tax return just because they are rich. The IRS does that job. The only reason people want to see tax returns of the rich is to self justify their resentment.
TP, of course there's no right to it. There is, however, a right to withhold my vote if a candidate does not. It's not a question of the candidate's right to retain his records in privacy. It's a matter of my right as a voter to say "show me, or I vote elsewhere." That's my right. The reason I want to see their tax returns has nothing to do with the number of digits in their respective AGIs, or similar.