George Will: Romney is Losing Argument over His Taxes in a Big Way

      If there is any doubt that Mitt Romney is losing the argument, the conservative columnist George Will's comments remove them. This is bad. You have a rising chorus of conservatives who are also asking Mitt Romney to release his taxes.

     
      "On ABC News, two other prominent Republicans, Matt Dowd and George Will, called on Romney to release more returns:

MATT DOWD: There is obviously something because if there was nothing there he would say have it…But I think the bigger thing is, it’s arrogance. Many of these politicians think I can do this, I can get away with this.

STEPHANAPOULOS …[George Will] You are nodding your head at that.

GEORGE WILL: Absolutely. Mitt Romney has said he has released all that’s necessary for people to understand “something” about my finances. Now “something” is a pregnant word… The costs of not releasing the returns are clear, therefore he must have calculated there are higher costs to releasing them.

         http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/07/15/517781/bill-kristol-romney-should-release-the-tax-returns-tomorrow/

         Bear in mind that Dowd is a long time Republican strategist and former Bush man.  While everyone knows that Rahm Emmanuel said Romney should stop whining, the first one to tell Mtt to do that was Republican strategist, John Weaver:

         "But here's a fresh response to Romney: "There is no whining in politics. Stop demanding an apology, release your tax returns."
           http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/national-interest/item/41467-qno-whining-in-politicsq

           Indeed, recall that it was the Republicans who first started the demand for Romney to release his tax returns during the primary:

           "It's important to remember that they - not the Democrats - raised this issue in the first place. Last winter, during one of the Republican debates, Rick Perry at one point spoke with rare coherence:

   "My income taxes have been out every year. Mitt, we need for you to release your income tax so the people of this country can see how you made your money. I think that's a fair thing. As Republicans, we cannot fire our nominee in September. We need to know now. So I hope you'll put your tax records out there so the people...can take a look and decide if we have a flawed candidate or not."

    So it is that we have Bill Kristol saying Romney should release his taxes "tomorrow", George Will saying he's losing the argument in "a big way", Matt Dowd saying it's arrogance on his part. This is a crucial point. Republicans want him to release his return as it's the only hope of getting past this. But in addition to this on a personal level, many like Matt Dowd, find this arrogant-again he's a former Bush strategist. Remember that when Romney refused to release his return at a primary debate he got booed. He is not going to have many friends left if he doesn't smarten up soon. Meanwhile, could any words have been more prophetic than Rick Perry's?