The real reason Mitt won't release his tax returns. (hint it has nothing to to with tax brackets)

So, in case you haven't been paying attention, and I don't blame you if you haven't, Mitt Romney is not following in his daddy's footsteps. That's ok, gotta blaze your own trail. Except the thing he is not doing is releasing his tax returns to the public so that everyone knows exactly who it is that they are electing to run their country. George Romney (Papa Romney) released 12 years when he was running for office, which more or less set the standard for politicians. Mitt has released 2-ish.


"DAAAAD, you're embarassing me" -Mitt Romney

Recently, Obama's campaign manager wrote a (passive aggressive) letter to the Romney campaign promising that if he releases just 5 years (only 3 more) they will stop bothering him for not releasing enough information. Romney's campaign sent an equally awesome and passive aggressive letter back that basically said: "no thank you, now that we have covered this I hope you guys can focus on the real issues at hand" <--paraphrased.

So much speculation has been made around Romney's taxes and why he is hiding them. Maybe he didn't pay any taxes, maybe he didn't pay enough taxes, maybe he is secretly in the mob. But the thing is, no matter what Romney paid in taxes after all this speculation Romney's base will get behind his reasoning and the left will hate him for it. And the undecided voters won't decide based on Mitt Romney's tax bracket. If it was truly all about taxes, even if Mitt paid zero taxes it would be easier for him to just release them to show that he is a bigger, better man and isn't afraid. Look, the far left isn't voting for Mitt Romney. (not until the far right votes for Obama at least, and also pigs fly)

Those are obviously all jokes, but seriously, everyone is getting in on the speculation action. 

So, why oh why IS Mitt hiding his tax returns? Because he doesn't want to alienate his base. You know, the tea party voters, the evangelical christians, the catholics, the rich white men in suits. It's no secret that Mitt Romney is the biggest flip-flopper on the block today. First he was against privatizing social security, now he is for it; first he wanted to defend a woman's right to choose, now he thinks Roe V Wade has gone to far; first he thought don't ask don't tell was silly, now he thinks it worked well; first he supported the assault rifle ban, now he is against all gun control laws. This is common knowledge to the democrat voters. Those are voters who won't be voting for him anyways. This is not really a heavily discussed topic within his base, and I'm sure he would like to keep it that way. 

I read this really good article about reasons why Mitt won't release his tax returns. Abby Huntsman says the following:

"Could he actually be worth more than is being estimated under federal disclosure filings (currently ~$190-250 million)? Has putting money in offshore accounts in some way lowered the amount of taxes he's had to pay (according to his campaign, the answer is no)? Or, is there significant income from Bain that was earned after his departure in 1999 (when Romney claims to have not been involved in Bain's investment decisions)? And lastly, was a deal stuck with fellow Bain partners that Romney could never disclose certain information about the firm and its income (since Bain remains a private company)?" (click the link above and read the rest of her article)

All of those are possible. But who would care if he was worth $250 million or $500 million? That's more money than any of his voters can even fathom. Whatever his tax bracket the right will defend it. And more importantly if it was something as simple as a privacy agreement with Bain, don't you think he would have come out and said it? He hasn't, he won't.

 If Mitt releases his tax returns, we will see he paid somewhere between 0 and 13% taxes. But we will also see the charities he is donating to. Has he given money to planned parenthood back when he supported that? Does he really want to make public how much money he gives to the Mormon church? Where else did Romney's charity money go that would cause him to lose votes on the right? Did his dollars go to stem cell research? Who knows. Right now, we don't know. And it is better that way. Romney will lose more votes within his base (where it matters) if he makes it clear how not conservative he really is, than he will lose from the left wing voters who aren't voting for him anyways, by not releasing them at all. If Romney alienates his socially conservative base, he will lose a HUGE chunk of voters.

But in 2002 he pledged to support planned parenthood.

Mitt Romney needs to be the pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, pro-religious freedom candidate. But he is only kinda pro-life, he doesn't seem to actually care that much about traditional marriage (MA issues marriage licences to same-sex couples, and Romney didn't really do anything about it and nobody has asked him why), and he is Mormon. Which nobody wants to remember, it's not a bad thing, but they seem to want it to be on the back burner. Probably because of all the connotations of polygamy around Mormonism, and then he would have to face speculation about that (though I'm sure Romney is not polygamous).

Remember, John McCain saw Romney's taxes and decided to go with Palin as his VP. How bad must those taxes have been for McCain to think Palin was his best option? Not paying enough taxes is easy to get through, so what, he did it legally, the end. That's how it would go. Donating to the wrong charities? That could literally stop somebody from voting for you. It's why people stopped eating at Chick-Fil-A.

If it were just about the fact that he is rich, has offshore money, and doesn't pay his fair share of taxes he would release them just so people would stop speculating. There is something really really really bad in those. Something that would cause him to lose the white house. Something that he and his campaign figured they will take the risk of losing a few votes, over the actual reality of releasing those taxes. For that, if I was going to vote republican and really couldn't ever vote for Obama, I would want to see those taxes even more so I knew who it was I was voting to run my country.