This morning Ed Rollins, most recently of the Michele Bachmann campaign but most famously the architect of Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election campaign, became the latest Republican to say that Mitt Romney needs to release more tax returns than he already has:
Mitt Romney needs to release more years of tax returns top GOP strategist Ed Rollins said on Fox News on Sunday morning.
“I think at this point of time it’s going to dog him all the way and he needs to get it behind him,” Rollins said. “I think he needs to release more taxes. Absolutely.”
Rollins, who managed the presidential campaigns of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) and President Ronald Reagan, said he would have released records from “five or six years” much sooner.
“I would not put out 20 years and I obviously wouldn’t respond to anything Harry Reid states,” he said. “At the end of the day you come to the point where you basically give a little bit more and you move forward. And he’s going to do that. Two years is not enough, obviously.”
Rollins is right, of course, as are the other Republicans who have said the same thing. Harry Reid’s insane allegations notwithstanding, Romney’s people have to realize by now that there’s just no way this meme is going to go away until Romney provides more information. The Democrats, meanwhile, must have polling that shows this issue hurts Romney or they wouldn’t be pushing it so aggressively. Romney, meanwhile, is creating the impression that he’s willing to suffer the political damage of holding the returns back rather than releasing the documents and taking the hit. That makes it easy for demagogues like Reid to make baseless allegations.
