Besides making his Mormon faith now an issue in the campaign, Romney is ignoring both his own recent history of releasing a few years of returns as well as the precedent that his own father set when he released twelve years of tax returns.
Were Mitt Romney and his own father bad Mormons when they previously released tax documents, and if it was fine with their religion before why is it not fine now? Did the Mormons change their minds in order to influence the 2012 election?
Then again, considering what's already been found in the Bain tax document, the more likely explanation for hiding his returns is that Romney would prefer that voters not know how much he has gamed the tax system. If people saw the full returns, there would surely be even more questions and more unpleasant surprises for voters. The tax filings may or may not be legal (though there is a strong argument that they were not legal), but they're also everything that is wrong about the one-sided tax law written for the Romney Class.
Once again, what is Mitt Romney hiding? From Salon:
After months stonewalling on releasing more tax returns, Mitt Romney invoked a brand-new explanation for demurring in an interview with Parade magazine set to hit newsstands this weekend: religion. “Our church doesn’t publish how much people have given [to the LDS Church]. This is done entirely privately. One of the downsides of releasing one’s financial information is that this is now all public, but we had never intended our contributions to be known. It’s a very personal thing between ourselves and our commitment to our God and to our church,” Romney told the magazine when asked about his returns, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.Note from John: Well that's interesting. What else won't his religion permit a President Romney to do? It's one thing to invoke your religion in private life, but to suggest that America should change the way it elects presidents because the Mormons don't like it, is quite another. Mitt Romney, in a very real way, is forcing the rest of America to live by Mormon standards - he's telling us that we are no longer permitted to have a full vetting of our presidential candidates because the Mormons don't like it.
As a gay man, I'm accustomed to the Mormon leadership trying to jam its religion down my throat and force me to live my life according to their rules. So perhaps it's not a surprise that now America at large is expected to permit the Mormons to change the rules of our electoral process in order to suit their needs.
Of course, Mitt Romney is lying. This has nothing to do with his being a Mormon, or his father, who was even higher in the Mormon faith than Mitt, would never have released so many years of his taxes when he ran for president.
This latest episode does show one thing: Mitt Romney is desperate to do anything to stop the release of his taxes. If Romney is now invoking his Mormon faith, a topic he's avoided like the plague during this campaign, then his taxes must contain something pretty awful for Romney to now "go there."
