Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 12:11 pm
Ann Romney couldn’t keep the contempt off of her face in an exclusive interview with Natalie Morales excerpted from an upcoming NBC special airing Thursday. Her lip curled in Cheneyesque contempt as reporter Morales asked, “Are you angry that it’s been in the press? I mean, should you not be questioned about your finances?”
Mrs. Romney’s response was that since their finances are “attacked” (implying some sort of unfair questioning), they won’t be releasing them. This is like saying, hey, if you’re going to arrest me for stealing, I’m not going to show you what I stole. I mean, their finances raise questions because of choices they made, not choices the American people made, so it hardly seems fair to punish the people for asking questions.
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Natalie Morales, “Why not be transparent, and release more than the 2010 and the estimates for 2011?”
Ann Romney,”Have you seen how we’re attacked? Have you seen what’s happened?”
Natalie Morales, “It’s been in the press quite a bit. Are you angry that it’s been in the press? I mean, should you not be questioned about your finances?”
Ann Romney, doing a poor job of hiding her anger, “We have been very transparent to what’s legally required of us. But, (talking down to Morales as if she’s a child), the more we release, the more we get attacked. The more we get questioned. (Yes, because your one year of tax returns was still unclear and raised a lot of questions.) The more we get pushed. And so we’ve done what’s legally required. And there’s going to be no more tax releases given. There’s a reason for that. And that’s because how, what happens when we release anything.”
Apparently, in Mrs. Romney’s worldview, if America doesn’t respond to the limited information she wants to share, they will be punished by not getting anymore. This is Romney “transparency”.
… Mrs. Romney, “We don’t disclose anymore because we just become a bigger target.”
And then, the kill shot. Natalie Morales sums up why the Romney’s won’t release more tax returns, “So, it’s because you’ll just continue to face more questions.”
We have a winner.
Ann Romney turns the right to vet a Presidential nominee into a personal attack and tries to reframe it as persecution, “It will just give them more ammunition.”
She means their financials would raise more questions for the American people. Yes, I suppose that’s true. Why is it that the Romneys feel they are above answering questions? Why can’t they, or won’t they, answer questions? If there is nothing to hide, release the returns and man up – take the hits for being rich and stashing money overseas and move on.
But wait, we already know those things about the Romney money. So what else is in the returns that will give “ammunition” to the American people against the Romneys?
Natalie Morales, “To the American people though, when they hear that about perhaps accounts with your name on it overseas, in tax shelters, they feel like you may be hiding something.”
And we come to the definition of a Romney. The pronouncement from on high, expected to be taken on faith. “There’s nothing we’re hiding.” This was accompanied by much shifting in the chair.
Oh. Okay, because, you know when you use tax shelters around the world, and you have already lied about your tax returns before and told us to trust you, pardon us, but we’re a bit skittish.
We are to forget all that we KNOW about the Romneys and Mr. Romney’s promises to the people of Massachusetts that while he wouldn’t SHOW them the tax returns, they needed to trust him. When it turned out he had been lying to them, well, he did amend his returns retroactively to say what he told them they said before. So really, how dare you people question him.
It is, after all, the Romneys’ “turn”.
Mrs. Romney then tried to take refuge in the blind trust that they have, “We don’t even know what’s in there.” She probably shouldn’t have gone there, with their personal lawyer managing that blind trust and having invested in their son’s business – oh, coincidence! – but, the good news for Ann Romney is that among all of the other specious ducks and dodges, this one will probably pass by unnoticed. She ended it with an attempt at folksy, “I”ll be curious to see what’s in there, too.” Yes, indeed, surprise! It’s a huge investment in your son’s business! Of all the things…
Mrs. Romney is correct, the Romneys’ finances have raised a lot of questions, not only because they refuse to be transparent, but also because there are disclosures missing and funds that appear on one disclosure and not on another — funds of millions of dollars, not a few cents. We have only been given one year to date, and that year was amended and was not complete. And then there are the international financial dealings, like the funding for Bain coming from Salvadoran oligarchs’ death squad money.
If that isn’t worthy of a few questions for someone running for leader of the free world, I’m not sure what the they would qualify as a question that they find appropriate. It’s also of interest that they stash their money in tax free havens around the world and Mr. Romney is running for President. Some of these investments bet against the US dollar, so yes, we’d like to know where he stands on a few issues based on the little we have seen of his returns and disclosures.
We’d like to know not because we are “jealous” that he has managed to successfully exploit a tax code that benefits the 2% (who is engaging in a class war here?), but because the policies he would champion as President impact the rest of us. Are we to have no say in those policies? Are we not entitled to know about them, when they will impact each and every one of us? We already know that Romney supports raising taxes on the middle class to pay for tax cuts to the wealthy, so yes, we have something at stake in this “business venture” of hiring a President, and just like Mr. Romney would do if he were buying a business, we insist on seeing the financials.
Mr. Romney, as a business man, knows that Bain would never buy a business without seeing its financials. But Mr. Romney and Mrs. Romney want America to buy them without seeing their financials, and they feel entitled to this exception. They don’t want to play by the rules of the market, they want the market adjusted for them. They can’t hack the questions and the attacks, so they demand an exception to the rule that every other presidential nominee has played by since Romney’s own father ran for President.
Mrs. Romney clearly thinks that their finances are none of your business, and that the thing y’all did wrong was “attack” and “ask questions” after they released a few tidbits. It is the fault of the American people that we are not getting more info from the Romneys. This is your punishment for not responding appropriately (as they wanted) to Mrs. Romney’s finances. This is called freedom.
I hope you all have learned your lesson. This isn’t America “as you know it”. This is Romney Republican America, where asking questions gets you cut off, and another angry Red Queen will tell you what you are entitled to ask and what you are not entitled to ask. Until then, shhhhhh! They get mad when poked.
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