As Bryan Preston writes at the Tatler, “Wrong-Way Reid Wrecks Obama’s Strategy:”
Reid’s tax gambit has forced the Obama campaign to admit, on television, that they “don’t have any proof” of anything they’re flinging against Romney after Stephanie Cutter promised to provide proof in mid July. That’s embarrassing, though it’s debatable whether Stephanie Cutter is even capable of feeling shame or knowing when she looks like a fool. She has never worked outside a political campaign and evidently does not know the meaning of the word “credible.” Or “sane.”
The Obama team, Reid and Cutter etc, have no proof that Mitt Romney has done a thing wrong. But there is proof that Obama was a hard drug user, and there is proof that his economic plans are a total failure.
And there’s proof that for all his noise and bluster, Harry Reid is among a group of top Democrats who haven’t released their own tax returns. The obvious thing to infer, using Reid’s own standard, is that he hasn’t released his tax returns because he hasn’t been paying any taxes or has something else to hide. Reid used the tax return issue to insist that Romney isn’t fit to hold office at all. Well, Harry, right back atcha. Ditto for Nancy Pelosi and DNC chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, neither of whom have released their own tax returns. Romney can now say “You show me yours and I’ll show you mine” and effectively shut the Democrat leadership up. Harry Reid took the Obama campaign’s ball and sprinted all the way to a touchdown. Too bad he ran the wrong way.
The upshot of all of this is that the Democrats look dishonest, creepy, desperate and hypocritical. It’s obvious that they’re creating all this hubbub to get away from having to admit that they don’t have a clue how to improve the economy and have nothing positive to run on. As an Obama surrogate, Harry Reid was supposed to put Mitt Romney on the defensive, but has instead focused negative attention back on the entire Democrat leadership. Oopsie.
And it’s a ham-handed reminder of what Ann Coulter dubs “Obama’s Signature Move: Unsealing Private Records,” dating back Jack Ryan’s implosion, which led to Obama wafting into the US Senate back in 2004:
Ryan had vehemently denied her allegations at the time, but it didn’t matter. The sex club allegations aired on “Entertainment Tonight,” “NBC Nightly News,” ABC’s “Good Morning America,” “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno,” and NBC’s “Today” show. CNN covered the story like it was the first moon landing.
(Interestingly, international papers also were ablaze with the story — the same newspapers that were supposed to be so bored with American sexual mores during Bill Clinton’s sex scandal.)
Four days after Judge Schnider unsealed the custody records, Ryan dropped out of the race for the horror of (allegedly) propositioning his own wife and then taking “no” for an answer.
Alan Keyes stepped in as a last-minute Republican candidate.
And that’s how Obama became a U.S. senator. He destroyed both his Democratic primary opponent and his Republican general election opponent with salacious allegations about their personal lives taken from “sealed” court records.
Obama’s team delved into Sarah Palin’s marriage and spread rumors of John McCain’s alleged affair in 2008 and they smeared Herman Cain in 2011 with hazy sexual harassment allegations all emanating from David Axelrod’s pals in Chicago.
It’s almost like a serial killer’s signature. Unsealed personal records have been released to the press. Obama must be running for office!
Hey, did Coulter just compare a presidential candidate to a serial killer? Who does she think she is, a Hollywood celebrity on the Today Show?
With Harry Reid tripling down today on his McCarthyism, Ed Morrissey reponds:
Note, please, that we seem to be back to one source for this information — “an extremely credible source,” but Reid did not use a plural. Earlier in the week, Reid claimed to have “a number of sources,” and that “the word is out.” So which is it? One extremely credible source from Bain who somehow got to look at Romney’s personal taxes for a ten-year period even though no one would have access to that except the Romneys, their accountant, and the IRS? Or a number of sources who say “the word is out”? Reid’s sounding more and more like Joe McCarthy every day.
Reid, who also refuses to release his own tax returns, isn’t just a hypocrite and a slanderer. He’s also a political idiot. Until these attacks, Romney was on the defensive over his tax returns. Now Romney can paint his decision to keep them private as a principled stand against unscrupulous opponents. Reid has handed the high ground to Romney in this fight with his scurrilous lies. Reid has all but ruined Obama’s strategy of making Romney look secretive and weird.
Just another chapter in The Quotable Harry Reid:
Join the conversation as a VIP Member