Opinion: Democrats are telling Harry Reid to please shut up

In an interview with the Huffington Post last week, Reid cites an anonymous Bain investor to report that Mitt Romney hasn’t paid any taxes for the past ten years. What PROOF? (Is proof important?)

The next day Reid doubled down, repeating the charge to Nevada papers and on the floor of the Senate.

“I am not basing this on some figment of my imagination,” Reid told Nevada reporters. “I have had a number of people tell me that.” But he would not expand on his sources. “I don’t think the burden should be on me,” he said. “The burden should be on him. He’s the one I’ve alleged has not paid any taxes.”

And on the Senate floor that same day, Reid said, “The word is out he hasn’t paid taxes for 10 years.”

That’s a pretty stiff charge for a man like Senator Reid who has not released his tax returns for the past three years while Romney has released all of his financial disclosures and his 2010 returns. He plans to release 2011 as soon as they are done.

At first the Democrats were all over this; it fit into the Obama strategy of talk about anything but his record as President. But in the days since the ridiculous charge was made, little by little Democrats have been trying to move away from the majority leader.

On Sunday’s Face the Nation, host and liberal apologist Bob Schieffer went on the attack as he interviewed former Ohio governor and Obama mouthpiece Ted Strickland and compared Harry Reid’s tactics to Joe McCarthy:

BOB SCHIEFFER: Let me go to you, Governor Strickland. You have been pounding Mitt Romney for not releasing his tax returns, and you have repeated what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has been saying that Mitt Romney may have paid no taxes in all of, in some of those years. You know, this morning Reince Priebus who’s the chairman of the Republican Party, said I think over on Fox, that, that Harry Reid is a dirty liar. And I have to say, he has shown nothing, no evidence to substantiate that charge. He just says he heard it from somebody. Do you have any proof that Mitt Romney paid no taxes in some years?

TED STRICKLAND: No, but Mr. Romney could give us the proof that he has paid taxes consistently. The fact is, Bob, Mitt Romney wants the American people to trust him with the Presidency, but he won’t trust us with his tax returns. All he has to do is release his tax returns. The question that I think is this: why is Mitt Romney refusing to give us his tax returns?

SCHIEFFER: Well, you know, I take your point, Governor, but isn’t this kind of like Joe McCarthy back in the era when he said, “I have here in my hand the names of 400 people in the State Department who are communist?” It turned out he didn’t and he was saying the way to prove that they’re not is for them to come forward here. I mean, asking somebody to come forward to, to just because there’s been an unsubstantiated charge, that’s a little thin to me.

Liberal Washington Post Columnist Richard Cohen called Reid’s charges gutter politics and wrote:

In “The Godfather Part II,” a senator from Nevada is portrayed as corrupt. His name is Pat Geary. In real life, a senator from Nevada is a jerk. His name is Harry Reid.

Reid is where he loves to be: the center of controversy. He has accused Mitt Romney of paying no taxes for 10 years. Romney denies the accusation and challenged Reid to put up or shut up. In an apparent response, Reid repeated the charges on the Senate floor. Countless aides have echoed their boss. They and he attribute their information to a source they will not name.

Whether such a source exists, really, is beside the point. It could be that someone did indeed tell Reid that Romney paid no taxes for 10 years. Journalists get that sort of tip all the time, and their responsibility is (1) to check it out and (2) identify the source. Reid has not done the latter and apparently has not done the former, either. The truth is that Reid doesn’t really care if the charge is true or not. He would prefer the former, but he’ll settle for the latter.

Perhaps the biggest and at the same time the most subtle slam came from the White House, which on Monday announced they would leave poor Harry dangling.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said on Monday that Reid (D-Nev.) “speaks for himself” and had spoken on the issue without any guidance from Team Obama.

“He certainly speaks for himself,” Carney said, adding that Obama hasn’t expressed an opinion on Reid’s recent comments.

But Carney said Reid’s comments speak to a “broader question” about the President’s views on income taxes, saying that a “tradition” which “has been in place since 1968 of candidates for the President releasing multiple years of their tax returns is an important one.”

Allow us to examine that tradition. Mitt’s dad released 12 years of taxes, so did Bill Clinton; Ronald Reagan released one year in 1980 when he ran, John McCain two years in 2008. John Kerry released 20 years, but that did not include that of his wife whose wealth accounted for the vast majority of the household income. In 2000, Bush provided nine years and Al Gore eight. In the 2008 primary, then Senator Barack Obama, D-Ill., delivered seven, a move that was matched by Hillary Clinton about a month later. In 1988, Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis released six years of returns.

So what is the verdict? Well, there is no standard. In fact, it seems as if the majority of candidates release fewer than ten years worth of returns.

The tax return issue is an important one for the Obama reelection effort as it diverts attention away from Obama’s record as President. Remember, in his last run for the job in 2008, Obama’s opponent also released the previous two years’ returns, but it was okay then because the Democrat didn’t have a record to avoid.

It seems that this issue is now getting too silly even for the Obama campaign. By backing away from Harry Reid, they are signaling that it is time for him to move on to another slander against the GOP candidate, and as a loyal attack dog he will be sure to obey.