Obama Campaign Aims to Swift Boat Mitt Romney Over Offshore Bank Accounts & Tax Returns
Obama Campaign Aims to Swift Boat Mitt Romney Over Offshore Bank Accounts & Taxes (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Democrats are on a mission to “swift boat” GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, in similar fashion as the Republicans did to John Kerry. The Obama campaign continues to pound away at Romney’s “secret” investments in a newly released video. There’s nothing wrong with being wealthy, but when you are running for the highest office in the country, then it looks pretty bad that you have stashed away money in a few different countries — Switzerland, Cayman Islands and Bermuda — in tax havens. You are, in essence, skirting the tax laws in your own country.
How can you be trusted to have the best interests of the people on Main Street at heart, in as far as the tax code? Rep. Charlie Rangel once headed the powerful Ways and Means Committee, all the while having tax and ethics issues. Um, you can’t send the fox to guard the hen house.
The Obama campaign video says: “Mitt Romney is defying calls to release more than one year’s worth of tax returns. How long can Romney keep information on his investments in overseas tax havens secret? And why he did it in the first place? Time will tell.”
Some pundits have expressed their opinion on the Democratic attacks and on Romney’s campaign:
Alex Burns: “The Democratic attacks on Romney’s finances are based on circumstantial evidence and basically amount to: where there’s smoke, there’s fire. What’s inconvenient for Romney is that the smoke includes buzzwords like ‘Swiss bank account’ that tend to be problematic for him in focus groups.”
Mark Halperin: “We are at a potentially critical moment in the presidential race over the Democrats’ attempts to make Romney’s Swiss bank account, Cayman Island investment funds, and secret tax returns into what the Republicans’ Swift Boating effort was for John Kerry in 2004.”
Charlie Cook: “If President Obama’s campaign machine can define Mitt Romney before his own campaign even tries, my bet is Obama wins reelection.”
[...]
“Voters’ willingness to hire Romney is being severely damaged, at least in swing states, by the advertising efforts of the Obama campaign and Priorities USA, a pro-Obama super PAC. The ads are devastatingly tough, portraying the former Massachusetts governor as a private-equity version of Gordon Gekko, a heartless corporate barracuda who has made a fortune acquiring and looting companies, laying off workers, and ruining lives and communities.”
The notion that one stashes money away in foreign banks just because one can afford to and runs for the presidency as icing on the cake, doesn’t resonate with people on Main Street, many of whom are struggling to keep a roof over their heads. That’s bad for Mitt Romney. As Rick Santorum said on the campaign trail, Mitt Romney is the worst candidate to go up against Barack Obama in November. The Obama campaign is pushing Mitt Romney in a box by defining him as one who skirts the tax code and doesn’t really have a plan to fix what ails this country because he is out of touch with the needs of people on Main Street. Add his reluctance to release more years of tax returns to the mix. Even former Mississippi Republican governor Haley Barbour is saying that he should.
This article was cross-posted from The Hinterland Gazette
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I’m confused. I thought swiftboating was making up lies and using those lies in ads against an opponent. Now it may be true that Mr. Romney only has a few dollars in those accounts. And it may be true that they weren’t placed there to avoid taxes, simply to get a higher interest rate or whatever. If all that’s true, and the Democrats know that’s true, they are indeed swiftboating. There is no law about candidates releasing their income tax returns – or overseas bank accounts – but maybe there should be?
The swiftboating comparison might be a stretch, but the Democrats are using a lot of innuendo without presenting evidence of wrongdoing. Politics as usual.
Swiftboating is too strong a term, while there is no wrongdoing per se.
My biggest problem beyond Romney taking advantage of offshore investments beyond the reach of we mere mortals is that he still has not come clean about all of those investments. The reason is obvious: Even with the laser-like scrutiny that a presidential campaign entails he believes that he is above the fray.
Swiftboating?? dont get it.
attacking him for possibly hiding money from the IRS…I get it.
and Rangel is fair game…and we KNOW what he did. The man should be in jail.
The swiftboating thing is just a weak attempt to get some attention. Unless a bunch of Romney’s former associates in the private equity business came forward to say he never really ran Bain capital and wasn’t the one who was responsible for its success.
As far as the tax dodging goes I believe it for one simple reason. I’ve lived my life guided by the idea that life is not an episode of “Three’s Company”, where every situation was just a vastly misunderstood series of events that make someone look like they did something they didn’t. In real life, things are almost always exactly as they appear. You tell me a super rich guy has offshore accounts and is engaged in the typical tax related shenanigans offshore account rich guys do, I can believe it.
If Romney had nothing to hide then he wouldn’t hide it. And one doesn’t open bank accounts in foreign countries to just stash a few dollars away.
The reality is that many wealthy Americans do have offshore accounts and tax havens. However not all of them do but not all of them are running for president.
What bothers me is that Romney is HIDING something.
Why would I vote for someone who can’t be trusted? I expect my leaders to act leaderly, not hide behind other countries’ banking and secrecy laws.
Correct use of language and words is critically important when it comes conveying thoughts accurately. The phrase, “swiftboating” is a pejorative, not an all purpose substitute. It isn’t being used properly here.
I am confused.
“The Democrats are on a mission to “swift boat” GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, in similar fashion as the Republicans did to John Kerry,”
according to whom? Otherwise, I agree with the basic sentiments
It looks like Halperin was the one using the Swiftboat term, and he wasn’t referring to the veracity of the attacks- just the fact that in both campains there was this decision to go negative and attack the opponent as somehow being unfit to serve.
But the very essence of swift boating is the fraudulence of the charges – making something up to impugn the honor of another. If the veracity of the charge is not being challenged the use of the term, swift boating, is…swift boating.
I think the reason we can’t agree on what swiftboating means is that Republicans who invented it against Kerry believe swiftboating is the dispersion of the truth. Whereas the Dems believe that swiftboating is the dispersion of lies.
In my book, swift boating is the process by which a net positive for a candidate (decorated military service, for example) is turned into a negative.
In 2004 you had a President whose military service was at best unremarkable being challenged by a candidate who had volunteered for and been wounded doing dangerous duty.
What the Republicans did with the swift boating of Kerry was to take a truth that they knew could be used against them (Kerry was in country and wounded – even if it were slightly – while their guy was flying training missions stateside) and turning it around to make it seem as if somehow getting shot at in some river on the Cambodian border was somehow less honorable than being in the Texas ANG.
What is being done to Romney would only be swift boating if Obama had twice as much money in offshore accounts as Mittens.