The British newspapers are coming after Mitt Romney with a vengeance and one has to wonder if this is setting the tone for possible icy relations with 10 Downing Street if Mitt Romney becomes our next president. You know, the man who understands the whole Anglo-Saxon heritage thing and is an Atlanticist. Whatever that means. The Guardian columnist MS Bellows Jr. is analyzing an interesting reason why Romney is reluctant to release his tax returns — possible voter fraud. This comes on the heels of a Telegraph report saying Mitt Romney may have breached ethics laws as governor of Massachusetts by doing business with Bain & Co., for which Bain Capital was the investment arm. Paul Ryan’s brother, Tobin Ryan, was an executive at Bain & Co. at the time. Seems to indicate Mitt Romney’s association with the Ryan family is more than Paul Ryan being qualified for the job of vice president.

None of them is really satisfactory, because none of them posits Romney concealing any facts more harmful than the blowback he is getting for not producing more returns. The problem may be that all of the prominent theories (with a couple of under-noticed exceptions) assume Romney is trying to conceal facts about his finances. Like the purloined letter pinned prominently in plain sight, what Romney’s really hiding might be something more mundane: the home address written on the top of the tax form. That address that might reveal a connection between the “tax returns” brouhaha and the “voter fraud” fizzle – which may be the strongest explanation of all.

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But the Romneys, arbitrarily, refuse to disclose a copy of the returns they filed in 2010 or 2009 (for tax years 2009 and 2008) – which, perhaps not coincidentally, bracket the time period when Romney allegedly committed fraud by voting in Massachusetts when he actually resided in California. So here’s the question: did Romney put his son’s basement’s address on the returns he filed in 2009 and 2010? Or did he truthfully use his real (non-Massachusetts) address, thus implicating himself in voter fraud?

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A felony voter fraud charge could expose Romney to fines and/or imprisonment, jeopardize Romney’s standing with the Michigan State Bar, and – worst of all, in the political sense – would be a mortal embarrassment on the campaign trail, both to himself and to down-ticket Republicans (especially Republican Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts, who won the special election in question but is locked in a tight, highly-publicized race against the popular Elizabeth Warren to retain his seat). Source: The Guardian

Of course, Mitt Romney will dismiss this as ridiculous chatter, but one has to ask, why doesn’t he just release his tax returns? What could be so bad that he doesn’t want the American people to see? This is going to follow him into the October debates. Um, will he pull out a white board to match Obama’s teleprompter?

This was cross-posted from The Hinterland Gazette.