Formerly disgraced dot-com stock pumper Henry Blodget, who has rehabilitated himself quite nicely as a sharp and witty Wall Street and political observer on Yahoo's Daily Ticker, said all that needs to be said about Mitt Romney yesterday... in one sentence! But I will include a little more than that because Blodget was on fire. So, over the orange flourish we go!
Blodget and his co-host Aaron Task were discussing Thursday's Republican debate and how Gingrich had an effective answer prepared for John King's open marriage question, and how in contrast Romney botched his gotcha question regarding when he was going to release his tax returns.
I recommend watching it to get the full effect; Blodget doesn't have to tell you what a farce he thinks Candidate Romney is-- his expressions and delivery tell it all. The delivery is priceless. (Video below or go here, good part starts at 2:45) "There is, I assume, no good answer for his tax returns, and for Bain," Blodget began, adding that Romney had spent millions on political consultants and still hadn't given a good answer on either subject. And then he continued:
Bain Capital is Wall Street: buy companies that employ lots of people, restructure them, fire lots of people, flip them to other folks, stick your money in the bank, and then, thanks to that wonderful tax loophole, it's like 'oh yes but this is capital at risk; therefore we deserve a tiny tax rate relative to all you folks, and by the way, it's stashed in the Cayman Islands, because the U.S. Government can't get their grubby hands on it, and we're not subject to all the same regulations'... and so there is no good answer.
That is all you need to say to beat Mitt Romney, right there, packed into one sentence. Say it with a smile, like Blodget did, because it is after all a big joke, and a joke deserves a smile. Put the mocking, superior inflection on the "capital at risk" part, just like Blodget did-- I think he got the tone just about right!
Continuing, Aaron Task then tried to make a case for a reasonable way forward for Romney: continue with his 'I'm not going to apologize for being successful' routine, defend capitalism, and so on, and then in the meantime just simply say that he'll release his tax returns in April, just like previous candidates have done.
The very affable Blodget nodded as if in agreement, and said "that's right"... but then he actually came back with a response that show why Task's proposed strategy might not be so easy for Romney:
What he can't say is, 'Look, to be honest, if I were to release my returns, you would see that I have hundreds of millions of dollars, more money than you can even conceive of, stashed in accounts that you can't see, giving me an income of ten, twenty, thirty million dollars a year at incredibly low tax-- I'm not going to apologize for that!'
And of course the other big joke is that just about every single Republican in Congress is defending this incredibly low tax rate for Romney and his ilk.
Folks, we already have all the material we need to trounce these clowns in November, not just Romney but the whole lot of them; they're giving this victory to us on a silver platter by this ridiculous position they have taken on taxes and by the poster child for unfair tax policy that they are about to nominate as their presidential candidate. Blodget demonstrates how to keep it very simple and crush them with a wink and a smile.