Disclaimer: Upper West Trade (TM) is a personal index created by Upper West for the initial purpose of tracking the odds of Mitt Romney not getting the Republican nomination for President. None of the information contained on Upper West Trade (TM) is an offer or sale of or the solicitation or invitation of an offer to buy any securities of Upper West Trade (TM) in the United States or any other jurisdiction.
The NNM Index (TM) is the percentage possibility that Mitt will Not be the Republican Nominee.
As detailed in the last
MNN (TM) Report on July 31, after a high of 46% on July 18, the
MNN (TM) had plunged to 30, before slowly increasing to 39% after Mitt's foreign trip debacle, and Harry Reid's "No taxes for 10 years" statements.
Now, after Romney's non-denial denials of the Reid charges, and his pitiful response that Reid has the burden of showing Mitt didn't pay his taxes, the MNN (TM) has once again risen back to 40%.
But Upper West Trade has been scratching its head as to the entire Mitt's taxes matter. With the GOP convention just a little more than three weeks away, several questions have occurred to UWT:
Did McCain really study Mitt's tax returns in 2008? Steve Schmidt says he never even saw them. Did McCain see them? Did McCain even get any tax documents from Mitt? Did he get an "executive summary" or just a portion of the returns?
If McCain did get them, has he shared them or their contents with the "real" GOP leadership (the Kochs, Rove, Ryan, Kristol)
If McCain didn't share the returns, do those "real" GOP leaders know what's in Mitt's tax returns? The demands by Kristol and others for Mitt to release them suggests that they don't know.
If they do know what's in them, and let him get nominated, does that mean there isn't anything very damaging in them?
If they don't know what's in them, will they permit the nomination of someone with potential explosive, campaign-ending material in his returns?
Wouldn't that be campaign malpractice exceeding even the choice of Palin, Eagleton or Mondale's "I will tax you pledge?
These are "known unknowns" about Mitt's taxes that would be crucial factors determining the
MNN (TM).
Commenters have asked whom else the Republicans would put up. I can see them choosing Paul Ryan or Scott Walker, Mike Huckabee or maybe even Jim DeMint.
But it's hard for me to believe that the Kochs and Adelson et al. would invest their billions in Mitt: (a) without knowing what's in Mitt's tax returns; or (b) permit nomination if the returns including anything like Harry Reid's charges.
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