One Baseless Claim Deserves Another

The majority leader said he was told that Romney "didn't pay any taxes for 10 years" by someone who invested with Bain Capital, Romney's former private equity firm. But Reid hasn't named names, and went so far as to admit that he didn't know if his information was accurate.

The Huffington Post

That's just great.  Harry Reid has just tossed a baseless allegation at Romney with the goal of making Romney disprove it by releasing his taxes.  In short, Romney is guilty until he proves his innocence.

Two can play that game.  I say that Obama had a GPA of only 2.2 while attending Columbia and failed Constitutional Law at Harvard.  Obviously, he's guilty unless he releases his transcripts.  The evidence for my claim is just as solid as for Reid's claim.

It is said that the first person to resort to name-calling has lost the argument.  So far, the Obama campaign or its surrogates have accused Romney of being a bully (incident where he cut a fellow student's hair when he was a teenager), a felon (supposedly misreporting when he departed Bain), a wimp (he's dodging the press and hiding his tax returns), and a tax cheat (Harry Reid's current claim).  The Obama campaign is throwing accusations and seeing what sticks.

The attacks on Romney are meant to deflect from the President's record.  Obama is not heralding the Stimulus or Obamacare.  He's not campaigning on bailouts.  The unemployment rate is worse today than when he was inaugurated.  The debt has grown by more than $5 trillion.  He did kill Osama bin Laden.  The record is not impressive.  If he can't win by positive accomplishments then he must resort to disqualifying his opponent.  Thus we have the long line of attacks.

Obama is in a very precarious position.  Europe is on the brink and could shove the world economy into recession.  The US economy is slowing down and threatening to dip back into recession.  The military cuts will provoke layoff letters the week before the election.  The most loyal Democratic constituency, African-Americans, is angry over his support for gay marriage.  Another loyal constituency, Jews, are not pleased by his relations with Israel.  In many ways, he has surprisingly little control over his fate, which should tell us something.