“….. .. . ………….. flock together”
The ongoing saga of Romney-gate continues. Romney is digging himself deeper and deeper into the muck as the days pass. He is not only alienating and causing heartburn for moderate and intelligent conservatives, he was awakened analytically gifted and astute reporters. Romney may not realize it but he is providing Pulitzer Prize winner fodder for the nation’s best investigative reporters, hard-hitting seekers of the truth, and effective OP-ED writers.
It is amazing how little people remember of the WaterGate cover-up. The initial lie, if addressed, is far lesser a ‘sentence’ than piling lie upon lie. Woodward and Bernstein developed the model from which Romney will eventfully capitulate and reveal his tax returns or he will suffer an agonizing journey into the November Elections.
Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Beast, suggests Romney has factually perjured himself.
The claim that he committed a felony by falsely reporting his role at Bain Capital under oath is what has really gotten under Romney’s skin. But it seems pretty clear to me that he signed a federal financial disclosure form, under the penalty of perjury, saying he had not been involved “in any way” with Bain after he left for Utah in February 1999. That’s a strong statement. And it is directly undercut by Romney’s own statement in his 2002 attempt to prove residency to run for governor:
Romney testified that “there were a number of social trips and business trips that brought [him] back to Massachusetts, board meetings” while he was running the Olympics. He added that he remained on the boards of several companies, including the Lifelike Co., in which Bain Capital held a stake until 2001…
“He succeeded in that three-year period in restoring confidence in the Olympic Games, closing that disastrous deficit and staging one of the most successful Olympic Games ever to occur on US soil,” said Peter L. Ebb from Ropes & Gray, [his lawyer at the 2002 hearing].
“Now while all that was going on, very much in the public eye, what happened to his private and public ties to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts? And the answer is they continued unabated just as they had.”
So the question of whether Romney committed a felony in his financial disclosure form is a very real one – because Romney and Romney’s lawyer provide the strongest evidence that it was perjury. Now we have more contemporaneous evidence that Romney perjured himself:
Read via linked title above….
Michael Tomasky also of The Daily Beast has taken Romney’s ‘serial lying” a step further reaching into Romney’s possible political maneuvering. While linking to both Andrew Sullivan and Scott Lehigh, the Boston Globe, Tomasky developed a screed that cannot help, but tighten the screws on an already ‘self-wounded’ Romney.
Excerpt from the end of the Tomasky piece.
So it remains possible that he wasn’t even a legitimate governor! As it happens, Scott Lehigh had a very interesting column in the Globe just the other day on this question:
Let’s enter the political time machine for a trip back to 2002. Having won a gold managerial medal for his stewardship of the winter Olympics, Romney came back to Massachusetts raring to run for governor. He had the makings of a formidable candidate, and local Democrats knew as much. They began raising questions about whether, after his out-of-state stint readying the Winter Games, he met the residency requirement to run for governor.
How Romney had filed his Massachusetts income taxes — as a resident or non-resident — during his years in Utah could have had some bearing on the issue. Since he had also been contemplating a run for office in Utah, some suspected he might have filed as resident there to establish more permanent roots in the Beehive State.
Romney initially refused to make a copy of his Massachusetts tax returns public, even a copy with the income information redacted. Suspicions only grew more intense after the Globe’s Frank Phillips reported that Romney had paid property taxes on his Park City, Utah, home as his primary residence for 1999, 2000, and 2001. Campaign aide Eric Fehrnstrom said that had happened because of a “clerical mistake” by the relevant county assessor’s office in Utah, an account that office pretty much backed up, though no one could say quite how the unusual error had occurred.
This is life with Mitt. Lehigh concluded that “trying to pin Romney down on a nettlesome issue could be like trying to pin a drop of mercury to a sheet of waxed paper. And it presented a revealing look at the less-than-candid way Romney and team would sometimes operate.” He’s hiding behavior that is at the very least too cute by half; worse, that cancels out what he has been trumpeting for months as his great qualification for the White House; and worst of all, still maybe a felony. Yeah, you’re right, conservatives; no story here.
End Excerpt….
As I have written in two separate pieces today, Romney appears guilty of lying and guilty of the inevitable ‘lying’ cover-ups.
As I approached last weekend, my thoughts about the body of Romney lies was as follows: Newt, Rick and Santorum told us he was a serial liar. While we believe those candidates, apparently he was the best of the nine who occupied debate stages; the GOP gave him the primaries.
Another thought was, what happens when he releases his tax returns and America so soon forget the horror of what we do not know about the illusive candidate. Well, his tax returnshave filed false SEC filings, lied about a shadow company in the Bahamas, and he may, according to the opinions of Tomaksy and a couple other reporters, served illegally in his one stint in political office.
Wow, and you and I thought ‘ All the Presidents Men‘ movie was a generation changing, political thriller!
Another analogy!
Romney’s current predicaments are much like watching a companionship MMA match and the champion (figuratively Obama) has the challenger (Figuratively Romney) in a rear-naked Choke hold. The question is, let’s see if the challenger can extricate himself from the campaign killing submission hold: a position of his own accomplishment.
The Pardu's Scroll 
