Down the Rabbit Hole

++The Obama Superpac had said the past week that their Bain ads were setting up the next phase of their attack on Mitt Romney. Is it going to be tax returns?


++The Romney campaign released an ad today with pundits like Doug Brooks, Mark Halperin and others bemoaning Obama's negative campaign. The kicker is that the ad is framed by Bob Schieffer asking "What happened to hope and change?" Unfortunately Bon Schieffer saw the ad and was shocked by it and instantly distanced himself from it.


++The Boston Globe continued its investigation into Bain Capitol with an analysis of Romney's Massachusetts corporate submissions. This past week the Romney campaign demanded an apology from the Globe and didn't receive it. The Romney folks had been successful getting people like the Washington Post to apologize but it seems that has worn thin and no longer a successful gambit.


++Paul Ryan was on the campaign trail defending Romney by crying that "his holdings are in a blind trust",thereby opening another possible front in this issue.


++Forbes Magazine, the "Capitalist Tool", printed an article that said Romney had to answer at least 35 questions before the Bain issue would go away. 


++The real next issue is the release of tax returns. This puzzles conservatives. FOX news today pointedly blamed Romney for all the confusion over this issue,raising the question why hadn't he cleaned all this up before he ran again for President. Matthew Dowd claimed there must be something that Romney is hiding and George Will said,"Therefore, he must have calculated that there are higher costs in releasing them". Will may be right. During the primary, Romney said he wasn't releasing his tax returns because he didn't want to do "opposition research for the Obama campaign." Since Democrats have argued that Romney doesn't pay the same rate as middle-class Americans,there must be more to the picture.


++In some ways, Bob Woodward was right today that releasing financial forms doesn't really tell you that much. But the pathological secrecy of the Romney campaign on this issue has been severely damaging to him.


++The Donald says that Willard should not release his tax returns until Obama proves his identity. Romney could use the birthed issue as a wedge to prove his bonafides as a card-carrying conservative.


++One thing the Obama campaign has done is set up the next stage of the Romney campaign by sowing the seeds for challenges to his Olympic story. The story has been covered in the past about the corruption at that time in Salt Lake City. Romney managed to smooth over the issues with the contractors and even kept the biggest on board, despite criminal investigations.


++A Democratic blogger raised the interesting question of how would the press have treated Romney's financial dealings if he had speculated in cattle futures like Hillary Clinton. 


++There does not seem to be an easy escape for Romney on the financial side. Observers speculate that Romney has not been on the campaign trail this weekend and has ceded the debate to his surrogates who all have mixed and contradictory messages. The most hyperbolic statements have Romney actually bowing out of the campaign, while others think he will have another Shiny Object moment of picking a vice-president to avoid the subject. But even here, opposition research by Democrats have been in high gear on all the major choices for Romney. So even this will not go down lightly.


++What if after all this and the constant barrage of the last three years against Obama, we actually have a result in November that is similar to 2008? RealClearPolitics has the race Obama 332 electoral votes and Romney 206. Obama has Florida, Virginia, Michigan and Ohio, while Romney picks up North Carolina and Indiana from Obama.