Mitt Romney’s Retroactive Retirement Fallout Lives Another Day (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Mitt Romney’s retroactive retirement is still creating buzz despite being first uttered on Sunday TV talk shows. I know Ed Gillespie wishes he could retroactively take those words back. Dana Milbank has a great piece on Mitt Romney and his time machine:

Retroactive retirement! It was a brilliant formulation, perhaps the greatest addition to the political lexicon since “no controlling legal authority.” And it raised tantalizing possibilities: If Romney can do it, perhaps others can go back in time to rearrange events.

George W. Bush could retroactively end his presidency on Sept. 1, 2008, before the financial collapse. Donald Rumsfeld could retroactively pull out of Iraq before the insurgency. President Obama could retroactively deny government funding for Solyndra.

Beyond politics, the Chicago Cubs could retroactively end their 2003 season before they squandered a three-games-to-one lead in the National League Championship Series. Disney could save $200 million by retroactively canceling production of the movie “John Carter.” Investors could retroactively skip Facebook’s IPO. Kim Kardashian could retroactively undo her wedding — or, better still, we could undo the Kardashians entirely.

In practice, retroactivity is not quite so simple. If it were, Sarah Palin would still be an obscure governor, Anthony Weiner wouldn’t have had a Twitter account, and John Edwards wouldn’t have hired a campaign videographer. Source: Washington Post

I would imagine there are a lot of things I would have liked to do retroactively such as launching this blog on WordPress instead of Blogger. Putting all jokes aside, the Romney team, including the nominee himself, need to stop squawking about being the victims of the “Chicago-style” politics. Stop whining. It’s clear Mitt Romney has been defined by the Democrats and that’s the first no-no in politics. He carpet-bombed Newt Gingrich and the Democrats are showing him the same love — “The Dark Knight Rises” to stomp on villain Bane.

From around the Internet:

Jay Bookman at The Atlanta Journal Constitution had this to say:

In the ’50s and ’60s, a period considered the economic heyday of a free and capitalist post-war America, George Romney paid 37 percent of his income in federal taxes.By 2010, Romney’s son paid a total of 13.9 percent of his income in federal taxes, this in an America that is supposedly well on its way to becoming a socialist state, with a confiscatory federal government intent on stealing the wealth of its highest earners.

Andrea Stone at The Huffington Post takes it from the McCain campaign perspective:

John McCain’s top campaign strategist in 2008 says that Mitt Romney’s much-discussed tax returns were not the reason that the Republican candidate chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, but he did acknowledge that Romney’s wealth played a factor in the decision.”I get the political hyperbole and all, but that’s not the way the decision was made,” Steve Schmidt told The Huffington Post. “We never sat around having a discussion about Mitt Romney’s taxes through the prism of a liability if he were chosen” for the ticket.

But he added that Romney’s wealth was seen as a liability – “Sen. McCain got caught flat-footed answering a question about how many houses he owned. In fact, they were Cindy McCain’s properties but that distinction was lost in the political optics and we knew it would be a big liability that the presidential and the vice presidential candidates together owned more than a dozen homes. It was like something out of a ‘Saturday Night Live’ skit. I mean, come on.”

The Dallas Morning News editorial board slams Mitt Romney:

In modern presidential politics, any candidate who doesn’t release several years of income tax returns is foolishly swimming upstream against public opinion and political common sense. Extensive disclosure of tax information is a rite of passage all candidates accept the moment they declare for the presidency.

William D. Cohen at Bloomberg raises a question few are talking about  Mitt Romney’s “magical” IRA and how it came to be bursting at seams with millions:

The most mysterious of the unexplained mysteries about Mitt Romney’s considerable wealth is how he was able to amass between $21 million and $102 million in his individual retirement account during the 15 years he was at Bain Capital LLC.How did he do it, given the relatively small amounts that the law permits to be contributed to such a plan on an annual basis? Romney has not explained this conundrum, and seeing as he wants to become president, he would be wise to start talking — if for no other reason than there might be many Americans who would like to emulate what he did.

Eugene Robinson at The Washington Post talks about the Romney train wreck:

Mitt Romney has every right to cloak his personal and professional finances in secrecy — and voters have every right to assume he has something embarrassing to hide. If this seems unfair, Romney has only himself to blame.Through a series of miscalculations, Romney has managed to turn what should have been a minor hiccup into what may be a defining moment, and not in a good way. Attacks by President Obama’s campaign serve mainly to draw attention to the train wreck.

Last night on CNN Erin Burnett hit it out of the ball park:

“It’s time, Mitt. Time to put them on the table. We all know what it is. Your taxes.”