Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Monday insisted that he would not release more than the two years of tax returns he had already promised because they could be damaging to his White House ambitions.
Over the weekend, conservative Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol had said that Romney would be "crazy" not to "[t]ake the hit for a day or two" and follow in his father's footsteps by releasing more than just one or two years of returns.
During a Monday interview on Fox & Friends, the GOP hopeful laughed off the call to be more transparent by citing two failed presidential candidate.
"John McCain ran for president and released two years of tax returns," Romney explained. "John Kerry ran for president. You know, his wife, who has hundreds of millions of dollars, she never released her tax returns. Somehow this wasn't an issue."
"The Obama people keep on wanting more and more and more," he continued. "More things to pick through, more things for their opposition research to try make a mountain out of and to distort and to be dishonest about. We’re going to put out two years of tax returns."
While Romney is correct that Teresa Heinz Kerry declined to release any tax returns when her husband, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), ran for the White House in 2004, a candidate's wife is not usually held to the same standard as the candidate. Over a course of years of campaigning for the Senate and presidency, Sen. Kerry had actually released 20 years worth of returns by 2004.
(h/t: Think Progress)
