Illegal? Not Willard, surely

Daniel Politi has a Slate article about Romney and his money:

Mitt Romney’s financial holdings abroad have become a favorite point for Democrats aiming to put forward the view that the Republican candidate is an out-of-touch wealthy business leader who has never had the nation’s best interest at heart. On the talk shows, President Obama supporters raised questions about Romney’s finances, saying it was time for the Republican to release more of his tax returns to make sure he isn’t hiding anything.
Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, said Romney needs to release more than one year of tax returns. She specifically qualified as “disturbing” a recent Vanity Fair article that details how the former governor has financial holdings in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. “Americans need to ask themselves, why does an American businessman need a Swiss bank account, and secretive investments like that?” Wasserman Schultz said on Fox News Sunday.
She wasn’t alone in focusing on Switzerland. Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley told ABC News that Romney “bet against America when he put his money in Swiss bank accounts and tax havens and shelters and also set up a secret company, the shell company in Bermuda.” Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana appeared alongside O’Malley and called the questions over Romney’s finances one of the many “distractions thrown out by the Obama campaign”.
Yet Democrats clearly believe attacking Romney’s finances could have staying power. Obama campaign adviser Robert Gibbs also demanded that the former governor release more years of tax returns, but went even further, saying there isn’t enough information to know whether Romney has done anything illegal. “The one thing he can do to clear up whether or not he’s done anything illegally, whether he’s shielding his income from taxes in Bermuda or Switzerland, is to do whatever other presidential candidate has done and that’s to release a series of years of their own tax returns,” Gibbs told CNN host Candy Crowley. “The best way to see if Mitt Romney is complying with America tax law is to have him release more of his tax returns.”

Rico says that rich guys don't have to play by the same rules as the rest of us, do they? But even Newt Gingrich turned on the guy:

Mitt Romney is a Swiss-bank-account-owning liar. So says Newt Gingrich, in an article by Linda Feldmann in the Christian Science Monitor:

Newt Gingrich officially dropped out of the presidential race, and the Obama campaign celebrated with a video that trashes Mitt Romney, in the words of Gingrich.
Talk about low-hanging fruit. All the Obama camp needed to do was collect the most pungent of Gingrich’s attacks on Romney during primary debates and interviews, add a heavy dose of sarcasm, and stir.
The video asks: is Gingrich throwing his support behind Romney? “As a man who wants to run for president of the United States who can’t be honest with the American people, why should we expect him to level about anything if he’s president?” the former House speaker asks matter-of-factly.
Next question: is it Romney’s business record that Newt supports? “You’d certainly have to say that Bain at times engaged in behavior where they looted a company, leaving behind 1,700 unemployed people,” Gingrich says, referring to the private-equity firm that Romney formerly headed.
Then: “There was a pattern, in some companies, a handful of them, of leaving them with enormous debt, and then within a year or two or three, having them go broke. I think that is something he ought to answer.”
Follow that with slams on Romney’s Swiss bank account, a “Romney machine” that’s “not capable of inspiring positive turnout”, positions that are “anti-immigrant”, and another attack on Romney’s honesty, and you’ve got a tidy message against the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.
Romney finished the competitive part of the primary season with the lowest likability of any major-party nominee in modern history, thanks in part to attacks from Gingrich and the other GOP candidates. Now Gingrich is reportedly set to endorse Romneyin the next couple of weeks. The Obama campaign is making sure we don’t forget what Gingrich thought just a few months ago...