'Call Obama's bluff!'
President Obama has now placed the documentary history of a presidential candidate on the table as a legitimate demand. His stooge Harry Reid has demanded 10 years of financial documentation from Mitt Romney. Wayne Root, who was Obama's class of '83 classmate at Columbia and a Libertarian Party vice presidential nominee, lays out very clearly how Mitt Romney can spring a trap on the Obama campaign's desperate gambit. From The Blaze:
Call Obama's bluff.
Romney should call a press conference and issue a challenge in front of the nation. He should agree to release more of his tax returns, only if Obama unseals his college records. Simple and straight-forward. Mitt should ask "What could possibly be so embarrassing in your college records from 29 years ago that you are afraid to let America's voters see? If it's THAT bad, maybe it's something the voters ought to see." Suddenly the tables are turned. Now Obama is on the defensive.
My bet is that Obama will never unseal his records because they contain information that could destroy his chances for re-election. Once this challenge is made public, my prediction is you'll never hear about Mitt's tax returns ever again.
Root then proceeds to lay out the unusual circumstances surrounding Obama's attendance at Columbia and the reasons to suspect that Obama got in and received financial support as a foreign student. One of the oddest questions about Obama's time there is how few people remember him. Root and Obama both majored in political science, and Root thought he knew all of his fellow majors. But he never heard of Obama back then. The Wall Street Journal telephoned a random 400 classmates and none of them remembered Obama. Yet somehow Obama got into Harvard Law School, without leaving so much as a footprint in the sand in the Columbia collective consciousness.
The sketchy outline provided by the campaign/media combine in 2008 simply does not bear scrutiny. The Obama Gang are a bunch of bullies. The Alinksy way is bullying. One thing about bullies is that they do not take a punch very well.
Mitt Romney is a very smart guy, highly trained in analysis, and closely focused on skilful implementation of a complex strategies. He is not the kind of man to respond to a gut instinct. I am not sure that his opponent's glass jaw ever made it into his equation. Taking a swing can be risky.
I don't think the Reid gambit is working very well. Sure, the media are using it as an excuse to keep raising the question "what is Romney hiding? -- which is precisely the strategy of this year's version of the JournOlist conspiracy. Keep the focus on Mitt's wealth. But the liberal media will follow the campaign's talking points using any old excuse. So use their predictability against them, and like a jujitsu adept, grab their momentum and use it against them.
Reid's approach is repulsive, and is drawing criticism from honest liberals as another version of McCarthyism, which is the worst sin in20th century liberal lore. The honest liberals are a genuine asset that can be brought to bear against Obama by following Root's suggestion.