Should more than 2 years of returns be required? Your argument seems to lead in that direction. I think your beef is with the requirements since they aren't requiring Romney to release more than he has.
Its not a "requirement" in the strictest sense of the word. Traditionally you release returns and Romney's own father made the point that a year's worth is not very informative because it could be an outlier.
The problem for Romney is that the economy is in the crapper and middle class folks have been struggling for so long, and there is a sense that things are not going to get better.
The GOP has been trying to sell the middle class on the notion that the cause of the malaise is taxes being too high on the rich and corporations, too much regulation of business, etc. The Dems have been trying to sell the middle class on the notion that the wealthy are hoarding the money they got from the Bush tax cuts instead of investing it, that more tax cuts for the wealthy is the exact wrong thing to do, and that the rich have coopted the Congress to create tax loopholes that help them avoid paying taxes according to our system of progressive tax rates.
The GOP would like to dumb the election down to "the economy still sucks" and hope that people don't look behind the curtain as to why. The Dems want people to start asking hard questions about whether tax cuts for the wealthy do anything other than swell overseas bank accounts.
Against that backdrop, Romney refuses to release his returns, allowing the Dems to pres and press and imply that Romney is part of this class of people that are ruining the country with their unbridled greed and effective bribing of the government so as to make tax dodges legal as tax avoidance.
The Dems are winning this battle, thanks in large part to the simple fact that the GOP has nominated a guy that symoblizes the very thing that the Dems have been villifying for awhile now. And it is absolutely working.
How else do you explain that, in this tepid, weak "recovery" (if you can call it that) the incumbent racial minority president is leading now in the three key battleground states by 6-8 points just three months from the election?
The GOP needed some kind of everyman candidate to step forward so that they could run on a platform of being able to associate with the middle class, which grows increasingly frustrated with the upper class and the crime they perceive goes on at the highest levels of banking and finance. Nominating a guy who used gimmicks not available to all of us to turn $450,000 in an IRA into over $100 million was utter stupidity.
Obama is going to win, and by a decent margin, and despite the fact that anyone else in office at this time and under these conditions should have lost in a rout.
The GOP have only themselves to blame for blowing the easiest shot at the WH they have had since Carter.
