So, to recap: Mitt Romney has, in the past two years, paid almost $5 million in taxes while giving away $7 million. And, as he said, he has paid the taxes he was supposed to pay according to the laws of the United States, which is all that is required — legally, morally and practically — of anyone.
If you’ve been reading my columns for the past couple of years, you know I’m perfectly capable of being critical of Romney. I did so the other day, and radio host Mark Levin called me a “trash-mouther” who was “giving aid and comfort to Obama.”
But the release of these tax records leaves no doubt about one thing: Mitt Romney is an extraordinarily, remarkably, astonishingly generous man. A good man. Maybe even a great man.
That is all. There is no “but.” Anyone who says otherwise is ignorant, stupid or a liar.
Mitt Romney's not running for "Great Man 2012", J-Pod. He's running for President. And I hate to break it to you, but there is a really big "but" in all this: Nowhere does Mitt reveal the status of his foreign bank accounts. We don't know if he paid "all the taxes he was supposed to" because the returns are still not complete.
On top of that, there remains the issue that the Romney camp admits to not taking the maximum charitable deduction in order to give himself a higher tax rate. He's playing loophole games with more money than most Americans will see in their entire lives, treating it as a tax tool for political purposes.
Oh, and while earning less than 6% of what Romney did, Barack Obama still gave 22% of his 2011 income to charity. That makes him a great man too, right?
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