Perhaps you saw this on Twitter this afternoon:
Josh Romney on Tuesday tweeted a photo of his father, Mitt Romney, paying his taxes, alluding to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-NV) charge during the 2012 election that Mitt Romney did not pay his taxes for ten years.....Here's the tweet:
Hey @SenatorReid here's a shot of @MittRomney paying taxes. Does it every year. It's how you get your paycheck. pic.twitter.com/DwSMXzYhuR
— Josh Romney (@joshromney) April 15, 2014You know what? Reid's attack was pretty nasty -- but politics ain't beanbag, and if Romney had released a few more years of returns (Mitt's father, of course, released twelve years' worth when he ran for president), that attack could have been neutralized. And, well, it's not as if Romney is the only presidential candidate ever to take a tough hit.
I can think of a few other people who got pummeled in presidential campaigns, some of them a hell of a lot worse than Mitt Romney. John Kerry. Al Gore. Mike Dukakis. And yet I didn't see any of them lashing out at their electoral antagonists a year and a half after losing a presidential election.
But on the right, it's common to lash out when you've been bested. On the right, it's admired.
I'm struck by the fact that Romney could have mailed his return or e-filed it, but chose to make a big public show of lining up at a post office, presumably so his son could do this -- but I'm also struck by the first tweet posted in response to this one:
@joshromney @SenatorReid @MittRomney Love that man!
— Angie Renteria (@angierenteria01) April 15, 2014Love that man! Yup, love him for spending the time since his defeat expressing bitterness abut his loss and repeatedly trolling the man who beat him, and, now, trolling one of his surrogates.
But the average right-winger has no problem with this, or with, say, Sarah Palin's perpetual nursing of grievances, or Dick Cheney's relentless attacks on the White House after Cheney's own administration left office in utter disgrace. Hell, let's go back to Richard Nixon, who mastered the art of bitterness, even while he was on top -- he was bitter in victory.
Right-wingers love feeling aggrieved -- and I guess they love pols who act out that feeling for them.
