This isn't a conspiracy theory. It's a prediction -- well, a semi-prediction, because it would be brazen and unbelievable if it happened. And I write in large part to ask others how we would know that it had happened if it did indeed come to pass.
Stories from today's front page and my reactions as I read them:
Romney says releasing his tax returns would hurt him politically. (Well -- yeah.)
Sheriff Joe Arpaio says he's super-duper sure Obama's birth certificate is fake. (Huh. Well, whatcha gonna do with people like that?)
HuffPost: Romney's 2010 tax return disclosure excluded key document on Swiss bank account. (God, he must be getting desperate.)
Why is the Romney campaign acting crazy? (I don't think that they're acting, Markos.)
House Democrats plan bill requiring presidential candidates to release 10 years of tax returns. (Ha-ha, clever! Maybe it wards off Mark Warner, too!)
Romney aide triumphantly tweets link to story about Romney dodging tax issue. (Ha-ha -- I can just imagine this guy writhing on the ground, screaming "MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STOP!")
HuffPo: Romney never would have run if he thought he'd have to release his tax returns.
(HOLY SHITE!)
I know, it's unsourced, but in that moment I had an insight into what someone with as agile a mind and twisted a soul as Mitt Romney might do in a situation such as this -- something that might also explain why he's taking so long dithering about it right now, pushing the date closer and closer to that of the election....
Is it possible that he might release fake returns?
How would we know that they were fake?
He could release ones that contained some mildly embarrassing disclosures, but not too embarrassing -- and when people say "well why did you delay?" he'd just explain that all this time he's been acting on principle, because he really thinks that demanding tax returns from a candidate is wrong, is prejudice against the wealthy -- whatever best argument his thousand monkeys at typewriters can come up with.
And then, at that moment, some of us would say "hmm, smells fishy" -- and he gets to take umbrage: "you're just like the birthers! You're like Joe Arpaio, Orly Taitz!"
By waiting until close to the election, Romney might reason, he'd be able to make it that much more difficult for people to check out the veracity of the returns. He'd make it that much easier to say, if someone came out with proof that they were fake, that the proof that they offered was what was fake.
It would just have to be enough to confuse everyone for just long enough. All he has to do is get through Election Day, a man like Romney might think to himself. There's no law against lying to the public, after all. The worst that could happen is that he could be impeached. They need 2/3 of the Senate -- they'll never get that. And if it really looked possible that he could be impeached over this unnecessary information that no one had a right to see anyway, I imagine him thinking to himself, well, then he could just resign and hand over the Presidency to Bobby Jindal, who had never been in on the plot. He'd still be the hero who got Barack H. Obama out of office for his party. He would have taken one for the team. History would absolve him.
And who's going to show that he's lying, anyway? His retainers are completely loyal. John McCain has his tax returns and would know that they didn't match, but is McCain going to blow the whistle on him? He hardly seems the type, Romney might conclude. The IRS has the information, but they can't release it. If Obama had Geithner or someone go after it, that would be a bigger scandal -- a campaign destroying scandal for Obama!
"It's not illegal! It might work! No one would have to know -- and so I could get away with it!"
OK, back to my own narrative voice now.
I presume -- I do not assume, I merely presume -- that there would be some reason that Romney could not actually get away with passing off faked (and largely exculpatory) tax returns as his real ones. I don't know what that reason is, but experience has told me that one of you probably does -- and that you'll tell us.
My takeaway from this is something different: this sort of legal-but-horrifying trick is not so far from the sort of thing that we know Romney did at Bain. His signing his name as Bain Capital's CEO and Managing Partner from 1999-2002 wasn't all that different from this.
If you had just a flicker of doubt, even for a moment, of whether Romney might try to do something like this to save his political hide, then let me ask you a question:
Do you really want a President that you can trust that little for the next four years?
(Just in case no one can explain why he couldn't get away with it for a couple of months, I'm upping my demand of Romney. I want to see his tax transcripts for the past 12 years, ordered directly from the IRS and sent to all of the major newspapers and networks and one to the DNC. Might as well not take any chances, you know?)