@tom_g It’s not a distraction. He’e merely being asked to provide the same documents asked of every serious contender for POTUS. George Romney, Mitt’s father, made 12 years of his returns available when he ran for president. George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, and John Kerry released multiple returns.
Prior to Barack Obama, no other president had been asked to provide a birth certificate. ACORN received significant negative publicity in the wake of the 2009 production and publication of videos, which were later found to be partially falsified and selectively edited by two conservative activists. Those were distractions.
In comparison, Romney knew that he would be asked to provide several years of tax returns when he decided to run. Hell, in in 1994, Romney vigorously called for then Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) to release his tax returns, in order to prove that he had “nothing to hide”:
With the tax-filing deadline looming, Republican Senate candidate Mitt Romney yesterday challenged Sen. Edward M. Kennedy to disclose his state and federal taxes to prove he has ‘nothing to hide,’ but another GOP rival, John R. Lakian, called Romney’s move ‘bush league’ ‘It’s time the biggest-taxing senator in Washington shows the people of Massachusetts how much he pays in taxes,” said Romney, a business consultant from Belmont. Romney said he would disclose his own state and federal taxes for the last three years ‘on the very day that Kennedy turns over his taxes for public scrutiny.’
[Boston Globe, 4/19/94]