Politics

George Will: Reid’s Romney tax claim ‘McCarthyism from the desert’

Jeff Poor Media Reporter
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During Sunday’s broadcast of ABC’s “This Week,” show regular and Washington Post columnist George Will poked holes in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s claim that Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney had not paid taxes in 10 years.

It is absurd, Will said, to trust a Bain investor as a reliable source on the tax situation of the company’s former chief executive.

“Harry Reid’s source, if we are to assume that he has one, is identified by Harry Reid as an investor in Bain,” Will said. “That’s as though I owned some Microsoft, which I do, and I said, ‘Well, as an investor in Microsoft I now have an opinions on Bill Gates’ tax return.’”

Will likened Reid’s attacks on Romney to former Wisconsin Republican Sen. Joe McCarthy’s anti-communist crusade in the 1950s, particularly his claims that communists had infiltrated the U.S. State Department.

“Look: In 1950 Joe McCarthy went to West Virginia, didn’t know what to tell the Women’s Republican Club of Wheeling, West Virginia,” Will explained. “So he said, ‘I have in my hand a list of 205 — we think — 205 communists in State Department.”

“He didn’t have a list. Harry Reid doesn’t have any evidence either. This is McCarthyism from the desert.”

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