so he could have answered that question simply by looking at his own list. but also when asked that question, romney had a bucket in his hand, with his newly purchased item in it. he could have at least told us that he had bought a bucket. joining me now are ana marie cox, political correspondent the guardian u.s., and jonathan capehart, opinion writer for the washington post and of course an msnbc contributor. ana, mitt s grocery list. mitt s grocery list. and jonathan, prepare a response, because i m going to ask you about this too. what was on it? caffeine-free diet coke, wild cherry diet pepsi, native sweet corn, bottled water, and my favorite, greek yogurt. is greek yogurt the arugula of this election cycle? i don t know. greek yogurt is pretty, you know, mass market now. john stamos does ads for it.
rob portman or any of these picks, the feasible picks, really change the narrative for mitt romney. i mean, how much mileage can you get out of a vp announcement? it depends. let s remember governor sarah palin. so you can definitely change narratives that is true! as we ve covered this race, we notice that we are focused on the story of the day. and then see the polls come out and it s about the economy. and it doesn t move. however, there s no disputing that this does set a new tone for the romney campaign. it gives them something new to talk about. and they need something new to talk about. i have to ask you, because you are experts in this field, who are your picks? we had bill kristol out there, saying, i would really like to see someone who s going to excite the party. whether that s a chris christie or marco rubio, but what is the likelihood that those guys are actually on the short list? i think they re on the short list. i think the likelihood they get picked is a
white house press secretary jay carney basically said, well, put up or shut up. you all probably know senator reid well, and, you know, he speaks for himself. there s a question for governor romney, right? he, as recently as last week, i think on abc, said that he would be happy to check if he paid a lower effective tax rate in previous years than the 13.9% that he paid in the year related to the tax return that he did release. romney has yet to satisfactorily answer that question or this one. instead of just going back and forth with harry reid, why not just release the tax returns and just put the issue to bed? well, actually, you can go on our website and you can see my financial disclosure statements going back to 2002. you also can see the tax returns that i ve put out for 2010. and those are, i think hundreds of pages of documents.
other than 2010 and 2011. these columns argued in january when other republican presidential candidates raised the tax issue, that mr. romney should have released his tax returns long ago to put the matter to rest. this is one of the ways in which the gop candidate has made his challenge harder than it should be. that s the problem for mitt romney. romney and his campaign continue to chase this rabbit down the hole by demanding full disclosure from harry reid as to his source on mitt romney s undisclosed tax returns. but even the wall street journal admits that the problem is not, in fact, reid s attack on romney s returns, but mitt romney s tax returns themselves. it s 92 days until the presidential election. and what the romney campaign doesn t seem to get with is that it s put up or shut up line is that when we re talking about an attack on romney s undisclosed tax returns, we re actually still talking about the fact that mitt romney hasn t shown us his tax returns. joining me
head over 700 miles north to ohio, where romney will be joined by senator and vp contender, rob portman. and, no, mitt romney will not sit on the bus for those 700-plus miles. like his last multi-state bus tour, romney will fly from state to state, then step off his comfy jet and on to his campaign bus, which for some reason team romney will serve as a better backdrop than mitt s chartered yet. romney s lack of campaign events scheduled for thursday and friday has at least one conservative pundit predicting romney s vp announcement will come this week. weird, i think, to do this four-day tour through four swing states, big bus tour, a lot of excitement, without having picked the vp and with that sort of hanging over him and dwarfing whatever message he wants to get out. so i now believe the pick will be made thursday afternoon or friday. let the guy go on the morning shows on friday, dominate the news through the weekend, very