Mr. Lazio pledged to release his tax returns soon after entering the Senate race in May, but had not done so, raising suspicions about whether he had the kind of financial problems that have tripped up other politicians in New York in recent decades.
The campaign of his Democratic opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton, criticized the delay, asking whether he was hiding something.
And more from one of Hillary's current top advisers:
''Rick Lazio can't explain why it took three months to release his taxes,'' said Howard Wolfson, a Clinton campaign spokesman. ''Now he won't come clean with New Yorkers and reveal the real cost of his reckless trillion-dollar tax plan. It's time for Mr. Lazio to stop playing games and start talking straight.''
How is Hillary going to fight Mr. Straight Talk in the fall when her own campaign isn't holding true to its own "straight talk"? She can't. Another theme Hillary won't be able to hit on.
Howard Wolfson, the chief spokesman for Mr. Lazio's opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton, even showed up at a Lazio event in Harlem to fan the flames [over his tax returns].
[T]he question is why Clinton and Wolfson were so obsessed by Lazio's returns that they were disrupting his events, but they now treat it as an irrelevancy when Hillary's returns are requested. There's occasionally the suggestion that different standards apply to a primary. But that makes no sense, especially when you're already an officeholder. Republicans are entitled to see Hillary's returns before making their decision, but not Dems?
No, it seems more like a reflection of the way Hillary and her team think. Principled people would reason as follows: "Since we made a huge fuss about Lazio's returns in 2000, to be consistent we should be very diligent about being just as transparent as Obama and releasing our own returns this year. Otherwise, we would be behaving like hypocrites."
But that's not what they're doing. So the reasoning is apparently this: "We acted like Lazio's tax returns were a big deal in 2000 because it was in our self-interest to do so, and this year we'll act like our returns aren't a big deal because it's in our self interest to do so. We don't act on principle, and we don't care about being consistent, and we don't care about being hypocritical."
Is there another explanation? If not -- what a great role model for our daughters!!!
