What Was Romney Trying to Hide?

Mitt Romney

"Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney admitted Monday that he and his team had destroyed official government records for purely political reasons.

WCVB-TV reported Friday that as Romney’s term as governor Massachusetts was ending, all of his administration’s emails were wiped from the servers. At the same time, eleven of his top aides purchased their computer hard drives for $65 each, and the remaining computers in the governor’s office were wiped clean as well." (Raw Stories, 11/23/2011) This admission came after days of trying to duck the question.

What is it with Republicans and transparency? If Romney worked so hard and spent so much money to become Governor of Massachusetts,  he surely understood that as governor he was a public employee working for the people of the state. If he had been working for Proctor and Gamble, he certainly would have realized that his employer owned all the records and could scrutinize his emails. It seems that he and other Republican governors do not want to admit that they are public servants; they apparently see themselves as lords of the manor, not accountable to the peasants.


As you may recall, Sarah Palin fought for months to conceal her emails from her time as Governor of Alaska. Another GOP presidential candidate, Texas Governor, Rick Perry, was systematically deleting emails until September, at which time a court ordered him to stop destroying public records. Sunday, a South Carolina paper, The State, reported that Republican Governor, Nikki Haley, had deleted "most emails that were sent prior to Oct.3."  So much for her campaign promise of transparency.


If one works for the people, the people have the right to see what you are doing. Apparently these governors have trouble grasping that concept.


And then there is the question: what are they trying to hide?  Years ago we learned that when Richard Nixon fought so hard to keep his tapes secret, he was indeed trying to hide criminal activity.