(Newser)
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Today's big talk show topic: Harry Reid's speculation that Mitt Romney hasn't paid taxes in 10 years. Republicans were on the attack, while Democrats defended Reid and/or urged Romney to just release his tax returns and end all the guessing games, Politico reports. Highlights from the Sunday dial:
- Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus was the harshest: "I'm not going to respond to a dirty liar who hasn't filed a single page of tax returns himself, complains about people with money but lives in the Ritz Carlton here down the street," he said on ABC's This Week.
- On CNN's State of the Union, Sen. Lindsey Graham said that he likes Reid, but this Romney accusation "is so out of bounds. I think he's lying about his statement of knowing something about Romney. … I think he's making things up."
- Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell called Reid's allegations "reckless and slanderous" on CBS's Face the Nation, noting that, "This is a guy who hasn’t released his own returns and for three years, can't get a budget passed in the United States Senate."
- Of course, as Obama campaign adviser Robert Gibbs pointed out on CNN, Romney could resolve this whole issue by going "to Kinko's," photocopying his tax returns, and releasing them. Fellow campaign adviser David Axelrod echoed that sentiment on Fox News Sunday: "The Romney campaign and Governor Romney can resolve this in 10 seconds—they can release the tax returns."
- As for Romney himself, he wasn't talking about taxes but about job creation: On CNN, he said that 12 million jobs would be created during his first term, because "that's what normally happens after a recession. But under this president, we have not seen that kind of pattern."
