A line of attack with legs?

It's a cliche that political attacks work only when they have some demonstrable relationship to reality -- when they touch a chord of genuine perception about a candidate.

By that standard, Obama campaign attack theme spotlighted today by Reuters would seem to have long-term potential:

"Feeding the Democrats' storyline: Romney's refusal to release more than a year or two of his tax returns, questions about whether he is being honest about when he left his job at Bain Capital, and the reams of records that have been kept secret from his years as Massachusetts governor and chief of the Salt Lake City Olympics."

Shucks, is that all? Methinks Reuters' Jeff Mason writes with a keen sense of the reality gap between this gambit and 2008's "who is Barack Obama?":

The last time Romney stonewalled on taxes

You may wonder why Romney thinks he can shut off demands to release several years' worth of tax returns, as other presidential candidates have done in recent years, like this:

JIM ACOSTA, CNN: When are you going to release more of your taxes and how many years?

ROMNEY: I've indicated that -- well, first of all, we've complied with the law. The law requires us to put out a full financial disclosure. That I've done. And then, in addition to that, I've already put out one year of tax returns. We'll put out the next year of tax returns as soon as the accountants have that ready. And that's what we're going to put out.

I know there will always be calls for more. People always want to get more. And, you know, we're putting out what is required plus more that is not required. And those are the two years that people are going to have. And that's -- that's all that's necessary for people to understand something about my finances. And, look, if people believe this should be a campaign about attacking one another on a personal basis and go back to the kinds of attacks that were suggested in some campaigns in the past, I don't want to go there.

The thing is, he's gotten away with it before. When he came home to Massachusetts swathed in Olympic glory to run for governor in spring 2002, Democrats challenged his residency status.*  They wouldn't have been able to if he had maintained dual residency.  But there was a tax break to be had by declaring his Utah house his primary residence, and Have-it-Both-Ways Romney went for it. The New York Times reported on 6/6/02: