Mitt Romney’s campaign has pushed back against calls he release more tax returns by insisting that former presidential candidates have only publicized a couple of years of tax documents.

“Well, as you know, the standard of– of releasing fully two years of returns, which goes above what the law requires, was a standard that Senator John McCain had adhered to as the Republican nominee in the last presidential campaign,” Romney adviser Ed Gillespie explained on Meet The Press this Sunday. “This is standard Senator Kerry adhered to as the Democratic nominee in the– in the election before that.”

But Gillespie, who served as the Chairman of the Republican National Committee during the 2004 presidential election, must know that “Kerry had put a total of 20 years of tax returns into the public domain by the time he ran for president.” After all, throughout that campaign he personally insisted that Kerry’s wife Teresa Heinz-Kerry, who files taxes separately from her husband, publicize her tax information — a position that is in direct conflict with his current spin for Romney. From an October 14, 2004 RNC press release:

“Throughout history, presidential candidates have disclosed income tax information prior to Election Day. We believe Americans value disclosure and transparency in campaigns.

During the 2003 filing year, Sen. Kerry made a $6 million loan to his campaign based on the value of a home jointly owned with his wife.

“Were it not for that infusion of cash John Kerry might not be on the campaign trail today. Because of her financial interest in the presidential campaign of her husband, Teresa Heinz Kerry pledged to disclose her tax information on October 15. Tomorrow is October 15 and Americans will find out if they plan to keep that promise.”

Throughout the 2004 campaign, Republicans pressured Heinz-Kerry to publicize her tax returns, given her investment in her husband’s campaign. She eventually released more information in October of that year, as Gillespie insisted that the documents presented “a legitimate question” for voters. Eight years later, the former RNC head is singing a decidedly different tune.

Mitt Romney and senior campaign advisor Ed Gillespie

GREGORY: He was still financially linked to Bain. And of course, a lot his fortune is due to his time with Bain. Even when he was on leave, does he stand by the business decisions that were made by the firm he created?

GILLESPIE: He actually retired retroactively at that point. He ended up not going back to the firm after his time in Salt Lake City. So he was actually retired from Bain.

Throughout the primary season until just last week, the Romney campaign stood forcefully by their assertion that Romney “retired” from Bain Capital in February of 1999. But with the release of previously unreported SEC documents last week which suggest that Romney in fact retained the titles of CEO and chairman well into the new century, the Romney campaign has struggled to adequately answer voters’ questions.

Gillespie was also questioned about whether Romney supports the business practice of outsourcing jobs overseas, a favorite tactic of Bain Capital. Gillespie was noncommittal, instead stating that Romney believes businesses should be free to do as they see fit.

Gillespie also tried to paint Romney’s decision to release just two years of tax returns as transparent. “The fact is, Governor Romney has put out already 2010, and will put out 2011 before this election. So, very transparent,” he told Gregory.

Senior Romney Adviser Ed Gillespie

Ed Gillespie, senior adviser to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, told Chuck Todd on MSNBC’s Daily Rundown that the campaign would make President Obama’s support for marriage equality an issue this November and that Romney will actively push for a constitutional amendment to take away the right of states to voluntarily extend marriage equality to same-sex couples.

Gillespie told Todd that same-sex marriage “will be another bright-line difference in this campaign.” He added that the GOP intends to campaign on the issue:

TODD: Will you guys campaign on this, campaign on this issue of marriage?

GILLESPIE: Sure. I think it’s an important issue for people and it engenders strong feelings on both sides. I think it’s important to be respectful in how we talk about our differences, but the fact is that’s a significant difference in November.

Later, Gillespie added that Romney believes a federal marriage constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage “should be enacted.” Watch the video:

Gillespie is no stranger to using same-sex couples as a wedge issue; he served as President George W. Bush’s Republican National Committee Chairman during the 2004 campaign. During that campaign, Republicans pushed for anti-LGBT state constitutional amendments to get out the conservative vote. They also wrote the following into the Party’s official platform: “We strongly support President Bush’s call for a Constitutional amendment that fully protects marriage, and we believe that neither federal nor state judges nor bureaucrats should force states to recognize other living arrangements as equivalent to marriage.”

Popular support for marriage has soared since then — most Americans now support same-sex marriage. The fact that a number of states enacted constitutional amendments back in 2004 has little bearing eight years later.

Romney has played up his pro-discrimination stand throughout this presidential campaign, boasting that he’d fought to take away marriage equality from same-sex couples and that he’d dug up an an obscure 1913 law (originally intended to limit interracial marriage) to keep out-of-state couples from marrying in Massachusetts. “On my watch, we fought hard and prevented Massachusetts from becoming the Las Vegas of gay marriage,” Romney told a CPAC Convention in February.

Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie

Even Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace saw the problem with the claim and pressed Gillespie when he mentioned the figure this morning. “It is not true,” Wallace said of the larger Romney argument, calling the 92 percent figure a “little bit of an accounting trick” and noting that “all the independent fact checkers have said it’s misleading.”

The best defense Gillespie could muster was to claim that some of the economists quoted by the Washington Post’s fact checker were liberal. Watch it:

Gillespie doesn’t even attempt to defend the substance of the claim because there is little substance to it.

The 92 percent figure obscures the fact that many more men than women lost jobs in the recession, as Wallaces forces Gillespie to admit. The key is timing. Men tend to be concentrated in industries that were hit first, like construction, so they lost their jobs first, while women tend to be contracted in the public sector, which had layoffs later on when state and local governments slashed their budgets.

In fact, it was Republican lawmakers and governors who led this effort, accounting for over 70 of percent state layoffs, so Romney’s claim is effectively blaming Obama for policies that Romney supports (cutting government workforces).