Castellanos on tax summary: Is this a joke?

Alex Castellanos, the former Mitt Romney strategist from 2008 who has alternately been critical and praising of the current campaign, left no doubt where he stands on the decision to release a summary of the candidate's tax rates over 20 years.

"At first I thought this was an April Fool's Joke," said Castellanos, who tweeted something to that effect at me earlier. "But it isn't April. I can't imagine that David Axelrod will now say, I'm glad Mitt put this issue behind him. This will drag Mitt's taxes back into the debate. And there's not many days left. I just can't imagine why they would do this. There are 40 days left and you have now made more of them about Mitt's taxes....you don't serve a life sentence and then confess afterward. They've taken their beating on this (already) ... I just don't understand how a (being) 'little pregnant' strategy (works)."

Other Republican operatives have emailed in with a similar reaction - that the summary is going to revive, instead of settle, questions on an issue where what had seemed to be the worst was already behind Romney.

UPDATE: The tax returns for 2011 were ones that Romney had said he would release before Oct. 15, and the calculation the campaign made appears to have been that doing it today was better than, say, next Friday, the weekend before the debate. The summaries, which Romney had already said he wasn't doing, were what Castellanos was referring to.

Maggie Haberman is senior political reporter for Politico.