Re: The Bain Bomb

On Mon, 09 Jan 2012 09:51:25 -0800, Rita <rtkngkd@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

From: Politico.com

The Bain bomb
By: Reid J. Epstein and Jim VandeHei
January 9, 2012 09:21 AM EST

NASHUA, N.H. ? Forget his specific rivals. The biggest threat to Mitt
Romney is hitting now and set to fully detonate in South Carolina:
It?s the Bain bomb.

While conservatives look unlikely to unite around one alternative to
Romney, the campaigns themselves are uniting around the theme that the
former head of Bain Capital looted companies, tossed people out of
jobs and is now exaggerating his success at the venture capital firm.

In the context of this moment in American politics, in which
frustration with the privileged is boiling hot, the attack, from
Republicans on one side and the Obama campaign on the other, will test
Romney. If he ends up looking more like an opportunist who profited
for the few than like a man who created jobs for the many, it?s hard
to imagine his polls numbers won?t drop.

Inadvertently, Romney created a new opening on the topic here Monday
morning as he tried to explain his health care position with a comment
almost custom-made for endless repeats in attack ads ? and a Web video
the Democratic National Committee already has up.

?I want individuals to have their own insurance. That means the
insurance company will have an incentive to keep you healthy,? Romney
said. ?It also means that if you don?t like what they do, you could
fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to
me. You know, if someone isn?t giving the good service, I want to say,
?I?m going to go get someone else to provide this service.??

Romney clearly knows he has a problem. At events, starting Sunday,
Romney started offering a broader explanation of his days at Bain.

But it?s about to get worse: Newt Gingrich, fresh off accusing Romney
of ?looting? companies, is about to see his friends spend $3.4 million
in South Carolina, much of it hitting this theme. Rick Perry, who in
December put out an ad slamming Romney for making ?millions buying
companies and laying off workers,? is already in the state, stepping
up the campaign he?s trying to salvage there.

Romney will continue to benefit from the splintered field, which might
mitigate the coming barrage. But it also means the attacks will
continue on multiple fronts at once, including the DNC and the
27-minute movie set to be released by the Gingrich-friendly super PAC
Winning Our Future that promises to ?highlight just four of Romney?s
many targets. Four businesses and the thousands of employees who work
there,? according to a trailer released on YouTube on Sunday.

Titled ?When Mitt Romney Came to Town,? the movie includes
testimonials from aggrieved workers who were laid off. ?We had to load
up our U-Haul because we done lost out home,? says one woman in the
video. The super PAC has also launched a website called
kingofbain.com.

Previewing the approach to Bain he himself will take in South Carolina
and beyond, Gingrich on Monday morning cheered and echoed the super
PAC attacks.

?Given the weight of negativity that Romney threw at us in Iowa, you
would be little bit less than human if you weren?t pretty happy that
you?re now going to see a more even playing field,? he said. ?My guess
is that at some point in the next week or 10 days, he?s going to have
to have a press conference and just answer a lot of questions. And
then people will decide if the film is accurate or inaccurate.?

Gingrich referred to the positive campaign message he?d claimed to
this point and said it was impossible to keep that up when talking
about Bain.

?It turns out that there are some things that if you describe them,
they?re negative,? he said. ?If you accurately describe some things,
they are negative,? Gingrich said.

Under fire, Romney?s campaign has responded by tagging Gingrich as an
enemy of capitalism and feeding the Democrats? message.

?It?s the Democrats? issue ? it?s the issue that Barack Obama comes
out after Mitt on,? said former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Romney
campaign co-chair, on Fox News on Monday morning. ?The Democrats have
brought this out for years. And for Newt or other Republicans to be
attacking private enterprise in this way I think is really just
embracing the Democrat?s message, and it?s unfortunately not what
Republicans should be doing.?

Rick Tyler, a former Gingrich aide who?s helping run Winning Our
Future, pushed right back on the Laura Ingraham radio show Monday
morning.

Calling Bain practices ?frankly predatory corporate mugging,? Tyler
said, ?Some people call that free enterprise; I just call it wrong.?

Tyler wasn?t concerned about providing fodder to Democrats, arguing
they would get to it anyway, and Republicans need to sort out Romney?s
record first.

?Mitt Romney hasn?t been vetted on Bain. I don?t think David Axelrod
and the Occupy movement are going to give him a pass on this,? Tyler
said. ?He?s been running for six years. How much do we know about his
20 years at Bain??

Gingrich isn?t alone. Perry localized the argument at an event Monday
morning in Anderson, S.C., speaking of the millions in management fees
that he portrayed Bain as looting from a nearby photo album business
in Gaffney and a steel company in Georgetown.

?There is something inherently wrong when getting rich off failure and
sticking it to someone else is how you do your business,? Perry said.

Perry picked up on Romney?s comments Sunday as he tried defend his
business record, saying he had worked hard to build businesses and
sometimes worried about getting fired just like the next guy.

?I had to shake my head yesterday when one of the wealthiest men, I
suppose, that?s ever run for the presidency of the United States ? the
son of a multimillionaire ? Mitt Romney, he said, ?I know what it?s
like to worry about whether you?re going to get fired,?? Perry said at
a restaurant here. ?There were a couple of times when I wondered
whether I was going to get a pink slip. He actually said this. Now, I
have no doubt that Mitt Romney was worried about pink slips, whether
he was going to have enough of them to hand out. Because his company,
Bain Capital, with all the jobs that they killed. I?m sure he was
worried he?d run out of pink slips.?

It?s the ?ultimate insult? for Romney to come to South Carolina, Perry
added, ?and tell you he feels the pain, because he caused it.?

Even Jon Huntsman got in on the action, pouncing immediately on
Romney?s ?fire people? line from the morning.

?I will always put my country first. It seems that Governor Romney
believes in putting politics first. Governor Romney enjoys firing
people. I enjoy creating jobs,? the former Utah governor told
reporters at a late morning press availability Monday in Concord.

Huntsman added that Romney?s comment shows that the former
Massachusetts governor is ?slightly out of touch with the economic
realities.?

Meanwhile, the DNC will also sharpen its attacks on Romney as a
?corporate raider,? as Obama adviser David Axelrod again dubbed the
former Massachusetts governor in an appearance on ABC?s ?This Week? on
Sunday.

The DNC is set to deliver faux pink slips to attendees of Romney town
halls in New Hampshire today. And after days of New Hampshire events
with a worker laid off by Bain in New Hampshire, the DNC also released
its first Web video mentioning Bain on Monday that challenges Romney?s
claim of creating 100,000 jobs.

And Romney?s starting to get a new round of independent fact-checking
on his Bain record, too. At Saturday?s debate, George Stephanopoulos
pressed him on his claim of creating 100,000 jobs, and The Wall Street
Journal on Monday ran an extensive analysis that found of 77 business
Bain invested in from 1984 to 1999, 22 percent either filed for
bankruptcy or closed within eight years, and another 8 percent lost
all the money Bain invested.

Romney?s already mounting an increasingly strong defense, starting in
appearances on the trail Sunday, after finishing the second debate in
which he was pressed on the topic, and continuing Monday morning.

?I think some people imagined, by the way, that I just went directly
to the top position in industry and in business, that I started off as
vice chairman or chairman or CEO of Bain,? Romney said Monday morning,
speaking to a friendly audience at the local Chamber of Commerce in
Nashua.

On the contrary, Romney said, he started ?at the bottom level and was
able over the years to work my way up, learned some lessons along the
way, saw some successes and some failure and that meant it was an
extraordinary experience.?

Romney attempted to humanize the experience by talking about his
conversations with the CEO of Staples, which Bain was an early and key
investor in.

?We opened that first store, we stock the shelves, and what happens if
people don?t show up? He said, ?Easy, we lower prices and advertise
more.? I said, ?What happens if they still don?t come?? ?Then we lower
prices some more, and advertise more.? In the business world, we
understand that things are not static, they are dynamic and by
incentives you can make behaviors change.?

Ginger Gibson, Jake Sherman, Juana Summers, MJ Lee and Jedd Rosche
contributed to this report.

© 2012 POLITICO LLC

Everybody seems to be acting like it's all over and Romney has the
nomination in the bag. I'm not convinced, though. On "Morning Joe"
about a week ago, Joe Scarborough said something to the effect that
most people simply do not understand the Republican base and if Romney
is nominated "there will be blood". Later, I think he tried to tone
that down a little bit, but I believe he's right in pointing out how
much the Republican (Southern) base hates Romney.

Most Republicans really don't know what a big slime ball Romney really
is and the other candidates are committed to making sure they find
out. So if you add that to the antagonism that already exists, I
wouldn't get to confident if I were Mitt Romney.


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