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Friday, July 13, 2012

The Bain of Mitt Romney's Existence

      The Republicans are worried. There's some concern that he is being "Swift Boated." That's a very ugly allusion, yet it has some merit.

       In one way this comparison is offensive and wrong. What happened to John Kerry in 2004 was a coordinated character assassination based on lies.

      What's going on here is that Romney has been unable to answer perfectly reasonable questions about his past. The most reasonable question of all and what is most puzzling is why he hasn't released his taxes.

      He has done only one and a half years and this was after his Republican primary opponents shamed him into doing even that. He says he will release more before the election. Well, ok, but this will remain an issue then at least until that point in time before the election.

     In another sense this is like Swift Boat it's true. You can say he has been Swift Boated however even more you can say he has been Karl Roved. The Karl Rove strategy is "Your strength is your weakness, your strength is my strength", basically your strength turns out to be your weakness, your own sword is used against you.

     This is what has happened to Mitt Romney. He came in running on Bain. And Bain is turning out to be the Bain of his existence. He thought he could say Elect me, I'm not President Obama, and I worked at Bain Capital which means I know how to create jobs.

     Turns out Bain has been more a net negative than a net positive. And there's no real way to change his strategy. It's like an army that prepared for one type of war and it has ended up being another type of war. Even though he out raised the President by $34 million in June this only reinforces the narrative of a hopelessly out of touch rich man who can't even understand what the average American goes through.

     His campaign is trying to turn it around and claim that the Bain attacks aren't fair but you live by the sword you die by the sword. As President Obama points it:

     "Obama said that since Romney’s “main calling card” for the White House is his private sector experience, it’s important for American voters to know exactly what his work at Bain involved   "

      "So that’s his premise,” Obama said in an interview taped on Thursday at the White House with CBS News’s Charlie Rose that was broadcast on Friday. “I think it is entirely appropriate to look at that record and see whether in fact his focus was creating jobs and he successfully did that. And when you look at the record there are questions there that have to be asked.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0712/78471.html#ixzz20VfY10pO

     "It is not that he is disqualified because of what he has done. It is if that’s your main claim, since he doesn’t talk about the fact that he was governor of Massachusetts for four years very much, than I want us to make sure that we know what your theory is about how to grow the economy. And that is a question most Americans want to know as well. This is the nature of running for president,” he said.

    "And Obama said Romney’s experience at a private-equity firm “doesn’t necessarily make you qualified to think about the economy as a whole.”

     “When some people question why I would challenge his Bain record, the point I’ve made there in the past is, if you’re a head of a large private equity firm or hedge fund, your job is to make money. It’s not to create jobs. It’s not even to create a successful business. It’s to make sure that you’re maximizing returns for your investor,” Obama said.

    “Now, that’s appropriate,” the president added. “That’s part of the American way. That’s part of the system. But that doesn’t necessarily make you qualified to think about the economy as a whole, because as president, my job is to think about the workers. My job is to think about communities, where jobs have been outsourced.”

   “I do not think at all it disqualifies him,” Obama said of Romney’s business experience. “But I also think it’s important if that’s his main calling card, if his basic premise is that ‘I’m Mr. Fix It on the economy because I made a lot of money.’

     That in a nutshell it the rub-Romney's calling card has become an albatross. For those conservatives hoping that Bill Clinton would carry their water for them again, it looks like the former President also now gets it:

     "Bill Clinton says Mitt Romney’s record at Bain is “relevant” to investigate since the Republican is running for president on his business experience."

     "NBC’s Savannah Guthrie asked Clinton in an interview taped Thursday and aired Friday whether he feels Romney’s overseas investments are a “legitimate line of attack” and “relevant to his fitness to be president.”


Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0712/78474.html#ixzz20Vlq0xRC

       "Oh, yes I do. I think, for one thing, it’s just as relevant as the going over my record as governor got when I ran for president,” Clinton said in the interview on the “Today” show. “I’d been governor for a dozen years. And because he’s put it at the forefront. He’s said basically, ‘I’d be a better president because I know how to create jobs because that’s what I did.’ And he’s going to take credit for running a successful Olympics, for example. So then all your work life before you run for president is relevant, and I think that will be relevant.”




Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0712/78474.html#ixzz20Vm0J0YL

     "And the American public “ought to know” about Romney’s overseas accounts, Clinton said.

      "The voters can make up their own minds about whether they think it’s a good thing for a person who wants to be president to minimize his own tax liability,” Clinton said.

      There's a lot about Romney that strikes as a little odd. For years of attacking liberals as not real Americans, Romney seems less American than any candidate in living memory. Everything about him seems to scream clueless about how other people think and feel.

     But his refusal to release his taxes is certainly the oddest of all-assuming he has nothing to hide as he insists. He may try to talk about Condoleeza Rice the next few days or weeks,, but the sense of disconnect isn't going away and until he finally releases his tax returns for at least the 8 years that the President has done, the perplexities will only increase.

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