The fallout from President Obama's attack on Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital continued Monday morning, as the Romney campaign released a memo to reporters that featured critical comments from Newark Super-Mayor Cory Booker (since walked back), former Democratic Congressman Harold Ford, Jr., and former Obama administration car czar Steve Rattner. We've compiled the remarks into a single video, so you can easily see what's there, and what is missing.
For the past week, Mitt Romney and his campaign have been crying 'foul' over an Obama campaign ad that challenged Romney's repeated claims that his tenure at Bain Capital demonstrates his ability to create jobs by focusing on the people thrown out of work by one Bain acquisition.
That's important, because Romney has attempted to re-cast the ad as 'character assassination' (ironically, it's the least character-oriented attack in a long campaign of attacks on Romney's character), while several people who are ostensibly on the President's 'side' have morphed it into an indictment of private equity.
The most recent was Newark Mayor Cory Booker, who, in a Meet The Press appearance, first drew a false equivalence between the President's ad and the scuttled Joe Ricketts plan to sic an 'extremely literate conservative African-American' on President Obama, calling both tactics (although most outlets, including this one, have reported Booker's remark as though it was directed only at the President) 'nauseating,' then saying 'I'm not about to sit here and indict private equity,' and that he was 'very uncomfortable with' the ad.
Mayor Booker later walked that back in a YouTube video (which has about 11,000 views right now; MTP has a total audience approaching 3 million) by pointing out that it is Mitt Romney who claimed his Bain experience makes him a job creator, which makes his record at Bain fair game for this kind of scrutiny.
That same observation is made, and ignored, by former Obama car czar Steve Rattner, who called the ad 'unfair' even as he couldn't help but point out that it was Mitt Romney who made the claim that his experience at Bain made him a job creator, when that's really not the point of private equity at all.
Then, this morning, former Rep. Harold Ford, Jr., said he agreed with Mayor Booker's original comments, and criticized Hizzoner for walking them back, adding 'private equity's not a bad thing. As a matter of fact, private equity is a good thing in many, many instances.'
What's missing from all of these indictments of President Obama's ad, including Mitt Romney's?
Maybe I'm missing something, but not only can I not find the part of President Obama's ad that says 'private equity is a bad thing,' I also can't find the part of these critiques in which anyone even tries to argue that Mitt Romney's stint at Bain had anything to do with creating jobs, as opposed to creating wealth for Bain and its investors. Not even Romney or his campaign have tried to make that argument.
Politically, Mayor Booker's comments are a major liability for the Obama campaign, even if they can somehow steer the conversation back to Mitt Romney's discredited claims of job creation. Mayor Booker is a good man with a big political future ahead of him, but I don't think his swerve off message was motivated by a self-interested desire to burnish his good-guy image, but by the fact that he actually is a good guy, and really wants a shiny, happy campaign about the issues. The fact that he can still think that way after running for Mayor in Newark speaks well of him, but there really aren't always two sides to every argument.
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'Maybe I'm missing something' never has a quote been so true
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If Romney was successful in creating wealth for Bain and its investors, just imagine what he can do when he is President of the United States and the taxpayers are the investors
Obama has been successful only in getting elected.
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The Bain attack bombed when Columbus Zoo Newt and TollPlaza Perry tried it, so naturally Obama uses it, and the Bill Burton's barely breathing SuperPac does the same thing.
Ford, Booker and Rattner have chosen not to be Obama Zombies and fade away into the forest when he does. Dems are waking up to the fact that Obama is toxic and radioactive to their party.
Obama is willing to scorch the planet to be reelected, and if he is, his party is destroyed and the Earth as we know it is lost.
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This article is so sad and naive its hard to comment on. I don't think Tommy doesn't get it, I suspect he just pretends not to because he's blinded by his own desperate BS intended to mislead people into choosing his ideology versus using facts and common sense to develop their own. This is propaganda at its worst. The Obama campaign is desperate to find something goody two-shoes Romney has done wrong, and finding nothing of consequence they are inventing negatives. They apparently aren't honest enough to argue positions, instead desperately clinging to personal attacks to intimidate voters away from Romney. Anything but letting people choose for themselves'
By the way Mediaite, who's working on an article about the 50,000 fraudulent voters in Florida and the DNC's denial voter fraud has any significance, even though many elections are decided by tens of votes?
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'Hizzoner'
what the hell is that? anyone? is it some kind of weird version of 'his honor'?
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Yeah, it usually refers to a mayor.
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