Open Thread: Romney Campaign “Fed Up” With Attacks on Bain
Posted: July 9, 2012 Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, open thread, U.S. Politics | Tags: Bain Capital, Corporate outsourcing, federal taxes, liars, Mitt Romney, obama campaign, offshore tax havens, snark, Swiss bank account 29 Comments
Be afraid, Obama campaign, be very afraid! You’ve really gotten under Romney’s skin with your nasty attacks on Bain Capital. Buzzfeed reports:
The Romney campaign will begin to aggressively push back against President Obama’s accusations that the Republican was an “outsourcing pioneer” today, a source privy to the the campaign’s strategy told BuzzFeed.
In a conference call Monday morning, senior staff said Romney’s surrogates would stop shying away from the word “lie” in responding to Democrats’ attacks on his business record, and plan to go on TV to call Obama a “liar,” the source said.
“They are very fed up with these attacks,” said the source.
Wow! Now that’s scary. They’re going to call Obama a liar? That should knock the President right out of the running, don’t you think? The Romneyites are still upset about that Washington Post story from June 21 that characterized Bain as a “pioneer” in outsourcing.
In response, Romney surrogates are going to make the case that most of the offshoring happened after the Republican left Bain, and that much of it was simply to help firms sell products overseas.
To spread the message, the source said, the campaign is going to start circulating a document to press that compiles “presidential falsehoods and exaggerations.”
Yikes! I don’t know if Obama can survive such a powerful pushback!
Meanwhile the Obama campaign has moved on from the Bain issue and begun attacking Romney about his secrecy about his personal finances, based on the Vanity Fair article by Nicholas Shaxon. Obama’s surrogates were out all weekend hammering Romney on his secrecy about his multiple secret investments in offshore tax havens, his Swiss bank account, and his failure to release more than one year’s tax returns.
I guess about three weeks from now, the Romney campaign will gear up to fight back on these latest attacks by the Obama campaign. Of course by then there probably will be new revelations about Romney. I’m betting pretty soon we’ll be hearing more about how Romney never really left Bain in 1999, as he claims.
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Carissa
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JJ Lopez aka Minkoff Minx
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Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Ralph put this link to Krugman up in the morning thread. It’s worth posting here because it’s precisely on point.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/09/opinion/krugman-mitts-gray-areas.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
The real thing is that it compares George Romney’s openness and income reported and basic job function to his son’s. BIG contrast.
Even the WSJ says that Mitt’s not going to be able to dodge these questions.
AND, remember, McCain chose Quitterella after reviewing 10 years of Romney Tax Returns.
Yes, but Mitt won’t address those issues for another three weeks, as I point out in my post. He’s still dealing with the Bain attacks.
If he continues to be three weeks behind on each set of Obama attacks, the right wingers are going to have conniption fits.
He can’t explain anything clearly and cogently. It looks like all this anger surrounds his inability to worm his way out of explaining something.
He won’t even release the names of his campaign bundlers. He’s not going to release any information at all, unless he’s forced into it.
You’re right. That’s a very good column by Krugman.
“Struggling” is a bit over the top when the campaign raised $71,000,000 last month. Frankly, all this money on both sides is sickening. Raising $106,000,000 to destroy the middle class isn’t something to be proud of, IMO. But that’s just me.
Obama proposes extending the Bush tax cuts on people who make less than $250,000. Romney calls it a “massive tax increase” that won’t help the middle class.
Only 2% of Americans would be affected by ending the Bush tax cuts on high earners.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/mitt-romney-middle-class-tax-cut-wont-help-middle-class/2012/07/09/gJQAXtmJYW_blog.html
I think we can probably mark that as another Romney lie. Personally, I think the last thing Willard should want is to start the “liar” games since he’s the most prolific I’ve ever seen. That could come back to bite him big time.
Obama supporters probably should be a little concerned, and many of them are.
An article by Lawrence Solomon in National Post posits that there’s only one explanation for the concomitant big drop in donations to Obama and big haul by Romney, and it’s a major shift of Jewish money. Jewish contributors have been very big donors to Democrats. Very, very, very big, way out of proportion to their fraction of the population.
More or less amusingly, Solomon says, Obama told a gathering of rabbis that he knows more about Judaism than any other president in history.
Financially, he’s struggling now even though his campaign had initially boasted they would scale the billion dollar heights. It’s Romney that looks to be on track for that.
So 0bama wanted unlimited campaign spending in 2008 and didn’t take any fed campaign funds. So now this year — the other guy can probably out spend 0bama.
Seems like many of us predicted this scenario in 2008.
Yes. And Obama pitifully must needs implore people to send him their wedding gift and birthday money.
Karma’s a wonderful bitch, isn’t she?
On the bright side of that fundraising gap is if/when Obama is reelected he won’t owe Wall St or most of the other people I detest a damn thing. That could mean a very different second term.
Gingrich tried the same attack and failed miserably. Obama smacks of desperation trying a failed strategy. It’s all he has. He’s the worst president in modern times and I hope he loses by a landslide.
Gingrich attacked Obama for ragging on Bain? That’s news to me.
When you say “modern times,” how many years are you referring to? The worst president of my lifetime has to be George W. Bush–after all, he and his policies caused the Great Recession. He would be followed by Nixon, Reagan, Carter, Bush the elder, and Ford. Obama is way down the list of worst presidents in modern times unless you were born yesterday.
Yes bush was the “let it happen” worst Prez ever. He really did out do good old dad.
GWB probably set the standard for worst. His whole life he got by on his last name.
Please. The one place Gingrich attacked Romney with Bain was in SC and he cleaned his clock. He was then shamed out of it by the big money but it even worked for Newt.
Maybe this has been done to death but OMG this is hilarious. Those Hamptons Romney donors are not exactly the elite it seems.
Pizza Rat Publicist Simply Does Not Care For Your Class War
These are the “job creators” who drive “the engine of the economy?” I don’t think there is any amount of mocking of these people that would be too much.
True that — and thanks for the snorting sort of laugh your remark evoked!!!
Hey Dak!
I know this is a bit OT, but I just saw this story and you are the one person I trust on economic issues. I remember him making the housing prediction, but does this prediction sound like it is on the up and up?
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/roubini-perfect-storm-unfolding-now-104907590.html
Hillary 2012
He makes money saying things like that … I’m skeptical.
The Mormons I know would never use the word “hell”. 😉
The Mormons I grew up with could raise it better than any one I ever knew … they had all the best drugs in town.
Seeing how Mitt Romney and his stuff constantly blame Obama for the things that are much more relevant to Romney (“liar”, “out of touch”, “no jobs plan”, “Obamacare”), it’s probably just a matter or time until Romney will claim that Obama has sheltered millions in Switzerland and Caymans
That is an old GOP scam isn’t it.
It’s a psychological defense mechanism called “projection”
It’s also a deliberate strategy, pioneered by Karl Rove.
The Obama campaign needs to keep hammering away at Romney on Bain, on flip flopping, on his job record as Bain, his draft dodging! Obama 2012!!