President Barack Obama is keeping up a drumbeat of skepticism over Mitt Romney’s insistence – displayed in a blitz of TV interviews – that he stepped down from his private equity firm years earlier than federal records indicate…His re-election campaign released an ad that repeated its allegation that Romney’s Bain Capital shipped American jobs to China and Mexico; that Romney has personal wealth in investments in Switzerland, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands; and that as governor of Massachusetts, he outsourced state jobs to India.
“Mitt Romney’s not the solution. He’s the problem,” Obama’s latest ad says as it plays video of Romney awkwardly singing “America the Beautiful.”
The ad was set to run in the battleground states of Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
The ad, targeting Romney’s vast personal wealth, comes as Democrats – and some Republicans – call for Romney to release tax returns going back several years. Romney has said anew that he won’t go beyond releasing his 2010 tax records and, before the election, his 2011 taxes.
Mitt Romney’s news channel blitz yesterday in self-defense against the accusation that he misled voters and the media about the date of his departure from Bain Capital doesn’t appear to have slowed the controversy at all. Politico has more reporting on Romney’s defense:
An animated and sometimes irritated Romney conceded that he continued to nominally head Bain Capital – the subject of relentless attacks against him by Democrats – after 1999 and had the option to return to managing the daily operations of the firm when the Olympics was over. He also stuck to his guns regarding his tax returns, saying he would release two years’ worth (2011 and 2010) and no more.“I was the owner of an entity that is filing those information – that information, but I had no role whatsoever in the management of Bain Capital after February of 1999, not that that would have been a problem, to have said that I was with the firm beyond that, but I simply wasn’t,” Romney said on CNN.
On Friday night, Romney’s answers had already proved unsatisfactory to the Obama campaign.
“The Obama campaign is not satisfied with Romney’s answer. They still want to see Romney’s tax returns as well as minutes from Bain meetings,” NBC White House correspondent Kristen Welker reported. From Obama’s camp, Welker said: “We expect the American people would want to see more information.”
Although the defensive chaff being put up by Romney’s surrogates via conservative media outlets is pretty heavy, in part reflecting the seriousness of the allegations, this discrepancy has the ability to heavily damage Romney’s campaign with many voters–and Romney has failed so far to substantively respond. Even if there’s no formal legal violation found with Romney’s statement on federal disclosure forms that he “left” Bain Capital in 1999, SEC documents indicating otherwise will leave a huge credibility gap that Romney can’t close without releasing information he has pledged not to release.
The damage is aggravated by specific denials the Romney campaign has made to attacks from both Obama and his GOP primary rivals about layoffs and outsourcing of jobs after 1999–such as GST Steel in Kansas City in 2001, which Romney denies responsibility for based solely on his claim that he left Bain Capital before that plant was closed.
In short, it’s Romney’s self-made pickle. He’s the only one who can end it–unless he can’t.
Full story: New Obama Ad Steps Up Bain Capital Attack on Romney in Colorado
looked really really week.
What’s the first thing you think when somebody says “I’m not a crook”?
fucking piker compared to the current batch of Republicans and their corporate overlords.
in a New York minute, over any of this century’s Republican Presidential or Vice-Presidential nominees. And, if he were still alive for this cycle, I would take Nixon over any of the entire field of Republican Presidential aspirants.
Oh, and yeah, . . . to give some perspective . . . I pretty much have always hated Nixon.
from scraping the bottom of the candidate barrel this election cycle.
Romney is, was, will be
againConservative.He is the awesomest R candidate the R’s have put up since…..since….R. Reagan.
No barrel scraping here – he’s just great. Just like Joe Coors.
Well, maybe not. At least, yet.
You can see it happen right before your eyes!
Mitt absolutely didn’t have any association with Bain after 1999.
Oh, well, he retained nominal control after 1999, but didn’t have any responsibility or actual authority.
Oh, well, after 1999 Mitt didn’t actually do anything for Bain except recruiting, and board meetings and signing paperwork.
Oh, well, after 1999, Mitt …
as signed off on by the Board he presided over in 2002, or something.
who else, besides Mittens, would sit on a board?
He attended board meetings of Staples, etc. indicating active involvement with Bain affairs.
Henry Blodget has an interesting explanation for how Mitt Romney appears to have gotten his impressive $100 million IRA account.
It turns out if you print your own currency (shares of stock), you can put any value you want on it. When US tax law says you can deposit that non-cash asset into your IRA (not to exceed a declared value of few thousand dollars per year), the answer is simple. All it takes is to just say your private currency is nearly worthless, allowing you to put thousands (millions) of shares in your IRA.
Mitt Romney and top Bain Capital executives essentially print their own paper currency when they create shares of stock in the companies they buy. When it comes time a few years later to cash out your stock, the value is often ten’s or hundreds of times more valuable. The fact that it’s in a tax-free IRA means that your jackpot just keeps expanding as you continue depositing the next company’s penny stock into the account.
Personal disclosure — When I joined a small startup company in the mid-’80′s, I was granted several thousand shares of stock at 40 cents a share. About a year later the company went public at $17. I wish I’d known about that tax accounting trick back in 1987 — my IRA would be a lot healthier today!
He knows about those tax accounting tricks, and therefore can of such great value to businesses.
in ’99 it seems there was something, not just the Olympics, that made Rmoney want to create a break, false or not, with Bain? Is it that he already knew he would be running for Senate/Governor/President? Is it that he knew it was a house of cards that might collapse and cost him his fortune and possibly his freedom?
They could have changed who was CEO & President of Bain in 24 hours. Even if he still owned 100% of the company. There is something else going on there. And the ax returns could well point to it.
I think most voters will understand the message that if you’re CEO and President – you’re in charge.
when he ran for governor. That’s why he quit retroactively.
http://articles.boston.com/201…
Romney wanted to run for Governor in Massachusetts, but he had moved to Utah where he now had a primary residence.
Therefore he needed Bain both ways.
I am calling a taxi retroactively to take me home.
So he negotiated a severance deal with Bain in 2002, retroactive to 1999.
And all of those official SEC filings in 2000, 2001 and 2002 and whatnot saying he was CEO, etc.: were those retroactively amended as well?
And what about his residency? Was that retroactively changed back to Utah after he’d gotten elected governor?
If so, was his Massachusetts governorship retroactively voided?
This could easily be where Romney loses the election. There’s still a lot of time left and a week is a lifetime, but this appears to be resonating big time.
First the tell. Romney’s response is that Obama should stop this attack because it’s not fair. If that’s his best defense, he has no defense.
Second, there clearly is some killer info in his tax returns for not just he previous 10 years, but even 1 year previous. That could well be damned if you do, damned if you don’t on releasing them.
The really good news is the Obama campaign is going all in on this attack. It’s a winning message, and it has the Romney campaign reacting poorly and ineffectively. And that dilutes the value of their funding advantage too.
Love to see Dems campaigning as effectively as Repubs
Agree totally, this is a wonderfull ad, and the timing is perfect.
Typically, 110-115 days out isn’t when the majority of the electorate’s paying serious attention, but when it’s a narrative on character it’s different.
The feckless, Vietnam era draft dodger turned Tedi Nugent style “tough guy” is now fighting a completely defensive two front war.
In light of the fact the reds are being bankrolled by billionaires, and that they have unlimited funds with which to roll over all opposition, a statistical tie mid July is very positive……and speaks to the brilliant asymmetrical warfare being waged by the battle hardened, disciplined and principled OFA.
Out spent by millions, every spot counts. The “death by a thousand cuts” strategy demands terrific spots like this ad.
And yes, David, it’s inspiring to see the Democratic Party going full throttle after the former draft dodger, with the nails end of the 2×4 landing solid, sustained shots to his credibility, every 24 hour news cycle.
Kerry spent weeks on the defensive with the Swift Boat attacks and many feel he never got back in stride to run an effective campaign.
He does not take criticism well and tends to respond emotionally. I think at core anything he thinks is unfair his response is to say the attack is wrong and should be stopped. He could well end up playing defense for the rest of the campaign.
A large part of this could be his business career. He has been so rich for so long that he probably is used to everyone around him agreeing & deferring to him. The “yes your majesty” expectation.
is that the Swift Boat charges turned out to be lies made up by people who perjured themselves but Kerry was too big of a weenie to release his military records.
The Swift Boating of Romney has legitimacy and we’re probably going to continue to get coverage of new evidence of his involvement in Bain after February of 1999.
The strategy is the same. Take your opponents strengths and grind them into the dust with doubts and counter facts. I think the OFA folks knew what they were doing when they floated the felony phrase out there. When the Repubs predictably reacted badly it still made the news but it wasn’t slander and eveyone knows that candidates can’t sue. OFA probably has more in store for King Willard. Obama is a winner and his organization has known for a long time that the richest Republican was going to be their opponent. They have had a long time to study the guy.
One can only imagine what President Obama’s campaign will come up in the form of opposition research.
At the same time, one wonders whether the Romney campaign really vetted their candidate and developed a strategy to deal with a situation like this.
Does Romney get a boost from the convention (political or financially)?
There is still a lot that can happen between now and November. However, if Romney finds himself in a situation similar to the one he’s in right now (post-convention), his chances of winning the election will be greatly diminished.
It’s probably no coincidence that now that we have reached the same degree of income disparity as the Gilded Age:
the Robber Barons think the time is right to put one of their own in charge of the country:
Money companies make to re-invest in growing the company – that’s great. But the money that goes into the individuals pocket – what’s the purpose in continuing to increase that? At about 10 million you essentially have unlimited money (unless you want to buy Lanai). And you’re not doing your kids any favors setting them up so they never have to work.
Hyper-competitiveness is in their blood.
At least Bill Gates turned over a new leaf by the late ’90′s and found true satisfaction in using his fortune to truly change the world for the better.
I think for many it’s just autopilot. Or greed.
but less honest IMO.
Breckenridge, Steamboat, etc. During that time I got to know many very wealthy people.
It is not an urban legend that some of these guys take pride in sharing, over dinner and a $2,000 bottle of wine at the Chart House, stories of ripping off contractors and other financial conquests.
I knew the contractors they ripped off…and the waitresses who overheard the conversations.
Isn’t that sort of like Coors beer in Florida?
Oh, wait……never mind.
that the older I get, the more my life sounds like a Bob Dylan song…?
I remember when my brother and one of his classmates at Santa Fe Jr. College( near Gainesville, Fla.) drove to Beaumont, Texas to buy Coors beer. You could not buy it east of the Sabine river in those days and it was in great demand.
It was intended to be graduation gifts for some friends of theirs, but we managed to finagle a couple six packs for personal use. I remember a truly memorable time that evening in a little trailer in Micanopy.
Anyone who doesn’t understand why Coors beer was such a phenomenon in those days never tasted Carling Black Label beer.
Nice Firebird, btw
About 1974, family Christmas vacation, we took maybe six cases – or more – of Coors back to Sarasota in the van. I remember my father not much liking it.
Years later I was drinking a Coors and had an epiphany. I remember thinking, “I don’t really like this.” It was a lesson about the power of mythology, although I didn’t realize that until later. Everyone says it’s great, it has to be shipped refrigerated, blah blah…..
But maybe I’ll vote for Joe Coors, cuz he’s not a beer, right?
that Kissinger stopped in Denver on his way back to DC from China and loaded up with the stuff. Remember the bottles were only 11 oz?
when the detective asks the bad guy played by John Houston
“Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can’t already afford?”
but when I called the Romney Campaign Support Hotline I had a scratchy connection and some guy with an Indian accent put me on hold.
Romney says he removed himself from all oversight, all decisions.
Ok, so you (generic you) own a company worth millions and millions. You appoint yourself CEO, President, Managing Director and Elevator Operator. You don’t just walk out one day and say, “See you guys in a couple of years, just as soon as I straighten out this Olympics mess.” Or even “Hasta la vista, compadres. I’m outa here–forever. Gonna prove my ‘nads in politics.” Without some safeguards: that is, contracts. Contracts assigning responsibilities, transferring this power and that power, allocating these millions and those millions, etc.
Considering the wealth he was walking out on, and considering what a bunch of greedy bastards he and his partners are, there had to have been some pretty intense negotiations among Romney and the partners (Who the hell are these so-called “partners” that keep coming up, anyway?), and those negotiations had to have (had to have!) resulted in some form of written agreements.
Such as: Ok, Llewelyn, you’re in charge of allocating parking spaces. Chipper, you’re the morning donut guy. Henri, keep those memos shredded. Now, guys, let’s sign these.
Romney keeps saying he turned over everything. You don’t do that without specification, without contracts. Bain must (or maybe not) have internal documents of all that, that they could produce, proving Romney really did just walk out and turn everything over.
Where are they? Or maybe not.
I’m probably too trusting to be a businessman and even I can’t imagine walking away from a company like that, with my name attached to anything without lots of safeguards and directions.
At minimum, it looks like there are already clear documents that say that Romney was still nominally chief of everything until 2001. And anyone who believes that his name (investments, legal liability, etc) was on the line and he had NOTHING to do with it is either naive or drinking heavily from the Kool-Aid pitcher.
you are absolutely right. If you are too trusting, you won’t be in business very long.
as his guest tomorrow morning. That should be interesting.
Watched the Chris Hayes show this a.m., and the guy from Bain didn’t really shed any new info, and certainly did nothing, in my estimation, but spiel the typical capitalist, Bainist line. Greed is good, government regs are bad.
There was not, in my view, enough tough questioning of Mr. Conard.
I am a little disappointd that Hayes didn’t go after him like the young, dark-haired female guest, (can’t recall her name just now) did. I have seen her before and enjoyed watching her call “bullshit” on him a couple of times.
On Fox News today the Romney campaign sent Gov. Terry Branstad who said (h/t TPM):
Best response, provide an answer that kills the attack. Second best response, change the subject. Worst response, say please stop it.
As to calling out “the blame game,” that’s exactly what Romney does in his ads attacking Obama.
A major lesson that Romney better learn (soon)is that President Obama isn’t going to give up; President Obama isn’t going down without a fight and will play it out to the election day.
Comment 1
Comment 2
Comment 3
Point–Romney had to be part of Bain in 1999-2002 to establish ties to Massachusetts so he could run for governor there. Because at the time, he was living in Salt Lake City, Utah, a well known suburb of Boston.
Counterpoint–Romney couldn’t possibly have any ties to Bain in 1999-2002, because he was running the Olympics. And Bain was affiliated with companies that were potentially going after Olympic gold (or folding greenbacks, anyway) at the same time. And that would have a conflict of interest when the IOC had just been plagued by scandal after scandal.
Point–Romney was listed as the total head honcho in every way at Bain between 1999-2002
to deceive, wait, reassure investors that Bain was the same company it ever was.
Counterpoint–Romney was not involved in Bain in any way, shape or form between 1999-2002, because that was when Bain was involved in vulture capitalism and wiping out American jobs, healthcare benefits and pensions. All the while making huge profits for Bain, of course.
Point and Counterpoint–Romney drew $100,000 a year as salary from Bain while having nothing at all to do with the company. Because the board of directors felt generous, and who could pass up a free hundred grand.
But the main problem I see is that the point and counterpoint arguments are all coming from Romney himself.
“Why, I can believe six impossible things before breakfast,” the red queen and apparently Mitt Romney.
They clearly hold horrible news about him. But if he releases them now he might be able to make this old news by November. If he waits till September when voters start to really pay attention, then it locks it in for the vote.
I definitely see no way he can avoid releasing his returns for 1999 – 2002. Otherwise this remains the primary story for the election.
Funny, that same tale has been on my mind during this whole point/counterpoint fiasco.
But if Romney doesn’t think the American people feel like they’ve fallen down a rabbit holet, he’d better know the conservatives do. They passed up Santorum for this? They passed up Gingrich for this? Hell, Bachman?
Were I one of Rove’s Rebuglodytes, I’d be swigging down Mylanta like spring water.
Mitt Romney Bain Capital Document Lists Him As ‘Managing Member’ In 2002
This isn’t just post Olympics. This is post getting elected Governor. And with the other person also listed, there isn’t even the excuse that he was the only one available.
And the excuses are getting even more lame. Ed Gillespie: Mitt Romney ‘Retired Retroactively’ From Bain Capital
Which is another way of saying “you know those last 2 years when I said I was running Bain – just kidding.” Want to bet that his tax returns show him getting a paycheck from Bain over that time?
And to show how much Obama owns the conversation now and that Romney is totally on the defensive, there’s this quote from Ed:
If you even have to say that, you’re is deep doo-doo. That’s right up there with Nixon’s “I am not a crook.” Not a winning campaign slogan.
Strength: Obama is not attacking Romney, the ad merely quotes media sources on Romney.
Weakness: The audience has to be able to read.
Romney singing with the crazy sound design is so unnerving and makes Romney sound so creepy that it could say that he’s akin to Ghandi and it would still do its job. Brilliant ad.
the last thing he said as he walked out the door was, “And by the way, boys, I’m taking the elevator with me; need it for my wife’s Caddys.”
weekend trip and can’t n believe there’s fifty comments on this and none from elbee or ’tad or ArapG calling this all meaningless bull that isn’t at all a bad thing for Romney. Maybe they’re confused by conservative heavy hitters like George Will not going along with the “Don’t worry. Be happy” talk. Also some R Govs saying Mittens needs to stop hiding and release the 12 years of tax returns. Hard to know what to say today? Trouble in the Borg?
The weird thing is that so many campaigns have tried that – and every time the voters decide what they think is important
If only pretending made it go away.
But it’s like they looked at a calendar and concluded – this was worth one cycle of Sunday shows. No one would understand or care.
Ryan response was that nobody cares
(http://politicalwire.com/archives/2012/07/15/extra_bonus_quote_of_the_day.html).
Time will tell whether this is true or not.
This one, for instance: