Mitt Romney’s Impotent Response To Obama’s Campaign Ad

As I reported earlier today, the Obama campaign released an ad that criticized Mitt Romney’s failed record of job creation while at Bain Capital. Now Romeny’s camp has weighed in with their own ad that seeks to rehabilitate Romney’s reputation.

My earlier article noted the rapid response attack on Obama’s ad by Romney’s comrades at Fox News. I also noted that their attack was a pathetic effort that failed to make their case against the President. If they are interested in learning how a credible rebuttal is constructed, they should pay attention to the way ThinkProgress has responded to Romney’s ad. Firstly, ThinkProgress noted that the Romney ad…

“…implies that the plant would not have been built without Romney’s assistance. Steele Dynamics ‘almost never got started,’ the narrator says. ‘When others shied away, Mitt Romney’s private-sector leadership team stepped in.’

“But the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette reported at the time (via Nexis), that Bain was just one of eight financiers for the project — hardly the lone white knight.”

They went on to reveal that in addition to the numerous investors in the business, it also was not the free-market miracle that Romney implied. In fact, it received millions of dollars from local and state funding, including revenue generated specifically by raising taxes to support the new company. In other words, just about every point that Romney made was rendered moot by a recitation of the facts.

I would add to this analysis that, while the citizens featured in Obama’s ad were all identified, those in the Romney ad were all anonymous. For all we know they were actors, because there is no way to certify their identities or their glowing accounts. Which is further evidence that Obama’s ad team produces documented facts while Romney’s people pump out propaganda.

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4 thoughts on “Mitt Romney’s Impotent Response To Obama’s Campaign Ad

  1. You (and ThinkProgress) don’t understand basic finance. Bain put in the equity capital and organized a consortium of banks to cover the rest. They weren’t “one of eight investors,” it was their project. If you put 25% down, got a construction loan and built a home, this would be like saying you were “only one of two entities involved in the home.” In your defense, the Ft. Wayne Journal didn’t understand this either.

    • Not exactly. GST was acquired in a leveraged buyout wherein Bain made an investment and drew on the company’s assets and loans as collateral. Bain ended up making millions in profit while they left the company in debt that resulted in their bankruptcy.

      The banks that made the loans lost money. The local and state governments (who invested more than Bain) lost money. The employees lost money and their jobs. Bain took their profit and left town.

      Your home construction analogy doesn’t apply because it describes a situation wherein the home does not exist and you are borrowing to build it. GST already existed and Bain borrowed money that went onto their own pockets and the company was left with nothing but debt.

  2. Read his post – he isn’t talking about GST and neither am I. He is talking about Steel Dynamics (an entirely different company) and saying Bain should not get credit for creating 6000 jobs, because they were only one of eight investors. This is nonsense, for the reasons I explained.

    With regard to GST, Romney was able to do an LBO on it because the company was going bankrupt and nobody else wanted it. All of the jobs would have been lost without Bain’s involvement, at a much earlier time. As far as Bain taking their profit and leaving town, read the report. Bain put in 8M and took out 8.5M. I’m sure if you asked GST employees whether they would like to keep their jobs for an extra four years, in exchange for the company paying Bain 500K, they would have said yes.

    Obama is a guy who has never played sports criticizing Micheal Phelps because he did not win a gold in every competition he entered, across three different Olympic games. Right now, the economy has 300,000 fewer jobs than when Obama took office (141.8M, down from 142.1M). That means Romney put more people to work running Bain than Obama has running America.

    • Actually, in my comment above I meant Steele Dynamics, not GST.

      As for the jobs numbers, the loss of jobs during the early part of Obama’s administration was entirely due to the economic collapse presided over by Bush and the GOP. Obama’s agenda was not implemented the day after his inauguration, as much as Republicans like to pretend that that is possible. It took a couple of years to have an effect. As of today, 4.2 million jobs have been created, and there has been about 26 straight months of job growth.

      Anyone who thinks that we should go back to the policies that produced the collapse is insane. Yet Romney’s campaign has said that’s exactly what they want to do.

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