"Because if you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare the voters. If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from."
"You make a big election about small things."
Barack Obama, Denver, Colorado, August 29, 2008
One might think that the man who claimed to have "saved our economy from catastrophe" would continually remind us of how he pulled that off as he makes his case for a second term. But, not Barack Obama. Instead of touting his record, he's spending millions attacking Mitt Romney with a variety of bizarre claims that even the Washington Post's political Fact Checker found to be "misleading, unfair and untrue."
This isn't the mark of a confident, proud, accomplished incumbent; this is a desperate man with a disappointing record relegated to throwing a lot of you-know-what against the wall hoping something sticks. And, this campaign strategy – if it can be called that – is no accident.
On August 9, 2011, Politico.com reported that the White House was "preparing to center the president's re-election campaign on a ferocious personal assault" on Mitt Romney. "Unless things change and Obama can run on accomplishments, he will have to kill Romney," explained someone identified only as a prominent Democratic strategist connected to the campaign.
So, regardless of Obama's claim that the economy has taken "a step in the right direction," the White House knows that is blather, their record is atrocious. Three horrible monthly economic reports in a row have forced Team Obama to ratchet up the all-out assault on Romney.
But, frustration is showing as the Obama assault doesn't seem to be working. Polls show the race tightening rather than moving in the President's favor. The White House laments that they are having trouble getting their message out. Really? I hadn't notice a drop off in the number of speeches or trips on Air Force One.
The problem is that Team Obama doesn't have an effective message, and the credibility of the messenger has stalled along with the economy. By an overwhelming 2:1 margin Americans believe the nation is headed down the wrong track, and Barack Obama has been driving the bus.
While Obama can't run on his record, the "kill Romney" strategy is a very high stakes gamble. When Obama goes after Romney there just isn't much there; certainly not anything new that hasn't been vetted in the public arena's laundry basket multiple times before.
As the son of a former Governor and Presidential candidate, Mitt Romney was always going to be noticed and examined under a microscope. When just in his mid-30s, Romney was tapped by Bill Bain in 1984 to lead the new start-up venture capital firm, Bain Capital. Because of the nature of the business, Romney and Bain Capital were continually scrutinized by government regulators, media watchdogs, and the most experienced business professionals, investors, and corporate attorneys in the country.
Romney's first foray in politics was a U.S. Senate campaign in 1994 against the Massachusetts titan, Ted Kennedy. Although unsuccessful, Romney did give Kennedy the toughest battle of his eight Senate campaigns, and the senior Senator unleashed all the Kennedy family attack dogs.
In 1999, Romney accepted the very public role as President and CEO of the Salt Lake Olympics. In 2002, he was elected the new Republican Governor in heavily Democratic Massachusetts. His fellow Governors elected Romney the Chairman of the Republican Governors' Association for the 2006 election cycle.
He waged a two year effort to be the Republican Presidential nominee in 2008, and though it was not to be his time, Romney remained very active and the presumptive frontrunner leading up to 2012. Although he has secured the 2012 nomination, Romney's opponents certainly left no attack untried in a particularly long and negative GOP primary campaign.
So, this isn't the first time a political opponent or business adversary has looked under every rock trying to discredit Mitt Romney. Team Obama is left to recycle old news and pretend they discovered a secret. Their act is growing old – fast – but, this isn't just about destroying Mitt Romney. Obama's mission is bigger and more dangerous than that…read on.
Obama knows that his economic record is abysmal, and that Romney's private sector bona fides are outstanding. Thus, the attempt to tarnish the star.
Obama fired what they thought was a silver-bullet with a television ad claiming Romney "outsourced" jobs during his time at Bain Capital. A credible charge of "outsourcing" jobs particularly during a bad economic cycle would be a political blow to the heart for any candidate.
However, almost immediately penalty flags started flying from media critics across the country. Glenn Kessler, The Fact Checker of the Washington Post, said "The Obama campaign fails to make its case. On just about every level, this ad is misleading, unfair and untrue from the use of 'corporate raider' to its examples of alleged outsourcing. Simply repeating the same debunked claims won't make them any more correct."
Unfazed by the public rebuke, Team Obama chose to escalate. After planting a groundless story in the Boston Globe, Team Obama used the article as the basis to claim Romney was in "full control" of management at Bain while he was also in Salt Lake running the Olympics. If true, that would be contrary to both public representations by Romney and SEC disclosure documents at the time. On a conference call with reporters on July 12, Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter said the Globe story proved Romney had "full control" of Bain while also running the Olympics. Cutter then accused Romney of "misrepresenting his position at Bain to the SEC, which is a felony."
That accusation got rejected even faster than the phony outsourcing claim.
On same day that Cutter made the felony accusation, the political watchdog FactCheck.org completely refuted the charge:
"But we see little new in any of these SEC filing, and a University of Pennsylvania Law School professor we spoke to sees no basis for the Obama campaign's claim that Romney committed a felony."
"None of the SEC filings show that Romney was anything but a passive, absentee owner during that time, as both Romney and Bain have long said. It should not surprise anyone that Romney retained certain titles while he was working out the final disposition of his ownership, for example. We see nothing to contradict the statement that a Bain spokesman issued in response to the Globe article."
"Bain Capital, July 12: Due to the sudden nature of Mr. Romney's departure, he remained the sole stockholder for a time while formal ownership was being documented and transferred to the group of partners who took over management of the firm in 1999. Accordingly, Mr. Romney was reported in various capacities on SEC filings during this period."
Likewise on the same day, Dan Primack, senior editor at Fortune Magazine, dismissed the ridiculous charge. In a posting on CNNMoney, Primack reviewed and summarized the several SEC filings for the time in question and concluded that the "Bain documents show that Romney was indeed telling the truth about no longer having operational input at Bain…"
Primack also explained, "These claims are very similar to ones made last week by David Corn in Mother Jones, which we disputed at the time." In that article, Primack said he had "seen no evidence" to substantiate the Obama campaign's assertions.
In less than 24 hours, Ed Rendell, the former Governor of Pennsylvania and General Chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 2000 said on MSNBC, "I think our supporters went a little bit too far with the felony business." Rendell also offered that Obama's scorched-earth negative attacks "may be hurting the President's brand a little bit, too."
For Team Obama, it's about winning at any cost – even if you have to lie. But, it also demonstrates a pure hatred of the free-market economy. Mitt Romney is a temporary diversion for Obama. His long-term target for destruction is the private sector economy.
Veteran Democrat strategist and Obama Super-PAC consultant Paul Begalla says, "Bain will never go away, never. We may even run ads against Bain after the election." That sounds more like a campaign to eradicate polio, or Al Qaeda. What exactly is so evil about a company that provides equity capital and management consulting expertise to private companies?
Obama provides the answer. In a recent interview with Charlie Rose of CBS, Obama said Romney – who is credited with turning around Bain and Company from financial crisis, built Bain Capital into one of the most successful private equity firms in the nation, rescued the Olympic Games, and governed Massachusetts – Obama doesn't believe Romney can see "the economy as a whole." But, a community organizer from Chicago apparently can?
Obama told Charlie Rose that his big problem with Romney's business experience was that his job was "to make money. It's not to create jobs. It's not even to create a successful business."
Those sixteen words explain the bigger, more dangerous agenda, and should be sufficient to disqualify Barack Obama for a second term. When did "making money" become a negative in the United States of America? Without profit, just how long do jobs even exist? Without profit, how do businesses expand and hire more workers, pay better wages, provide more benefits? Without profit, how much innovation would happen? Without profit, exactly how do you ever become a successful business, or define one? Without profit, what becomes of the American Dream?
Barack Obama will continue a relentless and deceitful campaign of trying to destroy Mitt Romney. He's already spent $100 million attacking Romney "rather than [as] a referendum on his own handling of the weak economy," according to the Associated Press. If Obama happens to be successful, however, rest assured he'll continue his long-term objective to destroy the once-great American free-market economy and the American Dream along with it. He won't say it that honestly, but then telling the truth has never gotten in the way of The One.
Comments