Who could wind up causing the most angst for President Barack Obama as he seeks reelection next November? The RNC? Fox News? Conservative Super PACs? How about… the Washington Post?
As I was reading Ed Morrissey’s speculation on the inoculation theory of primary politics regarding Mitt Romney’s days at Bain Capital, a delicious bit of irony began to come into focus. After the apparent flop of the Newt Gingrich Super PAC blockbuster on the subject, King of Bain, the Washington Post did one of the more extensive bits of fact checking we’ve seen out of them in some time. They wound up awarding the largely fictional mockumentary “Four Pinnochios” while tearing apart the claims in the film and pointing out highly disingenuous – if not flat out false – aspects of its creation.
This served as a rather stiff jab to the collective nose of Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry, but it’s also essentially deflated one line of attack which Team Obama was doubtless getting ready to use this fall. We’ve already seen DNC Chair Debby Wasserman Schultz trotting out the “Romney is a job cremator” spiel to anyone with a camera. But it’s going to be increasingly difficult for her team – or Obama himself – to carry that talking point forward in September after the evisceration it suffered at the hands of the Washington Post.
But we’re left to wonder… would Glenn Kessler have done quite such a thorough job had he been tasked with defending Mitt against, let’s just say… Obama? And, assuming Romney winds up being the GOP nominee, will he regret having feathered Mitt’s nest nine months from now when the president tries to take up the same line of attack?
The primary is allowing the left to test it’s attacks against the GOP nominee the same way it is testing the GOP nominees themselves. We will see what line of attack seems most plausible in the same way we will see who is the least vulnerable.
This line of attack failed, so Captain Zero will not be using it after the nominee (Romney) is chosen.
– during the general election when Team Mitt argues that it already addressed this issue during the primaries, 85% of the electorate will ask, “Huh, what? What’s this about Bain? Bad, isn’t it?”
You can’t be this naive, can you? You think that one fact-checking article in the WaPo is going to have *any* effect on this angle of attack in the general? Really? Mitt Romney is *not* Barack Obama, he will not get a free pass because of some silly, one-off, ‘fact check’ in the middle of January. I can’t believe I’m reading something this blindingly clueless on PJM.
I recently read that all presidential campaigns boil down — very broadly speaking — to either the message “brave new world” or the message “back to basics.” Obama’s 2008 campaign is an almost perfect example of “brave new world”, so now he’s vulnerable to a “back to basics” campaign (because it turns out his world is not so great after all.) Romney could combine a “back to basics” message with his Bain background by pointing out that what Bain did — restructuring and rescuing organizations that had fallen prey to bad ideas and bad managers — is exactly what the US government needs today. In short, Romney could present himself as the best way to achieve “back to basics” because he knows from Bain how to get rid of the bad while keeping the good. And, yes, to do this some people — like Obama! and similar thinkers — will have to lose their jobs and some malfunctioning US government departments may have to be eliminated. I think that there are a lot of moderate and independent voters who would be very happy to support this message.
Read Wapo worthless 4 pinnochio article, they actually say that some of the bain capital story is true. Now if you take the timeline of when Mitt “Willard destroy America” Romney. Romney was there to make the decisions to destroy these other companies and their employee’s live, when it actually occurred does not let him off the hook. What the “bought by the establishment” fact checkers need to be focusing on is what else did this shady, not going to let you see the skeletons or taxes on Evil Mitt Romney. That is the job of media. This equation will never change how people think of the corruption of Bain and Mitt.
Bain Capital is a ruthless job destroyer for profit
Mitt Romney was the head and still part of Bain
Mitt Romney is Bain therefore
Mitt Romney is a ruthless job destroyer for profit
End of story
Try digging into Mitt Romney’s past Wapo and PJ
Four pinnochios, I give you all one finger
Vote for Ron Paul, the only candidate who does not suckle on the lobbyist tit.