Apparently, Mitt Romney's job creation record includes hiring somebody to rope off a
perimeter around him to keep the riffraff away (Brian Snyder/Reuters)
According to Mitt Romney's campaign, if you question Romney's
record at Bain, you might as well be a
communist—even if you're Newt Gingrich or Rick Perry:
"It is no surprise that, having spent nearly half a century in government between them, Speaker Gingrich and Governor Perry have resorted to desperate attacks on a subject they don’t understand. We expect attacks on free enterprise from President Obama and his allies on the left – not from so-called ‘fiscal conservatives.’ Speaker Gingrich and Governor Perry seem to think that running against the private sector is the way to revive their floundering campaigns. Governor Romney will continue talking about his experience in the real economy, his vision for getting America back to work, and how important it is that we defeat President Obama in November." –Andrea Saul, Romney Campaign Spokesperson
And even worse, you're a coconspirator with President Obama!
Free enterprise is being put on trial by President Obama. And their first witness is Newt Gingrich.
This is really a terrible line of argument for Romney to be following. Imagine if after the Jeremiah Wright videos surfaced, the Obama campaign simply accused his critics of being racist—or hating God—and left it at that. That sort of response would have been a disaster, but it's exactly what Mitt Romney is doing here.
Instead of actually responding to the criticism, Romney is saying the criticism itself is out of bounds. But given that his whole rationale for being president (baloney though it may be) is that he has unique experience as a "job creator," isn't it fair to ask questions about his record creating jobs?
And if the essential claims about what Bain did are right—that it made money by leveraging and bankrupting companies—then isn't fair to ask if that is the sort of private sector experience that we want in the White House? What's so bad about a question like that?
Obviously Mitt Romney doesn't have any good answers to these questions or he would have given them already. It's a sign that he's probably not quite as electable a candidate as most people have assumed, at least up until now. And as a supporter of President Obama, I just hope Republicans don't figure that out until they're stuck with him.