On this morning's edition of "This Week," Martin O'Malley delivered the most blistering attack yet from the Obama campaign about Mitt Romney. When Bobby Jindal called the attacks on Romney's business record a distraction, O'Malley responded that they were fair game--particularly because Mitt's numerous offshore accounts amounted to a giant "bet against America."
The exchange started when guest host Terry Moran tried to get Jindal to address Romney's offshore accounts. After a long bit of evasive bobbing and weaving, Jindal finally said this:
Look, I think -- I think voters will consider all of the distractions thrown out by the Obama campaign. But at the end of the day, this election is about two fundamental choices. It's about President Obama, who wants to continue to spend money we don't have. They incurred now $1 trillion-plus deficit every year he's been president, after he promised we'd cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term. He hasn't done that. Promised unemployment would be below 8 percent, hadn't done that, promised he'd reform the entitlement programs, hasn't done that.
We're going the way of Europe. You may have noticed a couple of weeks ago, the German finance minister actually lectured the America -- actually lectured the American president about borrowing.
It set up this withering response from O'Malley:
The relevance is this, that Governor Romney can't can claim that his state actually was great at creating jobs when he was governor, so he's falling back and said, look, vote for me, I was a businessman, I created jobs.
You want talk about going the way of Europe? What went the way of Europe were the -- the Swiss bank accounts and the American dollars that Mitt Romney stuffed in that offshore Swiss bank account, jobs that he facilitated companies in moving offshore, out of places like Ohio, out of Pennsylvania and Maryland.
I mean, this is a fundamental disagreement between two different candidates and their vision for our country's future. Barack Obama believes enough in our country to be willing to work for and invest in it. Mitt Romney bets against America. He bet against America when he put his money in Swiss bank accounts and tax havens and shelters and also set up a secret company, the shell company in Bermuda, which, by the way, in order to avoid disclosure, he put in his wife's name right before he became governor of Massachusetts.
These are legitimate questions that a man who is holding himself out as wanting to lead our country forward needs to answer.
Watch the full exchange
here:
Couldn't have said it better myself. We have a guy who wants to lead this country, and instead of putting money in our banks, he puts them in tax shelters? After this, I don't ever want to hear anyone calling Democrats elitist ever again.
4:14 PM PT: Looks like the Obama campaign has declared open season on Romney's offshore accounts. TPM has an excellent summary of how the Blue Team went after them on the talk-show circuit today.