Is that a picture of 'free enterprise' ... or is it Mitt Romney and his Bain buddies?
Obama campaign aide Stephanie Cutter's
memo dismantling Mitt Romney's response (or lack thereof) to questions about his record at Bain is worth reading in full, but here's a sample:
Romney closed over a thousand plants, stores and offices, and cut employee wages, benefits and pensions. He laid off American workers and outsourced their jobs to other countries. And he and his partners made hundreds of millions of dollars while taking companies to bankruptcy.
Although some of the businesses in which he took a stake undoubtedly added jobs, neither Romney’s campaign nor any independent fact checker has supported his claim of producing a net increase of 100,000 American jobs – or even anything close to it.
That is Romney’s record. His overwrought response to questions about it has been to insist that any criticism of his business record is an assault on “free enterprise” itself.
But this is just an attempt to evade legitimate scrutiny of the record on which he says he’s running. “Free enterprise” isn’t running for President, Mitt Romney is. And voters deserve straight answers about his record, so they can know how his perspective would influence his decisions and actions if he were President of the United States.
[...]
Between now and November the American people will decide whether to respond to this crisis by electing a corporate raider who profited from – and promises to restore – the conditions that caused it, or re-electing a President fighting to level the playing field for American businesses, restore fairness for consumers and help the middle class reclaim a sense of economic security that will benefit the entire economy. That’s what’s on trial, not “free enterprise.”
Mitt Romney and the Republican Party have decided to build their campaign around a defense of free enterprise—as they define it.
President Obama and Democrats, meanwhile, will build their campaign around continuing to restore economic security to the middle-class.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which side is going to win that fight.