Am I the only one frustrated that today's focus has been on when W. Mitt Romney left Bain Capital instead of what he did while he was there?
I understand the Obama campaign is trying to leverage the Boston Globe report to force Romney to release additional tax returns. That's a worthy goal. But the "When did Romney leave?" meme is all that's being reported in the press. And frankly, I think voters will tune that out. However, what if instead voters heard:
With Sankaty, Romney was using a mysterious Bermuda-based entity to invest in a Chinese firm that thrived on US outsourcing.
That, to me at least, is the most powerful sentence in David Corn's Mother Jones article
"EXCLUSIVE: Romney Invested Millions in Chinese Firm That Profited on US Outsourcing" (sub-head: The GOP candidate decries China poaching US jobs. But at Bain he held a large stake in a Chinese company that did just that.)
I just read an article on Politico that appears to be representative of other articles I've read today.
Following Thursday’s story, the problem for Romney is if voters believe he was firmly linked to the company post-1999, it will torpedo what has thus far been the Republican’s defense against many Democratic attacks against his Bain tenure.
President Barack Obama and Democrats say Bain’s companies, and by extension Romney, laid off workers and outsourced jobs, shipping them overseas. But many of those acts happened after 1999, when Romney says he wasn’t responsible because he was no longer truly running Bain. But the Globe report showing Romney linked to the private equity firm as late as 2002 could contradict those claims, at least in the eyes of voters.
The article references the controversial outsourcing/off-shoring deals that came to light last week. Romney claims he isn't responsible for those because he left Bain in February 2009. He has been backed up - rightly or wrongly - by various fact-checkers.
But who cares about those deals? They no longer matter. Because we know for a fact that in 1998 Bain Capital, under W. Mitt Romney's watch, invested millions of dollars in Global-Tech, a Chinese firm that specialized in outsourcing formerly U.S.-based manufacturing jobs.
The Politico article and others I've read make no mention of David Corn's story. I don't care if you love or hate David Corn or whether you think he's trustworthy or not. The Romney campaign admits what he wrote is true!
Brookside had a small ownership stake (9.11%) in Global-Tech while Romney was there.
Hello? Mitt Romney made a multi-million dollar investment that would only work out in his favor if more American factory workers lost their jobs to the Chinese!
Game. Set. Match.
That is a storyline that is easily understood by even the most casual voters: Mitt Romney bet against American factory workers and profited when their jobs were moved to China.
That is a message I would pound all-day, every-day until it has saturated every corner of blue-collar America. But we have to strike now, while the iron is hot. Otherwise it will be dismissed as "old news" before it gets the primetime coverage it deserves.
I say we take Governor Romney at his word and assume he was only involved in investment decisions until February 2009. And then we ask him to explain the decision to invest in Global-Tech.
Here's my dream scenario:
Presidential Debate #1. Question #1.
Governor Romney, you have excused the Obama campaign about your role in investing in companies that shipped jobs overseas. However that was before we learned about Bain Capital's 1998 investment in Global-Tech. Two questions, Governor.
1. Are there any more investments similar to Global-Tech which have not yet come to our attention?
2. Governor, you made a multi-million dollar investment that would only work out in your favor if American factory workers lost their jobs to the Chinese. How do you explain that investment decision to an unemployed factory worker whose job went to China?