David Perdue has come up with yet another way to try to limit the damage from revelations about his long career in outsourcing. At a Georgia Senate debate Sunday night:
Perdue said some of the outsourcing claims were false and that his work in Asia at companies like Sara Lee entailed production overseas that was not necessarily tied to American operations.
“[The testimony] never says I outsourced jobs, not one time,” he said.
Did David Perdue say "I outsourced jobs" in his Pillowtex deposition? Not in so many words—but then, the deposition makes clear that he was concerned with product to the exclusion of jobs. The jobs are just a side effect to him. But
what he did say was "Kurt Salmon Associates, some of my experience there was helping footwear companies develop the ability to import shoes from Asia" and "Sara Lee did not have a centralized sourcing operation in Asia, and we built that from the ground up" and "In terms of the cost of goods, you know, you had significant advantages on cost of goods there compared to what Sara Lee was doing domestically."
Does he really expect us to believe that all these companies where he developed the ability to import shoes from Asia or built centralized sourcing operations in Asia from the ground up, that didn't involve outsourcing jobs? In other words, how stupid does David Perdue think Georgia voters are? Does he think voters are going to believe that when a company starts making the vast majority of its goods in Asia and importing them to the United States, that won't cost jobs in the United States? Because, wow, you would have to be pretty f'ing stupid to believe that.
Let's take a quick look at the evolution of Perdue's response to news of his outsourcing career. First, Perdue said "Defend it? I'm proud of it"—then tried to redefine it to sound harmless and commonplace.
Then he tried to downplay it by saying "This is another attempt by my desperate opposition to use one line out of a 186-page document to define a career." Except it was dozens of lines. The dozens of lines where he explained what he'd done throughout his career.
Next he suggested that ignorance was the reason people were upset and if they understood and loved the free enterprise system, they'd see things differently. Along the way, he also tried to sweep his work for an Indian company under the rug. In other words, he's flailing, trying to downplay or cover up his life's work. And this is a guy whose entire qualification for Senate was supposed to be "millionaire businessman."
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