President Obama’s re-election campaign has sunk its teeth into Mitt Romney’s business background — but did it draw blood?
The campaign on Monday presented a new ad in which the private-equity firm once headed by Romney — and, indeed, Romney personally — are blasted as willful job-killers.
And not just job-killers.
“He was like a vampire,” said Jack Cobb. “He came in and sucked the life out of you.”
This from a veteran steelworker who lost his job when one of Bain Capital’s investments went bust — two full years after Romney left the firm.
Meanwhile, the chief investment officer of Bain’s credit affiliate is now a top campaign-funds bundler for — yes — Obama.
Hypocrisy?
Yes, but that’s not the half of it.
For, on the very same night that ad began running, Barack Obama was in a ritzy Manhattan apartment, collecting $35,800 a head from a roomful of venture capitalists.
Hosting the event was Tony James, president of the Blackstone Group — the nation’s largest private-equity firm.
Never mind that the Obama campaign simply delights in ripping selected Blackstone partners for “betting against America.” They would be the ones who’ve contributed to Mitt Romney.
Similarly, Obama has no problem taking money from execs at Bain Capital — who are among his top contributors.
Or opening a criminal investigation of JPMorgan Chase’s $2 billion loss — as the Justice Department did yesterday — while Obama bundler Jon Corzine’s mysterious loss of $1.6 billion of his clients’ money at bankrupt MF Global remains unresolved.
Even Obama’s own former “auto czar,” Steve Rattner, calls the Bain attack ad “unfair,” saying the company under Romney did its job “superbly well, acting within the rules, and did it very responsibly.”
For the record, as Rich Lowry writes on National Review Online, Bain Capital didn’t acquire Jack Cobb’s company to run it into the ground.
It invested tens of millions over seven years trying to prop up a beleaguered firm — but failed. Yet Bain was able to turn another industry firm, Steel Dynamics, into a technologically innovative powerhouse.
That’s the nature of capitalism: There are winners and losers.
But it wasn’t Bain Capital that sank billions into Solyndra and other failed green-energy firms — sucking the life right out of US taxpayers, who had to foot the bill.
Thus was the Bain ad undead on arrival.