TPM: Why Bain Is Back

[maddezmom]

Josh Marshall-July 2, 2012, 12:17 PM340

A month ago, conventional wisdom had it that the Bain attacks on Mitt Romney were somehow failing terribly — notwithstanding the fact that they’ve been key parts of every other campaign Democrats and Republicans have run against Romney going all the way back to 1994. And yet all of a sudden, the Obama campaign is going full outsource/Bain attack on Romney at every opportunity. So they think it’s working great. New polling suggests they may be on to something. And in the most telling development, in the days leading up to the surprise Supreme Court ruling, the Romney campaign itself is mounting a mammoth pushback, signaling more clearly than anything that they think it’s working too.

So what happened?

Consider three basic factors. First, round one of the Bain Wars was almost entirely hashed out in what you might call the Acela corridor — an insular community, overwhelmingly affluent and educated, and decidedly not the audience for the message or the folks who find themselves on the receiving end of capitalism’s creative destruction.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) visited TPM’s DC offices last week as part of our Newsmaker interview series and said basically: trust me, this message worked in Ohio. Maybe he was right all along. I suspect he was.

But there was another rhetorical dimension. ‘Private equity’ is a weird phrase. Most people have no idea what it does or doesn’t mean. And the Romney campaign through it’s surrogates was able to hit its opponents with something like ‘Hey, it’s poor form to be going all Nation magaziney and pretending that private equity isn’t awesome!’

More:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/07/a_month_ago_the_conventional.php

not to mention

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/romney-bain-abortion-stericycle-sec
http://www.salon.com/2012/07/02/when_did_romney_leave_bain/singleton/

[Dont call me Shirley]

1. Isn't it Bane Capital?!

[maddezmom]

2. the name Bain is going to be a read Bane/Pain for him, me thinks

[Douglas Carpenter]

3. of course everyone always knew that Bain is Romney's Achilles heel and Romney

would probably win if the Obama campaign does not push this issue. Everyone always knew this. The ONLY reason why some Democrats were perfectly willing to hand the White House over to Romney was because they would rather see a Republican in the White House and Republicans controlling every branch of government and all the consequences that entails - They would rather see that than to offend their friends in the Hedge Fund Manager cocktail party circuit.