Attack ads to blast Mitt Romney’s work at Bain Capital
A ‘super PAC’ backing Newt Gingrich is financing a campaign that aims to show Romney destroyed jobs while running a venture capital firm.
Reporting from Washington—Voters in South Carolina are about to witness an attack on Mitt Romney and the work of a private equity firm that made him wealthy and has provided the underpinnings for his appeal to voters.
The assault will come Monday in the form of a planned $1-million-plus advertising campaign. The effort, which may expand to other states, is sponsored by an independent political group backing Newt Gingrich that has received donations from some of the country’s most ardent conservatives.
The group, Winning Our Future, promises a sustained attack on Romney and the company he formed, Bain Capital. “We will buy whatever it takes to get people to understand Romney’s real record of deliberate job destruction,” said Rick Tyler, a longtime Gingrich aide who works now as a senior adviser to the “super PAC” backing the former House speaker.
The ads are expected to focus on the plight of workers who were laid off after their employers were purchased by Bain Capital. Romney founded the venture capital company in 1984 after working for the Bain consulting firm, and throughout the campaign he has boasted of the jobs he created during his tenure.
Anger at Romney and others in the financial elite has been roiling throughout this election season. But the criticism has come mostly from the left. Next week’s wave of complaints are an attempt to spread the anger among Republicans, in whose hands Gingrich’s future rests.
In recent days, Romney has sought to distinguish his background by defending his brand of capitalism and scoring President Obama for what he terms “crony capitalism” — using government resources to benefit firms and organizations that back his political career.
“This is not capitalism,” Tyler said Saturday of Bain’s record. “This is predatory paper-shuffling.”
The new effort drew a harsh response from Romney backers.
“It’s puzzling to see Speaker Gingrich and his supporters continue their attacks on free enterprise,” said Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul. “… Unlike President Obama and Speaker Gingrich, Mitt Romney spent his career in business and knows what it will take to turn around our nation’s bad economy.”
Gingrich came in for harsh criticism several weeks ago when he raised questions about job losses resulting from leveraged buyout deals in which Romney took part at Bain Capital.
The disagreement underscores a divide among Republicans like Romney, who defend the behavior of Wall Street entrepreneurs, and others who have been seething at some activities of the financial elite.
The ads rely on footage from a film critical of Romney that was just completed by a former Romney ally, Jason Meath, who collaborated in 2008 with Romney adviser Stuart Stevens to produce pro-Romney ads.
The film, called “When Mitt Romney Came to Town,” focuses on four companies that Bain Capital took over in the 1980s and 1990s. It includes interviews with workers and residents in Marion, Ind., where a plant owned by Ampad, a paper products company, was shut down after Bain Capital acquired the firm.
Often, Bain would come in, buy a company and then extend its borrowing limits. Then max out the credit line and then, *BLAMMO* declare the company as bankrupt and sell off the assets. while the Bain Execs kept the borrowed money leaving the company’s stock holders, bondholders with partial payments at best or often like the employees, nothing.
On this blog we relentlessly beat up George Soros for doing exactly the same things. This is not free enterprise, this is not capitalism. This is destruction of wealth, no matter how Romney’s people try to spin this.
Here is the commercial for the film: THAT WAS PULLED, and now is back
So here is part one and two extended trailers, thx fritz cat
A pro-Gingrich “super PAC” is planning to air a blistering new attack video in South Carolina on Mitt Romney, depicting the GOP presidential front-runner as a corporate “raider” whose firm “destroyed the dreams of thousands of Americans” by buying up companies and firing its workers.
The film, titled “King of Bain: When Mitt Romney Came to Town,” — was made by a former Romney advertising adviser. Its contents mirror attacks that have been made for months by political surrogates of President Barack Obama on Romney’s years as the chief officer of the Bain Capital investment firm.
“For the first time, this film will show what Bain Capital actually did,” said Rick Tyler, a senior adviser to Winning Our Future, a pro-Gingrich super PAC that acquired the rights to the movie on Friday. The super PAC is posting a two-minute trailer from the 27-minute film on a website Saturday.
“They targeted companies … they raided them … and thousands of workers lost their jobs. This is not capitalism. This is predatory,” Tyler said.
