By Byron York
The Romney campaign wants to introduce a new concept into the debate over President Obamas economic record. Imagine the president ran an investment firm. He poured billions of dollars into green energy projects that didnt work. People lost jobs. He poured billions into sometimes implausible stimulus projects that didnt work either. And even when he succeeded in keeping companies afloat as he did with General Motors and Chrysler he did it by downsizing and laying off thousands of workers.
And now with that record the president is attacking Mitt Romney for a successful career as a private equity investor at Bain Capital. Obama launched the first Bain attack ad Monday morning blaming Romney for the failure of a Kansas City steel company a failure that resulted in the loss of 750 jobs.
We view Mitt Romney as a job destroyer says one laid-off worker in the Obama ad.
Romney has long known the attack was coming. His campaign conducted a thorough study of all of Bains dealings while Romney was there; they feel confident that Romneys record of successes far outweighs the failures. Romney also had an ad of his own waiting on Monday featuring a steel mill that is thriving after Bain investments. And the Romney campaign took a hard look at those Obama investments.
In the general election Ill be pointing out that the president took the reins of General Motors and Chrysler closed factories closed dealerships laid off thousands and thousands of workers Mitt Romney said in January. He did it to try to save the business.
Thats the same sort of thing private equity investors do Romney says -- they just dont do it with taxpayer dollars as Obama has. And Romney supporters will likely emphasize that Obamas taxpayer-paid investments often went to people and organizations that contributed big money to Obamas campaign.
When youre in the private sector people make decisions based on profit and loss and whats going to create jobs and whats going to work Romney adviser Ed Gillespie told conservative reporters on a conference call Monday afternoon. When you have this level of government involvement in our economy you have things like Solyndra and the decisions relative to the auto layoffs and you dont have that transparency you dont know if theres political influence -- who gets a health care waiver from the mandate and who doesnt? -- and they still dont say how they make those decisions.
This crony capitalism ... is rampant in this administration and is a real problem Gillespie said and yes we are going to continue to talk about that.
Some Democrats seemed a bit taken aback at word that in addition to Solyndra the Romney campaign plans to hit Obama on the auto bailouts. Arent those a big success? Well the taxpayers investment still has not been paid off and the deal constituted a remarkable gift to some of Obamas top union supporters. In addition what some people dont remember is that as part of the bailouts Obama demanded the closure of hundreds and hundreds of auto dealerships across the country in what turned out to be a costly and often haphazard process.
President Obamas auto task force pressed General Motors and Chrysler to close scores of dealerships without adequately considering the jobs that would be lost or having a firm idea of the cost savings that would be achieved an audit of the process has concluded the New York Times reported in July 2010. The report ... estimated that tens of thousands of jobs were lost as a result.
Democrats argue that Romney invested to get rich while Obama did it to try to rescue the economy. But Romney can make a compelling case that Obama handed out taxpayer dollars to benefit Obamas own benefactors. If you were a big Obama bundler then a big green-energy loan guarantee might have been headed your way.
Romneys record at Bain is a perfectly legitimate topic for political argument since Romney has based a great deal of his candidacy on his success in business. But Obama is basing his candidacy on his own investments. And for the Romney campaign thats the issue of the campaign. Making sure Americans are aware of the presidents record is the top job of the campaign Ed Gillespie said Monday: Because hes not going to run on it but we are.
Byron York The Examiners chief political correspondent can be contacted at byork@washingtonexaminer.com.
