Mitt Romney has a jobs problem, that is he made a fortune firing people. Not only did he take over companies and fire employees, he took government money to do it all the while pocketing millions for himself. Yesterday an unaired commercial from Ted Kennedy’s 1994 Senate campaign against Romney was released. Take a look:
Romney has been relatively unscathed so far in the presidential race. Most criticism has been directed as his evil socialist healthcare plan. His jobs record may be more of a problem.
Romney’s 2012 foes are starting to deploy the same attack lines Kennedy used 17 years ago. When Romney criticized President Barack Obama over last week’s bleak unemployment report, Obama adviser David Axelrod shot back on Twitter: “In business, Romney made a fortune firing American workers. As governor, 47th in job creation.”
Earlier this spring, Republican Donald Trump became the first presidential aspirant to attack Romney’s record in the open, dismissing him as “a funds guy” who would “buy companies, he’d close companies, he’d get rid of the jobs.”
I have no doubt that Michele Bachmann will not be afraid to go in for the kill. That’s the nice thing about having no underlying ideology. You don’t even have to be self-consistent.
“There’s no question that should Mitt Romney become the nominee of the party, there’s going to be a line of attack opened up on him that’s not dissimilar to that Ted Kennedy used in their Senate battle,” said Steve Schmidt, who managed John McCain’s 2008 general election campaign. Still, he predicted that the public would view Romney as a “credible and effective spokesman for economic growth.”
Said Schmidt: “The effectiveness of the attacks is likely to be diminished because of the severity of the crisis we’re in.”
I’m not sure what Schmidt is smoking but the depth of the current crisis won’t diminish the power of the attack. Romney would run as the alternative to Obama. The alternative is a CEO who fired a bunch of people? Thanks, but no thanks.