Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Saturday, July 14, 2012

And Now Obama Brings The Bain-Pain


Holy Smackdown, Batman.

As someone (I think Josh Marshall) out it earlier today, we're not used to a Democratic politician playing hardball like this.  This is going to cause caterwauling among the punditry, which as DougJ points out, means you're winning.

Romney has won exactly ONE race in his life, unless you count beating The Blessed Sweater Vest of the Virgin Mary and the Lumpen Remains of Newt Gingrich's Ego for the GOP nomination.

He's getting plastered on this, which - as Krugman points out - is entirely fair and appropriate.  The attacks on Bain are really attacks on his policies, which would dramatically slash the safety net and redistribute wealth upwards.  How is that different from laying off workers to pad Bain's bottom line?

Earlier, I said that Romney was the worst possible candidate to run against Obama and Obamacare, because it was basically Romneycare.  It is also worth noting that sending a private equity vulture capitalist out to run during the tail end of the worst fiscal crisis and unemployment crash since the 1930s was also less than deft.

Gingrich played around with these attacks in March and was called to the curb by the GOP mandarins.  But the problem is that Obama was always going to make these attacks.  This is how you beat Mitt Romney, who has all the empathy of a ballpeen hammer.

Romney whining for an apology for hurting his fee-fees is the weakest response possible.

If we had a functioning, adversarial press corps (where have you gone Mike Wallace?) Romney would be trailing by 15 points...

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