For months the Obama 2012 campaign has been leveling attacks on Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney based on false reports about his time at Bain Capital.
Neutral fact-checkers from a variety of major news organizations have repeatedly debunked these claims, but the Obama campaign hasn’t seemed to notice.
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The latest incarnation of the Bain Capital verbal assaults focus on whether Mitt Romney may have been involved with Bain Capital after 1999. Despite the extensive paper evidence that Romney left to manage the Olympics in 1999 and corroboration from most of the people working for Bain Capital at the time, the Obama campaign continues to pursue this line of attack.
The truth is simple. Romney left Bain Capital in 1999 to run the Olympics. Romney had zero involvement with day to day operations after 1999, but because of SEC requirements his name remained on certain documents for several years. This reality is backed up by overwhelming evidence and testimony. So the question becomes why exactly does the Obama campaign continue making these accusations?
Today we received the answer to that question.
Obama’s deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter accidentally revealed the campaign’s strategy this morning on CBS’ Face the Nation.
“What American understands that you don’t bear any responsibility for the decisions that were made at that company if you’re at the head of it?” Cutter told the show’s host Bob Schieffer.
Ignoring the irony of this statement coming from a surrogate of a President who has blamed everything from ATM’s to bad weather for economic failures during his presidency, Cutter is making clear that the Obama campaign is assuming that Americans won’t understand that simply being listed as CEO on some documents is not the equivalent to actually participating in the company.
Either the Obama campaign is clueless about how such companies operate, or they are knowingly being dishonest to confuse the American people. The likely scenario is that the Obama 2012 campaign is counting on Americans getting confused by the details of their attacks.
It is understandable that President Obama would not want to focus on an economic record that includes 41 straight months of unemployment at above 8 percent, but that does not excuse the type of deceitful campaign he is now running. Politics is a rough profession, but that doesn’t mean known falsehoods and baseless conspiracy theories should be fair game for a presidential campaign – especially from a sitting President.
The candidate that ran on ‘Hope’ and ‘Change’ in 2008 is now running an entire campaign based on attacks and distortions. This isn’t what the American people thought they were signing up for when they electing Barack Obama in 2008. We deserve better.
