Judging from the intensity and frequency of Democratic attacks, you'd think the general election was just around the corner and Mitt Romney was officially the Republican presidential nominee.
Actually, the election is 10 months away and the GOP has a long way to go before it selects its challenger. But the Democratic National Committee is hammering away at Romney as if there were no tomorrow. The effort is designed to define the former Massachusetts governor as an untrustworthy flip-flopper who doesn't represent everyday Americans. And it indicates that the folks who run the Democratic party and President Obama's re-election campaign believe Romney will ultimately be their opponent in 2012.
[See a slide show of 10 issues driving Obama's re-election campaign.]
The DNC's latest technique is to quote workers who were adversely affected by the policies of Romney-influenced companies in the past. The goal is to portray him as uncaring and interested more in corporate profits than workers' welfare.
The DNC sent reporters a summary of an ABC News interview with Rudy Johnson, identified as "a labor organizer who was laid off in 1992 by Ampad, a company run by Bain Capital under Mitt Romney." Johnson complained that the Romney approach to business success was severe downsizing that cost many people their jobs at the factory where he worked in Marion, Ind.
[See a collection of political cartoons on Mitt Romney.]
The DNC also sent reporters a memo blasting Romney from R.T. Rybak, DNC vice chairman, and Sue Dvorsky, chairwoman of the Iowa Democratic party. "With less than a week to go until the Iowa caucuses on January 3, Mitt Romney has returned to the state to make his closing arguments to Iowa voters," the memo says. The party leaders go on to condemn Romney's "17-year political career of waffling on the issues and decisions that have left the middle class behind, his continued support of policies that threaten our economic recovery, and a concerted effort to rewrite history so that working families in Iowa and across the country don't realize how truly out of touch Mitt Romney is."
Rybak and Dvorsky say Romney is "a former corporate buyout specialist for Bain Capital who made a fortune firing thousands of workers, cutting benefits, bankrupting American companies and outsourcing jobs overseas" and he "now supports an economic plan that would roll back financial reform and let Wall Street write its own rules again."
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Conrad Shull of PA 3:00PM December 29, 2011
dom youngross of OH 11:58AM December 29, 2011