Mitt's misery, in a word: Bain - POLITICO.com Print View

Mitt's misery, in a word: Bain By: Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman January 22, 2012 06:40 PM EST

COLUMBIA, S.C. – The verdict is in: Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital problem is real. Of all the forces that converged to doom Romney in Saturday’s South Carolina primary, none may be as disconcerting for Republicans as the attacks on Romney’s private equity work – an offensive that caught Romney off-guard and triggered a damaging conversation about his vast personal wealth. Even as Romney blasted his assailants – Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich and a pro-Gingrich super PAC – as anti-capitalism, he also left sympathetic GOP elites agog with a series of missteps that bolstered the charge that he’s an out-of-touch mega-millionaire. Rather than cheerfully giving a detailed account of his Bain career, as he sees it, Romney grumbled in one debate that it was “strange, on a stage like this with Republicans, having to describe how private equity and venture capital work.” He fumbled questions about whether he’d release his tax returns, gave shifting answers on how many jobs he’d helped create and told a crowd earlier this month that he liked being able to fire service providers. Now, the Bain issue is front and center, wrapping up an array of Democratic and Republican criticisms of Romney in a neat, single-syllable package. And as Romney seeks to regroup from his weekend defeat, Republicans are asking: why wasn’t he better prepared to handle all this? “As a result of his post-New Hampshire problems and the South Carolina results, Gov. Romney will get better on Bain and tighten up on taxes or he won’t be our nominee,” said Republican strategist Tucker Eskew, a veteran of South Carolina politics. “By the same perspective, Speaker Gingrich will be challenged going into Florida to defend some of the issues he hasn’t yet nailed down, like Freddie Mac. Republicans are trying to settle on our lead warrior and we aren’t there yet.” South Carolina political hand Richard Quinn, a former John McCain and Jon Huntsman adviser, said the combination of Bain and Romney’s tax returns had voters asking: “Where has he made all this money? Where’s he got it? What’s he hiding?” “This guy is the poster boy for the kind of campaign that Barack Obama is prepared to wage,” said Quinn, who supported Gingrich in the last days of the South Carolina race. “He started out with this brand as the flip-flopper who they don’t really trust … On top of that, the newer criticisms of him were fed by those images of him saying things like, ‘I like to fire people.’ Everybody understands it was taken out of context, but in politics context doesn’t matter.” Romney’s camp sees the Bain debate quite differently: far from a drag on their candidate, Romney strategists contend that the former Massachusetts governor cemented his status as the pro-growth candidate in the race through his duel with Gingrich and Perry. While South Carolina didn’t turn out as the Romney camp had hoped, they say the private equity fight leaves Gingrich on territory that will be exceedingly difficult to defend over a long GOP primary. “As a result of the attacks, the governor emerged as the premier defender of free enterprise in a Republican primary, which is a pretty good place to be,” said Romney adviser Kevin Madden. “Grassroots conservatives and top conservative leaders all rallied to Romney’s defense. Newt’s attacks on this issue will be part of his eventual demise. Newt demonstrated both his hypocrisy and his volatility by attacking capitalism one minute and then standing there with a, ‘Who, me?’ look on his face the next.” Romney himself framed the debate over Bain as a fight between capitalism and anti-capitalism in remarks to supporters Saturday night. Without specifically referring to Bain, Romney urged Republicans not to reward “those who pick up the weapons of the left.” “If Republican leaders want to join this president in demonizing success and disparaging conservative values, then they’re not going to be fit to be our nominee,” Romney said. Public polling gives only an inconclusive picture of the Bain attacks’ direct impact in South Carolina: in a POLITICO poll taken the week before the primary, only 15 percent of voters in the state said they were less likely to support Romney because of Bain. Twelve percent said Romney’s time at Bain nudged them somewhat or strongly toward voting for him. And while there was an income gap in South Carolina exit polls – Romney fared better with upper-income voters than with lower-income voters – that’s a phenomenon that’s shown up elsewhere, before the Bain attacks occurred. But sources also said data for at least one campaign showed the Bain attacks taking a bit of the job-creator sheen off Romney as they raised questions about his business experience and left Romney answering in hazy terms. “It gave people pause about his chief area of strength, his business experience, which he had failed to explain beyond ‘I created 100,000 jobs,’ or ‘I had a successful career in the private sector,’” one source said. Even in Romney’s circle, there’s a level of concern about whether the former Massachusetts governor has made it too easy for opponents to cast him as a cold, secretive Howard Hughes type. Other Republicans are privately incredulous over Romney’s awkward response to the mockery of his wealth and criticism of his private equity background. Despite the attacks on his record, Romney has yet to give an in-depth explanation to voters – in accessible, layman’s terms – of what exactly he did as the head of Bain Capital. Beyond aligning himself with “free enterprise” in general and ticking off the names of companies Bain invested in, Romney has not made his claim to creating jobs digestible for most voters. That’s made him vulnerable, strategists say, to being caricatured as a Gordon Gekko figure – an attack that may be less resonant among free market-loving Republicans, but that nevertheless underscores Romney’s wealth and lack of relatability. “If attacking Romney on private equity and for paying a lower tax rate had worked, Rick Perry would have gained traction and would still be in the race,” argued one Republican operative supporting Romney, alluding to Perry’s attacks on Romney as a “vulture capitalist.” Still, the strategist said: “The disturbing part of all of this is that these attacks were all desperate attempts by flailing candidates and yet they were enough to take Romney off his game, not because they worked, but because he was unprepared. This will prolong the inevitable and will hopefully make Romney a stronger candidate for the general, but this is a little surprising.” It remains to be seen whether Bain Capital, per se, will continue to be a target in the GOP primary. It’s not a risk-free attack for Republicans: internal polling for multiple campaigns showed that when the pro-Gingrich super PAC Winning our Future began its Bain offensive, Gingrich took a hit to his numbers along with Romney. But the whole range of Bain-related issues – Romney’s business record, his job-creation claims and personal wealth – is especially significant because of its role in a potential general election. Democrats have signaled they intend to wage an aggressive campaign to discredit Romney on the economy. Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said the GOP primary was pointing the way. “We applaud success, but his record, which he’s hung his candidacy on, of being a corporate raider, and of essentially coming into communities, devastating the local economy, shutting down plants, deliberately bankrupting companies and shipping jobs overseas is not one that voters are embracing,” the Florida congresswoman said. “I think probably the whole thing is more resonant [in a general election] than in a primary. I have to tell you, I was a little bit surprised that the Bain record is resonating in the primary, too.” Rick Tyler, the former Gingrich spokesman and Winning Our Future strategist, said he had absolutely no doubt the Bain ads played a role in paving the way for a Newt-versus-Mitt fight in South Carolina. “They were part of the equation. They wouldn’t have worked just on their own, but they created the opportunity for the Romney camp to make misstep after misstep. And they also created the opportunity for Newt to shine,” Tyler said. “Mitt Romney showed his weaknesses and Newt showed his strengths. We helped create the environment that allowed that to happen.” Tyler wouldn’t say whether the ads will make another appearance in Florida – a state, like South Carolina, where Bain Capital was involved in unsuccessful business ventures. But he noted: “There’s already lots of stories in Florida – the Miami Herald seems to be doing its job about companies in Florida that went belly-up under Bain. Maybe we inspired the media to actually dig deeper.” Romney supporters, too, are looking to Florida’s Jan. 31 as a clearer test case on Bain, as the campaign will be fought across a wider stretch of political ground and Romney will have more time to find his footing and respond. “I don’t think this South Carolina result is necessarily a trend about what’s working and what’s not,” said Republican wise man Charlie Black, who supports Romney. “We’ll see a lot more in Florida where you’ve got a more diverse constituency.”

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Mitt's misery, in a word: Bain - POLITICO.com Print View