Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed has located John McCain’s 200-page opposition reasearch book on Mitt Romney. It’s embedded below.
I turned to the section on Bain, and at page 136 found this sentence:
Romney Served As CEO Of Bain Capital Through August 2001, Even Though He No Longer Ran Daily Operations. “Although he gave up running day-to-day operations at the venture capital firm in order to head the Salt Lake Winter Olympics, he remained CEO and held his financial interest in the company through August 2001.” (Stephanie Ebbert and Yvonne Abraham, “Camps Spar Over Romney Word Choice,” The Boston Globe, 10/31/02)
If accurate, that contradicts one of the key components in the WaPo Fact Check of King of Bain, in which WaPo exonerated Romney from any responsibility for the KB Toys deal because it closed in December 2000 “more than a year after Romney left for the Olympics.”
Let me know what you find of interest.
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“Romney has been criticized by experts for failing to deliver on issues of business development and economicgrowth after selling himself as the “CEO governor.”
The entire “Economic issues” section is devastating. Obama-lite he is.
And McCain endorsed this guy? Both are really in the tank. More than likely, both men are the puppets of the communist party and will do their bidding. Win-win for the communists.
That dog will hunt….
Your increasing zeal to take down Romney.
Not to say that there is not any damaging stuff out there, rather that your quest has entirely ignored all the damaging stuff on Gingrich. In other words, successfully taking down Romney in the primaries is far from your perceived certainty that Newt would win the General.
BTW, has Newt released his tax records?
He’s releasing them this week
So in other words, just like Mitt, Newt hasn’t released his tax records.
Unlike Mitt, he has clearly committed to releasing his tax returns as early as this week. Reading comprehension isn’t your strong point, is it?
“Your increasing zeal to take down Romney.”
Doug, did you protest so much about all the zeal to take down Newt in Iowa?
Who is Doug?
And do you know that the brunt of the negative ads run in Iowa were for Ron Paul’s campaign?
“In other words, successfully taking down Romney in the primaries is far from your perceived certainty that Newt would win the General.”
No more so than Romney taking down Gingrich would validate your perceived certainty that Mitt would win the General.
You see, not everyone buys your mantra of Mitt’s ‘Electability’. Better we examine his baggage now (just like all of the other candidates) instead of being ‘surprised’ later in the primaries.
Interesting comment given your previous ad hominem:
I have been a Palin supporter since early summer 2008 (that is right, since before she was McCain’s VP choice). But she is not in the race. As such, I chose Bachmann as the candidate that best represented my values and views. And she is gone as well. So I am stuck with four guys that have serious flaws. I have said on this site several times that I prefer Perry. I have also acknowledged that his flaws, while the least significant to the base, are the biggest liability in a general election.
20% of the voting population is familiar with the issues, 80% vote based upon visceral reactions. GWBush is too fresh in the minds of voters, and irrespective of how much better Rick Perry is than Bush, all the national media has to do in its quest to re-elect Obama, is to show clips of both speaking to torpedo Perry’s chance.
So while I know that any of the three remaining would be worlds better than our current occupier of the White House, I am not blind to the flaws within each. I am not a Romney supporter, as I am not a Santorum nor a Gingrich supporter. Quite frankly, I am not what so many here are, a fanboy of one candidate (nor an anti-Mormon bigot as a few here are).
All of our likely candidates have serious flaws that will upset the base. All our likely candidates have superficial flaws that will be hammered upon by the media. I recognize Romney’s flaws, but this site and many of the commenters here refuse to acknowledge that Gingrich’s flaws are just as problematic in winning the White House.
Well, that’s nice and all, but what does that have to do with your sneering remarks to the good professor?
Gingrich’s baggage is quite well known. That baggage has been acknowledged many times by folks posting here and, more importantly, by our host – Professor Jacobson.
What does tend to ‘irk’ people is that Romney has baggage as well, but the pundits and the establishment studiously avoid examination of that baggage. Frankly, it is baggage that, IMHO, makes him the weakest possible candidate against Barack Obama. From what I’ve read, a good deal of the folks that comment here feel much the same way.
And, as to what you refer to as an ad hominem… well, I call it an observation based upon what you’ve been posting.
So far, I’ve seen little evidence to refute that.
“Not to say that there is not any damaging stuff out there, rather that your quest has entirely ignored all the damaging stuff on Gingrich. In other words, successfully taking down Romney in the primaries is far from your perceived certainty that Newt would win the General.”
Newt isn’t the one who’s being pushed as the inevitable candidate. And why shouldn’t we try (in vain or not) to take Romney down if he’s for all intents as purposes about as “progressive” as Obama?
Fitting that Mittens went on mission to France.
I very much appreciate the proffesor’s efforts to head off disaster, but the truth of Mitt Romney’s unfitness to turn the tide against the statist scourge that is destroying this country is really quite simple: HE WAS GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS. It really is just that simple. Non-statists do not get elected to this office.
Thats a good point. I also like the ability to blame situational ethics when I am found to be a bastard.
we all know the where you are is more important then the who you are.
“HE WAS GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS. It really is just that simple. Non-statists do not get elected to this office.”
Neither do conservatives. I maintain that the question any conservative voter should ask themselves when considering Romney as a candidate is, “how did he manage to get elected Governor of a deep blue state like Massachusetts?”
Two points..
1. Romney seems close to having as many positions, as the Kama Sutra.
2. Should Obama dump Biden, he could pick Romney and not miss a beat.
I have got to add an “AMEN!” to this one.
Scanning through the portion on RomneyCare, it’s now more clear why he failed to divorce himself from that boondoggle. To paraphrase Anthony Weiner, he and the bill are one.
Yep, Romney probably was an effective Massachusetts Governor, considering that’s a very liberal state.
But, seriously, Romney is just slightly to the right of Senator Lieberman, generally speaking, except the Senator has a better grasp on foreign policy, IMHAO, than does Governor Romney.
If it weren’t for Romney’s lack of a foreign policy background, I’d almost believe he would have been a Scoop Jackson Democrat back in the day.
[…] Romney January 17, 2012 There have been hints of this out there for ages. Tonight, via Legal Insurrection, comes the “official” John McCain 2008 opposition research on Mitt Romney. The Pink […]
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The file did not mention the ethical issue that arose when Romney sat on the Board of Staples and the company decided to buy a Bain business, Claricom Networks, that went bankrupt:
STAPLES DEAL HIGHLIGHTS CONFLICTS WHEN VCS SERVE ON BOARDS ROMNEY SAT OUT 1998 VOTE TO BUY PHONE COMPANY: [THIRD EDITION]
Healy, Beth. Boston Globe [Boston, Mass] 03 June 2002: C.1.
It was late 1998, .. it [Staples Board] urged Staples founder and chairman Tom Stemberg to .. buy a telephone company.
Romney, until recently a Staples director and member of the board’s executive committee, could not advise Stemberg on the pros and cons of entering the red-hot telecom sector. Instead, Romney recused himself from all discussions about the proposed deal because he had a conflict of interest: The company Staples wanted to buy was owned by Bain Capital ..
Bain did well in the $140 million deal. So did Romney, earning about $100,000 from his share of the profits. Staples shareholders did not: The transaction was written off as a total loss two years later, after the telecom boom went bust.
The deal is not one Romney brags about these days .. Romney acknowledged he faced a conflict when Staples proposed buying Claricom Networks, but said he acted appropriately by sitting out all talks on the matter, advising neither Staples nor Bain.
A third option Romney could have chosen was to forgo taking any personal profits in the deal. But Romney … didn’t consider the $100,000 in the Claricom deal to be “material,” according to two former Bain partners who requested anonymity.
“Inasmuch as he took the profit in the transaction, ethically he was a transgressor,” said Robert Ash, a lecturer on business ethics and former chief executive of Fleet Investment Management, where he oversaw $42 billion in investments.
The file did not mention Dade Behring:
“The main story line of the article is that Romney conducted a turnaround of Dade beginning in 1994, which sucked the company dry. The turnaround worked out well for Romney and Bain Capital: it extracted $242 million, a return that was eight times its initial investment, plus fees of $100 million. The process worked out less well for others: it drove the company into bankruptcy in 2002 and destroyed some 1,700 jobs in the USA.”
……..
“The deals were structured to make money for Bain Capital
What is interesting about the Dade story is that Romney structured the deal in ways that almost guaranteed that he and his partners would come out ahead.
Thus Bain Capital and a small group of investors, including Goldman Sachs [GS], bought Dade in 1994 with mostly borrowed money, limiting their risk. Bain extracted cash from the company in various ways. For a start, they paid themselves nearly $100 million in fees, first for buying the company and then for helping to run it. In this way, even if Romney and his colleagues had lost their entire investment of $30 million, they would still have come out ahead.
In 1999, in the absence of a satisfactory offer for the purchase of Dade, Romney had Dade take on loans so that it could buy out half the shareholders. As a result, Bain extracted $242 million out of the business shortly before it went bankrupt.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/14/was-romneys-turnaround-of-dade-a-triumph-or-a-smoking-gun/
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/us/politics/after-mitt-romney-deal-company-showed-profits-and-then-layoffs.html?_r=1
It’s called “Capitalism”, folks. And just how does KB Toys compare to Solyndra and Fast and Furious? And the others to come. Why not focus on those scandals?
“And just how does KB Toys compare to Solyndra and Fast and Furious? And the others to come. Why not focus on those scandals?”
Because Barack Obama isn’t running for the Republican nomination.
It’s called ‘vetting the candidate’. It’s kind of what we’re supposed to do during the primary season.
The file did not address the use of offshore tax havens by Bain:
Island tax havens factor into Romney’s business success
“While in private business, Mitt Romney utilized shell companies in two offshore tax havens to help eligible investors avoid paying U.S. taxes, federal and state records show.
Romney gained no personal tax benefit from the legal operations in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. But aides to the Republican presidential hopeful and former colleagues acknowledged that the tax-friendly jurisdictions helped attract billions of additional investment dollars to Romney’s former company, Bain Capital, and thus boosted profits for Romney and his partners.”
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-na-mittoffshore17dec17,0,3457481.story
The point is that he didn’t receive a tax benefit, but he did make money from it.
Another issue the file did not address is Mitt Romney’s Management Style:
The Romney Economy
… “Their new firm reflected some aspects of Romney’s own personality: his mania for detail and for process. He was a cautious executive. “Mitt was always worried that things weren’t going to work out–he never took big risks,” one of his colleagues told me. “Everything was very measurable. I think Mitt had a tremendous amount of insecurity and fear of failure.” Romney never worked from any particular “macro theme,” any philosophy of how the economy was moving. What he employed instead was an exhausting habit of playing devil’s advocate, proposing sequential objections to a particular project or idea, until eventually, through a kind of Darwinian process, consensus was reached. “I never viewed Mitt as very decisive,” says one of his Bain Capital colleagues. “The idea was that if there’s enough argument around an issue by bright people, ultimately the data will prevail.” Romney may have been, as another early Bain Capital partner puts it, a “very case-by-case, reactive thinker,” but he was also an extremely hard worker and an egalitarian boss.”
http://nymag.com/news/politics/mitt-romney-2011-10/
boy his legal appointments (judges, etc) are horrifying.
starts at approx page 38.
“boy his legal appointments (judges, etc) are horrifying.”
Yeah, you can pretty much say that about his entire tenure as Governor. If he gets hit about it, he’ll just push back with his usual schtick… talk around the question and, if pressed, blame it all on a Dem dominated legislature.
What is glaring to me every time he says that is that he apparently made no effort to advance any conservative agenda at all, even if he knew it would get pushed back. I mean, jeez…. how can you say you’re conservative if you never tried to advance or defend conservatism when you where in a position of power?
[…] Research January 18, 2012 There have been hints of this out there for ages. Tonight, via Legal Insurrection, comes the “official” John McCain 2008 opposition research on Mitt Romney. The Pink […]
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[…] Years January 19, 2012 There have been hints of this out there for ages. Tonight, via Legal Insurrection, comes the “official” John McCain 2008 opposition research on Mitt Romney. The Pink […]
[…] Reform? January 19, 2012 There have been hints of this out there for ages. Tonight, via Legal Insurrection, comes the “official” John McCain 2008 opposition research on Mitt Romney. The Pink […]