Obama campaign slams Romney for "Swiss bank account"
Updated at 9:50 a.m. ET
(CBS News) Less than a week after proclaiming the start of the general presidential election, President Obama's re-election team is unveiling its first negative ad campaign specifically targeting the presumptive Republican nominee, Mitt Romney.
Obama for America's new ad, called "Swiss Bank Account," casts Romney as a corporate raider more interested in building up profits than the nation's economy. It also takes on the conservative group Americans for Prosperity and the oil industry.
The 30-second spot begins by defending Mr. Obama's record on energy investments against the charges Americans for Prosperity made in a $6 million ad buy. "President Obama's clean energy initiatives have helped create jobs for projects across America, not overseas," a narrator says as the ad shows a map of where energy investments have created jobs.
"What about Mitt Romney?" the narrator continues. "As a corporate CEO, he shipped American jobs to places like Mexico and China."
Then, taking a page right out of Newt Gingrich's primary playbook, the ad hits Romney for failing to initially disclose a Swiss bank account in his financial disclosure reports. "It's just what you expect from a guy who had a Swiss Bank Account," the narrator says.
The ad will air in the swing states of Virginia, Ohio and Iowa. A senior campaign official told CBS News it is a significant buy that will air on broadcast.
While the Obama campaign isn't wasting any time going negative, they're also rolling out a positive campaign message. Yesterday, the Obama team unveiled a seven-minute video called "Forward," focusing on the president's accomplishments so far, which it plans to play during the president's first campaign rallies over the weekend.
The Romney campaign on Tuesday responded to the Obama ad, calling it part of "a series of sideshows."
"Unable to defend his failed record of 23 million Americans struggling for work, wasteful boondoggles like Solyndra, skyrocketing national debt, and unacceptably high energy prices, President Obama has once again resorted to attacking Mitt Romney," Romney campaign spokesperson Amanda Henneberg said in a statement. "The American people have suffered enough over the last three years and deserve better."
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But it's been pretty clear for some time that you abhor facts which get in the way of your diatribes. It is actually a fact that you make most of your stuff up.
This must mean the powers that be are terribly frightened and this was a HUGE success. This is only the beginning, look for nationwide actions against Banking Against America (BofA) next Wednesday May 9.
Helping retired people or badly maimed veterans with their health care needs isn't "efficient." If you were a businessperson, you'd do anything to keep those veterans out of your hospital -- especially if you had never been in the service like romney.
It's not the job of a businessman to feel sad about the consequences of cutbacks for your marriage, your employees, your grandma, or your community. But it should be the president's job. The inherently destructive nature of a dynamic market economy means that lots of people are suffering on any given day thanks to forces beyond their control.
While romney's strength is that he understands those forces better than most, his weakness is that he doesn't understand the suffering being born with a gold spoon stuck up his nether region, nor does he care like many of the top 1%.
At Bain Capital, mitt romney was a cold, ruthless destroyer of jobs and families -- someone America does not need in the White House.
Indeed, the gingrich-tied documentary, 'King of Bain: When Mitt Romney Came to Town,' explicitly opens with an homage to free-market capitalism as the bringer of all good things. The idea is to build a distinction between the good kind of businessman, the one who launches and grows firms, creating new products and jobs and opportunities, and the evil, romney-style businessman, who makes millions by raiding and looting.
Coming up with an idea, raising funds, building a factory, and beginning to sell products is one, often admirable, way to get rich.
That's a noble American, job-creating business venture.
Undertaking a leveraged buyout of an existing firm, shutting down a bunch of its plants, reorganizing it, and then flipping the restructured entity to new owners is very different. One creates jobs, one kills them.
One is noble, the other squalid. One builds firms, the other loots them.
This only proves that willard romney is totally evil and should be thrown to the curb by the American people as quickly as possible!
And despite your own denial, it's a good example of parroting the fox/rush propaganda trying to protect the corporate raider!
Here's just one example of many:
Special report: Romney's steel skeleton in the Bain closet
The young men in business suits, gingerly picking their way among the millwrights, machinists and pipefitters at Kansas City's Worldwide Grinding Systems steel mill.
Apparently they liked what they saw. Soon after, in October 1993, Bain Capital, co-founded by Mitt Romney, became majority shareholder in a steel mill that had been operating since 1888.
Less than a decade later, the mill was padlocked and some 750 people lost their jobs. Workers were denied the severance pay and health insurance they'd been promised, and their pension benefits were cut by as much as $400 a month.
What's more, a federal government insurance agency had to pony up $44 million to bail out the company's underfunded pension plan. Nevertheless, Bain profited on the deal, receiving $12 million on its $8 million initial investment and at least $4.5 million in consulting fees.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/06/us-campaign-romney-bailout-idUSTRE8050LL20120106
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Vulture capitalism is a proven fact by corporate raider mitt romney!
He got wealthy at the expense of American jobs!
Typical chickenhawk republican talking out of both sides of his mouth!
Prove my statement above wrong, or just admit that willard romney was a GREEDY vulture capitalist, bankrupting companies after raiding their assets for his own personal wealth, and sending those livable wage jobs overseas.
Do your own research instead of swallowing the usual right-wing propaganda from fox and rush and then making sill attacks here, since romney's history at Bain Capital is public knowledge -- how some of his investments have killed jobs, and the disingenuous statistics his campaign is now using to inflate his record.
LOL!
Funny how the conservitard republicans never miss a chance to pat themselves on the back in the most arrogant posts, and it seems none of them watch the fox political network or listen to rush according to them, but parrot the same propaganda day in and day out.
The #2 Axiom of American politics is: "if you can't convince with facts, dazzle with bull crap." And, an old adage is: "arguing politics is like wrestling with pigs, you both get dirty and the pigs enjoy it."
Beware voters, the spin doctors are afoot ... it's an election year don't you know ...