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Special report: Romney's steel skeleton in the Bain closet (Here we go)
Reuters ^ | January 6, 2011 | Andy Sullivan and Greg Roumeliotis

Posted on 01/06/2012 11:46:25 AM PST by C19fan

It was funny at first.

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. Gaping up at the cranes that swung 10-foot cast iron buckets through the air. Jumping at the thunder from the melt shop's electric-arc furnace as it turned scrap metal into lava.

"They looked like a bunch of high school kids to me. A bunch of Wall Street preppies," says Jim Linson, an electronics repairman who worked at the plant for 40 years. "They came in, they were in awe."

(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...


TOPICS: Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: bain; baincapital; romney
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It has begun. Edward Kennedy and his buddies in the Boston media used the same playbook to pummel Romney back in 1994.
1 posted on 01/06/2012 11:46:36 AM PST by C19fan
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To: C19fan

Folks on “our side” who tell us that Rombama is the most electable are ignoring this stuff.


2 posted on 01/06/2012 11:50:57 AM PST by Grunthor (Mitt.....Obama without the tan.)
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To: C19fan
If Romney is the nominee, it plays straight into the left's hands. When they portray the GOP as a rich white guy's club, Romney could be their posterboy.

Add to this that his biggest contributors are almost all "too big to fail" Wall Street types, the caricature is complete.

No to Romney.
3 posted on 01/06/2012 11:51:01 AM PST by Antoninus (Defeat Romney--Defeat Obama.)
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To: C19fan

Bain + Preppy Pro-War Draft-Dodger = Huge 0bama win. As surely as night follows day.


4 posted on 01/06/2012 11:51:31 AM PST by Lou Budvis (Not Romney. Not Now. Not in November.)
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To: C19fan

Better that it come out now, before he gets nominated.


5 posted on 01/06/2012 11:52:49 AM PST by dfwgator
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To: C19fan

Well, Obama can’t talk, the venture capital firm that he co-founded and the steel mill that he purchased to try and make money...oh, wait, that’s right, he’s never done any of those things, he’s never had a real private sector job. Nevermind.


6 posted on 01/06/2012 11:53:07 AM PST by americanophile ("this absurd theology of an immoral Bedouin, is a rotting corpse which poisons our lives" - Ataturk)
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To: Grunthor

Romney needs to release the details of his Bain deal.


7 posted on 01/06/2012 11:55:20 AM PST by tennmountainman
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To: C19fan

Romney is the poster boy for all that Obama’s occupy protesters scream about. If Mitt wins the nom, they will occupy him.


8 posted on 01/06/2012 12:00:14 PM PST by RoosterRedux
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To: C19fan
""They looked like a bunch of high school kids to me. A bunch of Wall Street preppies," says Jim Linson, an electronics repairman who worked at the plant for 40 years. "They came in, they were in awe."

Not in support of Romney but just to comment on this sort of observation. There are all kinds of jobs and I wonder how the average steelmill worker would fare on a wall street trading floor or in a backroom with a few hundred excel spreadsheets to analyze. The great white shark is a pretty tough predator; drop him in Death Valley and the worms will feast. Tough and capable is usually a matter of where

9 posted on 01/06/2012 12:02:30 PM PST by muir_redwoods (No wonder this administration favors abortion; everything they have done is an abortion)
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To: C19fan

Then let’s have the principled argument of capitalism versus socialism and the role of government. I don’t see any reason we should be afraid or or back away from that fight. Obama’s the one who wants to lay off thousands by cutting DoD and he’s the one who invested in Solyndra and the Chevy Volt. Bring it on!


10 posted on 01/06/2012 12:03:39 PM PST by rhombus
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To: C19fan

I remember all the “buy it, loot it, shut it down” games that were perpetrated by folks like Mittens. The press and the Dems haven’t forgotten either.

With the economy in the bucket leading up to the next election, there will be no shortage of real people that lost their retirement to appear on Obama’s re-election ads. Many will blame Mittens personally for ruining their lives.

The GOP race is playing right into oBama’s hand, all according to plan.


11 posted on 01/06/2012 12:03:39 PM PST by wrench
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To: C19fan
I guess the media can't wait for the primaries to end like they had planned.

The silver lining here is maybe the Ann Coulters etc will stop telling us Romney is the only electable candidate on the GOP side when they see he's just as vulnerable to media attacks as the others.

12 posted on 01/06/2012 12:04:49 PM PST by skeeter
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To: All
This story will be pounded into the Midwest states until every voter will be able to repeat it in their sleep.

There is no way in hell Romney can take states like Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Kansas, Missouri...with this albatross around his neck.

Then there's Romney's Southern state problems...

This election will be over the second Republicans make him the nominee. It won't even be close.
13 posted on 01/06/2012 12:06:06 PM PST by j_k_l
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To: muir_redwoods

Louis: [approaching the New York Commodities Exchange] Think big, think positive, never show any sign of weakness. Always go for the throat. Buy low, sell high. Fear? That’s the other guy’s problem. Nothing you have ever experienced will prepare you for the absolute carnage you are about to witness. Super Bowl, World Series - they don’t know what pressure is. In this building, it’s either kill or be killed. You make no friends in the pits and you take no prisoners. One minute you’re up half a million in soybeans and the next, boom, your kids don’t go to college and they’ve repossessed your Bentley. Are you with me?

Billy Ray: Yeah, we got to kill the motherf... - we got to kill ‘em!


14 posted on 01/06/2012 12:06:29 PM PST by dfwgator
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To: C19fan

The Bain stuff doesn bug me as much as the preppy pro-war draft dodger. Mormon missionary crap got them out of Vietnam? Just damn.


15 posted on 01/06/2012 12:07:34 PM PST by montag813
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To: muir_redwoods

Got that right.


16 posted on 01/06/2012 12:08:52 PM PST by stuartcr ("In this election year of 12, how deep into their closets will we delve?")
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To: j_k_l

Oh Mittens will take Michigan his daddy was gov there.


17 posted on 01/06/2012 12:10:06 PM PST by US Navy Vet (Go Packers! Go Rockies! Go Boston Bruins! See, I'm "Diverse"!)
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To: skeeter

“I guess the media can’t wait for the primaries to end like they had planned.”

Just like how the MSM still was fawning over McCain until it was pretty he clinched the nomination they the turned against him on a dime.


18 posted on 01/06/2012 12:11:11 PM PST by C19fan
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To: C19fan
No surprises, here. Reuters is leading the left-wing charge against the man they consider the putative Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney. He co-founded an investment firm, the firm had many successes and made tens of millions in the process. Romney naturally profited too and is very wealthy, today. So what?

The Reuters hit piece goes out of it's way to ignore the thousands of jobs Bain's investments made possible and focuses on a specific failure that left some blue-collar workers with no job and no money, never considering that had Romney's company not invested in the now-defunct steel mill, the same thing would have happened to the workers, only much sooner. The focus of the article, that Romney and his firm made big money on the deal while workers were left out in the cold, is technically accurate but ignores the reality that the workers were always totally vulnerable to being laid off, with or without Bain and that the money Romney and his firm made did not come from the pockets of the displaced workers. You'll never read that in a Reuters article about a GOP presidential candidate.

I can't stand Mitt Romney and think he's a total phony but this kind of attack, characterizing Romney as the fabulously rich businessman making millions while poor blue collar workers get the shaft was always going to be the Democrat's meme if Romney was nominated. It was the rationale for 'Occupy Wall Street' because Romney is 'Wall Street'. He's a target for Obama's class warfare approach to governing and campaigning, forgive the redundancy. Another reason why Romney is unacceptable to conservatives. Not only are his policies and ideology wrong but all his 'moderation' won't mean squat once the leftmedia begins it's 24/7 campaign to get Barack Obama, the worst president in modern times, re-elected. They can't use Obama's achievements because he doesn't have any. Well, maybe 'ObamaCare', which most Americans hate, so that won't work. Oh, wait. Obama did authorize the Navy SEALS to assassinate Osama bin Laden. There's that. Not much else.

Leaving the left only one option: make the election about the Republican, not Obama. I'm not at all convinced that strategy will work, no matter who the nominee turns out to be but Mitt Romney is like a gift to the Obama campaign - and a threat to conservatives who cannot accept more-of- the-same-under-a-different-label in Washington. Romney must not win the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. He'll lose to Obama.

19 posted on 01/06/2012 12:12:44 PM PST by Jim Scott
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To: C19fan

The irony is that if there is one part of Romney’s record where he truly is better than the other candidates, its his running of Bain. As the article points out, Romney was hugely successful at Bain and the success came from growing companies for the most part — creating jobs. Reuters picked out one bad investment to pound on, which is what I am sure the Dems will do to.


20 posted on 01/06/2012 12:16:32 PM PST by Opinionated Blowhard ("When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.")
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