Romney, you got some 'splaining to do...

[Scooter]

And that would be another non-answer that would keep the story alive through several more news cycles. Congratulations, you've just mired your candidate in even deeper quicksand.

[Econoline]

What I really really really don't get is that if Romney and the Republican party are so proud of his record at Bain Capital, proud enough to use that record a major selling point--THE major selling point--as to why Romney could do a better job than Obama on the economy, and if SEC documents (and other sources, including his own wife) show that he was running Bain Capital until 2001 or 2002 rather than February 1999 as he and others had previously said.......then why oh why doesn't he just say that the later date is the true date?????????????

I mean, it's not like he's being accused of working as a stripper or a drug dealer or an OSHA bureaucrat in order to support his family during that period, is it? Can anyone help me out with this? Jim? Dave?

[Lord Jim]

I'm afraid I won't be able to help you with this Econo, because I'm really not inclined to spend a lot of time looking into what seems clearly to me to be nothing but a bureaucratic paperwork screw up that's being blown out of all proportion for political purposes....I'd just about find talking about a cricket match more interesting....

I'm sure this will be a huge deal to all those folks who wouldn't have voted for Romney at bayonet point in the first place...

Anybody else...

Not so much....

[Scooter]

So if it was just a paperwork screw up, why couldn't he just say so? Of course, there's the little matter that the SEC filings, if false, would mean he committed a felony, but...

[Lord Jim]

You've convinced me Scooter....

In fact this is so dastardly I think that he should withdraw from the race....

Then we can nominate Jeb Bush.....

[Econoline]

Jim, I'm assuming that the SEC filing (and other evidence) is truthful, and that Mit and the GOP want everybody to believe that he was a successful capitalist and therefore capable of "running the economy." So WHY DOESN'T HE JUST SAY SO????? If I were hiring ANYONE for ANY kind of job--not just POTUS--and there was a discrepancy on their resume concerning three years of their employment history, I'd certainly want to clear that up before hiring them. Wouldn't you? Wouldn't anyone?

[Lord Jim]

Well Econo, it's not like Romney fell off the grid and his time was unaccounted for...He was running the Olympics at the time...and then running for Governor of Massachusetts...it was in all the papers....

To me the absolute proof that Romney wasn't running the company during the time in question is the $100,000 payment...

In what year that Romney was actually running the company, do you figure he was paid anywhere near as little as 100K?

Please....

[Econoline]

I thought most of his income came from investments?

[Econoline]

So let me get this straight: in your opinion Romney did commit a felony....but it's no big deal, because he was only lying about a financial matter and only lying to the SEC (Republicans probably tell lies like this all the time, right?)--at least he wasn't lying about something important, like a blow job, huh?

And if it was fine for him to NO WORK AT ALL for $100,000 a year, I'm sure he'll do FOUR TIMES that much work for a salary of $400,000!

Seriously, it seems to me that Romney faces a potential legal downside for continuing to insist that he didn't do any work for Bain in 1999-2000-2001, and a potential political downside (from anyone earning less than 100K/yr, if the Dems can exploit it) for continuing to insist that he did nothing to earn the salary he was given by Bain above and beyond his stock options, dividends, capital gains, etc. So what's the downside for him if he admits that he did do some management work for Bain during that period? I'm just not getting it.

[Rick]

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washin ... l-campaign

Mitt Romney appeared on five news networks Friday in an attempt to mitigate the fallout of Thursday's Boston Globe report, which showed the GOP presidential nominee may have not left Bain Capital in 1999, as he said, but instead in 2002.

The Globe report cited SEC documents from Bain that described Romney as "sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president," even after 1999. Romney called the allegations ridiculous on Friday, and said it was beneath the dignity of President Barack Obama to raise the issue.

But Romney's comments have done little to quell the debate, and he was roundly criticized Monday for his inability to handle the problem, with the Washington Post calling Bain Romney's "unsolvable problem," and Fox News writing that Romney only had himself to blame.

At this point in his political career, Romney should know how to deal with the Bain problem.

Why? Because he's dealt with it before.

A Whispers deep dive into news reports from the early 2000s show that questions about the SEC filings came up in 2002, when Romney was running for Massachusetts governor.

The Boston Herald and the Boston Globe both reported on Oct. 29, 2002 that Romney was being attacked by his democratic opponent, Shannon O'Brien, about a plant shutdown at GST steel in 2001. According to the reports, when Romney responded that he was on leave from Bain during the year of the GST steel shutdown, O'Brien shot back that Romney retained some control at Bain in 2001, as his signature was still on SEC documents.

Instead of floundering, as the Romney campaign appears to be doing now, his gubernatorial campaign team countered O'Brien's attacks by releasing a letter from Bain Capital attorney R. Bradford Malt.

According to the Herald, Malt "confirmed that Romney went on leave from Bain on Feb. 11, 1999, to run the Olympics - and said there's nothing untoward about Romney, Bain's co-founder, signing legal documents." The Globe similarly reported that the letter from Malt argued "Romney was not actively involved with Bain after Feb. 11, 1999, even though he was sometimes called on to sign Bain's SEC filings."

Romney's gubernatorial campaign also released a second letter, from former CEO of GST, Mark Essig, who said Romney was in no way responsible for the plant's closing. "It saddens me that the pain and suffering of so many resulting from the closure of the plant have been twisted to serve someone's political purpose," Essig said at the time, according to the 2002 Globe report.

After the release of the dual letters, it appears that O'Brien's attacks on Romney's tenure at Bain and SEC filings died out. And Romney, of course, went on to win the election.

If his response to SEC filings worked so well in 2002, why doesn't the Romney campaign release those letters once more? A Whispers attempt to track down Malt and Essig's letters was fruitless: The letters do not appear to exist online anymore, if they ever did.

Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul suggested to Whispers that she believed the issue has already been laid to rest.

"Mitt Romney had no involvement in management or investment decisions at Bain Capital after February 1999," Saul said in an E-mail, "as has been confirmed by Bain Capital, multiple independent fact checkers and a unanimous finding of fact by the Massachusetts Ballot Law Commission.

[Rick]

Which leads to this:

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/20 ... ain-in-99/

A campaign official for the GOP contender released the commission’s ruling to CNN in response to questions about recently revealed federal and state documents that list Romney as the CEO and President of Bain Capital as late as 2002, three years after the Republican presidential candidate said he left the company.

An official with the campaign, did not dispute that Romney’s name appears on Bain’s filings at the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2001. He said it “just wasn’t the case” that Romney was involved in any managerial decisions at the firm.

“The reason he was on the filings is that he was technically with the firm,” the official told CNN.

In a conference call with reporters Thursday, a top Obama campaign official accused Romney of “misrepresenting” his business record to either the SEC or to voters.

The official pointed to the ballot commission’s ruling that noted Romney rented an apartment in Utah and “worked, on average, over 12 hours per day, 6 days per week” after joining the Salt Lake City Olympics organizing committee in 1999.

The ballot commission document is likely to prompt more questions about Romney’s ties to Bain after his move to Salt Lake City. As part of its ruling in favor of Romney’s residency eligibility, the panel noted Romney testified to the commission he traveled to Massachusetts where he sat on the board of one notable Bain-related company, the office supply chain, Staples.

Romney “testified that he was a director of Staples, Marriott International and Life Like,” the commission’s finding states.

The GOP contender has often touted his involvement in establishing Staples as part of his work at Bain.

[Rick]

A bit of irony, from Obama "Birthers" to Romney "Residenciers"...

[Scooter]

An official with the campaign, did not dispute that Romney’s name appears on Bain’s filings at the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2001. He said it “just wasn’t the case” that Romney was involved in any managerial decisions at the firm.

Oh yes, that's completely credible. I'm sure there are lots of corporate filings listing me as CEO of companies I have nothing to do with. Happens all the time.

[Rick]

It's quoted today but it flew whenever he ran for Governor...

[Lord Jim]

Well, Team Obama and their allies in the media have been banging this diversionary drum for nearly two weeks now...

And they've been spending on attack ads like drunken sailors...(well, like drunken sailors would spend if they were really nasty and had 100 million dollars)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama's campaign has spent nearly $100 million on television commercials in selected battleground states so far. It's part of an effort to create lasting, negative impressions of Republican Mitt Romney before he and his allies ramp up for the fall.

Organizations that track media spending and other sources say more than one-fifth of the president's ad spending has been in Ohio. Florida ranks second and Virginia third.

Obama's television ad spending dwarfs the Romney campaign's so far by a margin of 4-1 or more.

About three-quarters of the president's advertising has been critical of Romney.

Obama's campaign has launched five commercials this month, including an attack ad released today that shows Romney singing an off-key rendition of "America The Beautiful." Pictures and signs scroll by that say his companies shipped jobs to Mexico and China. Massachusetts state jobs went to India while he was governor and he has personal investments in Switzerland, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.

A memo from the Romney campaign distributed this week says "Despite all of the negative advertising from the Obama campaign, polling numbers are exactly where they were before they started this onslaught."

Read more: http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/poli ... z211WDY3FT

And despite all of this, that Romney memo is exactly correct; the latest RCP poll average has Obama with a statistically insignificant 1.4% lead, which is actually slightly down from the statistically insignificant lead he held before this began...

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls ... -1171.html

The latest state polls where all this lucre was dumped don't show any significant changes either....

Gee whiz, if this is what he has to do just to run in place, it makes you wonder where he'd be in the polls without all the sandbagging...

He's not going to have the luxury of outspending Romney at this kind of rate in the fall, when average people are really focusing on the race....(even all the free contributions from the media won't make up the gap)

I wonder what diversionary ploy they have lined up for August after July's economic reports come out ....

I suspect we're likely to be treated to a new Operation: Shiny Object from the Obama forces shortly after the job numbers come out, every month between now and the election...

[loCAtek]

[Lord Jim]

I'm sure most of you by this time have seen the Obama campaign hit piece on Romney that features Romney's hokie, off-key rendition of America The Beautiful....

To a man or woman, all of the Democrats I know think this is a brilliant commercial....

And the Obama campaign people obviously agree, because it's running almost every hour on the cable news channels (since I'm seeing it it's obviously being used nationally since California isn't a swing state)

However I seriously question how effective that ad is going to be with independent, persuadable voters....

I enjoy analyzing political ads, and I can be objective in giving my opinion on whether or not I think the ad is an effective piece of marketing, whether I agree with the message or not, and even without regard to whether or not it is full of lies, distortions, and half-truths....

But to me, the use of Romney's grating singing performance seems to look more juvenile than clever, is distracting, and really detracts from the points the ad is trying to make...

The ad is attempting to make all sorts of serious charges against Romney, but the singing tends to make the whole thing look like a joke...It looks more like high school sophomore prank than a serious attack, and it trivializes the message, and makes the Obama campaign look unserious at a time when millions of people are seriously hurting...

I think this one could easily backfire, especially being used as much as it is. I suspect that when most people now hear Romney starting in with "Oh, beautiful..." that they are probably tuning the rest of it out....

[Lord Jim]

BTW, you may have noticed that in this ad, the legally required candidates voice approval message, (in this case Obama's) is heard at the beginning of the ad rather than the end.....

There's a reason for this...

Research has shown that as a rule, audiences are less likely to associate the ad with the candidate personally if the approval message comes at the beginning rather than the end. So the usual campaign procedure is to have the candidates voice at the beginning of negative hit pieces, (because candidates don't want to be personally associated with them; negative ads can drive up your opponents negative rating, but they can also drive up your own.) and to put the approval message at the end of warm and fuzzy positive ads.....

[Sue U]

Ads being run in July are mostly to generate campaign contributions (and to some extent for sport) -- that's why the ad is designed to appeal to Democrats and likely sympathizers. Nobody's going to remember a July ad in November, and to the extent there is anyone who is genuinely "undecided" now they're certainly not paying attention to anything either campaign is saying today.

Frankly, Romney's "America the Beautiful" schtick was the part of his standard stump speech that grated on me the most. First, does anyone really believe that Romney is the kind of guy who spontaneously bursts into song at a (i.e. every) campaign appearance? The man couldn't be more wooden if he was a cigar store Indian. Second, "America the Beautiful" is hardly the basis for national policy either foreign or domestic; the canned "sing it with me" routine was nothing more than running out the clock at the campaign stop photo-op and avoiding saying anything substantive that would likely get him in trouble. Yeah, that's the ticket; don't talk about what your actual policies might be, just sing a patriotic song!

Anyway, the GOP primaries produced plenty enough quality Romney footage to make a ton of Obama campaign ads for the fall. I'm waiting for the one featuring my favorite Romney line: "Corporations are people, my friend." I'll bet you'll be seeing a lot of that around the second week of October.

[Gob]

. Second, "America the Beautiful" is hardly the basis for national policy either foreign or domestic;

America the Beautiful
Words by Katharine Lee Bates,
Melody by Samuel Ward

O beautiful for spacious skies, (Watch out for unmanned spy drones though)
For amber waves of grain, (Sorry, the drought got them, come back next year!)
For purple mountain majesties (Ignore the air pollution from coal, gas, and oil-burning power plants please, a good wind will shift it.)
Above the fruited plain! (As long as we can get enough immigrants in to pick them.)
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood (The Muslim Brotherhood?)
From sea to shining sea! (Oops, BP put paid to that.)

O beautiful for pilgrim feet (Damn English invaders!)
Whose stern impassioned stress (aka Miserable bastards.)
A thoroughfare of freedom beat (Now a toll paying freeway.)
Across the wilderness! (Please pay your park entery fee to the ranger.)
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw, (Soon, please.)
Confirm thy soul in self-control, (You''re kidding, right?)
Thy liberty in law! (Some conditions apply.)