Will The American People Elect Gordon Gekko President?

Romney-Bain Capital money shot

Republicans who fail to grasp how Mitt Romney's past corporate raider ways will be Obama to vilify his candidacy do so at their own peril. Despite Romney's claims to the contrary, he was not in the business of creating jobs as a venture capitalist at Bain Capital where he made hundreds of millions of dollars. He was a vulture investor. The American Thinker's Aaron Goldberg figures out what the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) figured out many years ago when Romney ran against him:

Mitt Romney was NOT primarily a venture capitalist. A venture capitalist invests in early-stage businesses with the hope that they grow and prosper. These early-stage businesses are often risky investments. Though most ultimately fail, some succeed spectacularly making the risks worthwhile. Apple Computer and Google are two such examples. This is what Mitt Romney means when he says some investments succeed and some fail. 

By contrast, Mitt Romney was primarily what is affectionately known as a vulture investor. Bain Capital invested in failing companies with the intention of either restructuring their business or stripping the business and selling its assets. This business model often adversely affects a company's employees. To be fair, if the company had gone bankrupt on its own, that would have adversely affected the company's employees too. The question Republican primary voters need to ask themselves is not whether Mitt Romney did anything illegal or immoral. In a climate of near 10% unemployment, do Republicans want a vulture investor to be the face of their party?

The two core arguments for Mitt Romney's candidacy are (1) that he knows how to create jobs and (2) that he stands a better chance of defeating Barack Obama than his competitors. Is it true that a slash and burn vulture investor is the best advocate for job creation? If you were a factory worker in Ohio or Pennsylvania or the upper Midwest and Mitt Romney killed your job because there was a more efficient use of the capital employed in your factory, are you really going to listen to what Mitt Romney has to say even if you believe in hard work and free market capitalism?

Greenberg is absolutely correct in his assessment that nominating Romney will play right into Obama's Marxist rhetoric and policies. The late Sen. Ted Kennedy used a single company in eastern Indiana, Ampad, that Romney's Bain Capital acquired when Romney ran the company to effectively end his chances of winning that race. A Wall Street Journal analysis found that 22% of the companies Bain invested in when Romney ran the company either filed for bankruptcy or went out of business. Nearly 10% of the businesses ran into so much trouble that the company lost all of the money it invested. Just ten companies during Romney's eight years in charge of the company produced over 70% of the company's profits. Yes, the Republican Party will find itself defending a Gordon Gekko-type character in one of the worst economic times our country has faced if it nominates Romney. He should play real well with middle Americans.

UPDATE: Be sure to check out this new documentary, "When Mitt Romney Came To Town", prepared by a pro-Gingrich Super PAC (thank you Jim Bopp) which exposes the reality of what Romney and Bain Capital are all about. The video about at the mid-way point tells the heart-wrenching stories of the harm Bain Capital did to employees of the Marion, Indiana paper company a Bain-controlled company purchased, Ampad, which slashed the wages of more than 200 employees who worked there before eventually shutting the plant down and firing all the employees. The documentary notes that Bain Capital began with seed money from anonymous Latin American investors. Nice.