Thursday, July 12, 2012

Bain and Switch - The Obama Campaign's Strategy of Distraction

If this was the Obama campaign’s strategy, it’s brilliant.

To win a re-election campaign, they decided they somehow needed to distract voters and the press from the story that President Obama has presided over an abysmal economy that has 8.2 percent of American workers unemployed, not counting the men and women who have given up looking for jobs.

What did they come up with?

Bain Capital.

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is the real job-cutter, they want you to believe. In the midst of investing and building new companies and new jobs as part of his role at the venture capital company, there were mergers and downsizing and other horrible things that happen in the private business world that resulted in lay-offs.

So you see, if you want to be angry about people being laid-off, aim your blame at Mitt Romney. That's the way the Obama campaign wants it, because that's the only way their guy can possibly win another four years in the White House.

The very idea that we’re seeing so many stories in the press about Mitt Romney’s record at Bain as a supposed job cutter while Obama spends his days blaming other people for 8.2 percent unemployment is total b-s.

If we're supposed to buy into the notion that blame flows to the top of an organization, then where is President Obama's accountability for the 12 million Americans who are out of work? What about the millions of Americans who have spent through their 401K's in recent years just to pay for food and gas? How about all of the foreclosures, and all the small businesses that have had to take down their signs and board up their windows because they couldn't compete anymore?

Obama for America 2012 doesn't want you to think about all of that. They would much rather have you focus on just one business, Bain Capital, and its former CEO, Mitt Romney.

The problem is, the Obama campaign is blurring the line between things that are "wrong" and things that are unfortunate. They want you to believe that Mitt Romney did something "wrong" at Bain Capital because some of the companies it invested in laid people off. But, there's nothing "wrong" with that. Romney was engaged in what most of us like to refer to as "business." In the "business world," there are successes and failures. There is risk and reward. Jobs are created, and sometimes jobs are lost. That's sometimes unfortunate, but it's not "wrong."

President Obama wants people to live in a fairy tale world where there is always a happy ending and where success is guaranteed. He is uncomfortable with the ups and downs of business (probably because he's never worked at one himself). He wants everyone to win all the time. He wants everyone to make the same salary, live in the same kind of house and have access to all the same advantages in life no matter how hard they work. That's the Democratic Way.

But, it's not the American Way. It isn't the American Dream it's cracked up to be. It's divisive class warfare, pure and simple. It's the type of liberal political philosophy that has ravaged other parts of the world and sent generations of immigrants fleeing their homelands to seek a better life here -- in America, the land of opportunity.

President Obama would do good to remember that we live in a nation where people are promised the opportunity to succeed, not success itself. That's the American Way. And, there is good reason for that. Success is relative. If there is no failure, then there is no real success. If there is no failure, there is no incentive for hard work and self-starting initiative that made this country great. There is only need for one thing -- a government of entitlement programs and draconian regulations which traps its citizens in a cycle of dependency.

So, the next time you hear President Obama and his surrogates criticizing Mitt Romney and Bain Capital, why don't you look at their actual records instead. Who do you want to lead our economy for the next four years -- someone the President himself criticizes for being successful at business, or someone who's presided over an unemployed population twice the size of Massachusetts for over a thousand days?

You decide. Election Day is less than 120 days away.

Friday, July 06, 2012

Meredith Warren talks GOP politics on NECN

Meredith Warren joined NECN's Morning Show this morning to talk about presidential politics; specifically, the possibility that GOP candidate Mitt Romney will pick a woman to serve as his vice president.

Click below to watch the full video on NECN.com.