Sullivan: He's Drowning Not Waving (Pro-Lifers will not be Happy!)

Update 07/13 6:56pm: Was in financial control through 2002.

Official documents have revealed that Mitt Romney remained in control of Bain Capital until 2002, three years longer than he has previously claimed. Romney has said that he left the firm in 1999 in order to be chief executive of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics. However, his signature remains on documents through 2002, when he finalized a 10-year severance deal with Bain that was retroactive to 1999. Despite Romney's focus on his Olympic activities during those three years, he has been shown to have had managerial control over five new investments during that time. He also remained in control of 100 percent of the company and earned money as a Bain "executive" during that time. 

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Today as I have been visiting various websites about the problem with Romney's story when he left Bain, found Sullivan's piece with links to other comments the most complete. Is Romney's whole premise for not detailing that he was at Bain through 2002 when he actually did head Bain because of the following:

he (Romney) was responsible for investing in a company that disposes of aborted fetuses, and signed a filing for that particular company, you can see why he doesn't want to defend 1999 to 2001 in practice. It would destroy him with the pro-life base.

Is this the fact he has been hiding from 2001 and doesn't want the base of the Republican Party to find out.  Too late now as it is out in the open but will it make any difference to those Republicans with blinders on who will vote for any Republican candidate no matter who it is.  Today is the perfect example of his pandering and not understanding the pro-life community by saying Condi Rice who is pro-choice is a finalist for Vice President that was leaked to Drudge.  Now does it mean Rice is being used to take Bain off the front pages on the internet which is not working, or he is trying to play up to blacks who are not buying anything he says after his visit to the NAACP.  I have emails from the pro-life community saying if Rice is the VP nominee, don't vote for Romney.

Is the Republican Party which has maintained a very pro-life stance set to nominate a candidate that was responsible for investing in a company that disposes of aborted fetuses?  Sure looks like it but that is okay as he is wealthy and the RNC won't have to put out as much money for the candidate.  Question is if the RNC Chairman is really pro-life or gives lip service?

I said months ago I couldn't believe the GOP was poised to nominate a pro-choice person who now is considering another pro-choice person, Condi Rice, to be his VP.  I don't want to hear anything about Romney's pro-life stance because it is pandering pure and simple but unfortunately the pro-life community bought into it saying the stance he took as MA Governor doesn't pertain today.  The fact this his campaign would even consider a pro-choice person says all any thinking person needs to know.


Is Rick Santorum going to campaign for Romney in PA after this and the question would be "WHY" as he really is pro-life? 


All the Romney lies are starting to catch up with him on Bain, and he is not even the nominee.  There is plenty more waiting because the Democrats probably have more on Romney now then the other candidates did in 2008.  The big question is whether the GOP can survive a Romney candidacy.

If I was a Democrat consultant, I would be salivating at this news that Romney as head of Bain invested in a company that disposed of aborted fetuses.  Shows he was never really pro-life IMHO!  I cannot fathom investing in a company that did that.  Makes me ill and I admit that I am not an ardent pro-lifer.  I am one of those people who doesn't believe I have a right to make a decision for someone else just myself.  I don't walk in their shoes and definitely do not want to see the days of the backroom abortions come back.  This company invested in by Romney while he owned Bain really does creep me out.

How many more lies is Romney going to tell because it just keeps going and going?  He may be the most dishonest Presidential candidate to run which says a lot.  The lies are stacking up and the ones about Bain are huge because he either lied to the SEC he was in charge, lied to the Ethics Commission of MA to get on the ballot to run for Governor, or he is lying now.  Throw a dart!

Still cannot get over that he owned Bain 100% and appointed himself as the CEO, Chairman of the Board and President of Bain because we had been led to believe it was formed by a group of partners from other companies.  Who is telling the truth?  One thing for sure is that it is not Mitt Romney who has trouble with the facts and the truth.  This is why so many of us have called him Democrat-lite -- he acts like one.  This is also another reason that Gingrich and Santorum went after Romney so hard but the RNC and others made sure their voices did not drown out the chosen one of the establishment Republicans -- Mitt Romney.

Bain: He's Drowning Not Waving, Ctd

Andrew Sullivan

July 13, 2012

My take on this morning's developments here and here. But even the WaPo concedes that Romney cited his active Bain business ties from 1999 on in 2002 under oath to help establish residential eligibility to run for governor of Massachusetts in 2002. And Kessler admits that Romney's sworn testimony on this contradicts his legal SEC filing, and several filings Romney made as CEO in the period in question. Steve Kornacki tries to glean what Romney was thinking by keeping his ties to Bain and Bain acquisitions while off in Utah:

[I]t makes all the sense in the world that he would have held on to his leadership titles at Bain and planned to return after the games. For most of the time he was in Utah, politics was not a realistic option for Romney’s immediate post-Olympic career. And because of this, it makes all the sense in the world that Romney would have remained apprised of Bain’s activities while in Utah and maintained some level of engagement, even if he wasn’t directly involved in the company’s day-to-day activities.

How Kevin Roose frames the story:

Romney, during his leave of absence, looks to have been a Potemkin CEO, in charge without actually being in charge. Does that mean, per the Obama campaign, that Romney can be "blamed for bankruptcies and layoffs from Bain investments" until he formally left Bain in 2002? In a legal and political sense, certainly. By keeping his titles and Bain shares during his leave of absence (probably in the hopes that he would return to Bain after the Olympics), he allowed himself to be kept on the hook for anything, good or bad, that the firm did while he was off in Salt Lake City.

Seems pretty clear to me - unless Romney wants to argue that being the CEO of a company doesn't mean you have any actual responsibility for it, which is a little troubling for a potential president's future accountability, don't you think? In fact, it sounds like Rumsfeld's view of being defense secretary. Weigel's take:

Sure, Romney's name appeared on Bain's SEC filings. But he didn't make Bain's decisions. He only benefited financially from them. Now you see why the Obama campaign thinks it can drag this out over weeks and months. Explaining why Romney himself wasn't really CEO during his leave of absence (when he was trying to save the American Olympics, for Pete's sake!) involves explaining some complicated corporation-fu. In the meantime, the Obama campaign can use "outsource" in every other graf of its press releases, and ignore the Fact-Check squads.

Allahpundit yawns:

One of the ironies of this story is that Romney’s opponents already have a way to tie him to Bain’s post-1999 record, irrespective of whether he quit day-to-day operations at the time. Remember this NYT piece from last December describing how Romney’s retirement deal with Bain granted him a share of profits on deals made through 2009? He was still receiving some of those profits last year because some of the deals hadn’t wound down yet. If the touchstone here is Romney making money off of Bain’s work rather than Romney directing Bain’s operations, then Democrats don’t need the Globe story.

But Romney was paid a salary as well - for a job he has said both that he didn't do in any way and subsequently that he did, while running the Olympics. That's the issue. Only one of Romney's stories can be true, and one of them was under oath. And if he really didn't do anything, then the issue is Romney's possible perjury in 2002 and 2011. The Republicans once impeached a president who committed perjury. Are they now going to nominate someone who did it as well - and insist it's no big deal? Or does it all hinge on what the meaning of CEO and "sole owner" is? Josh Barro looks at the bigger picture:

[R]eally, what Mitt Romney was doing in 2000 is beside the point. Romney founded one of America's leading private equity firms. What private equity does is take underperforming firms and make them more profitable, sometimes by closing facilities and sending operations overseas. If he can't defend Bain's 1999-2002 record on the merits, he can't defend its record from 1984 to 1999 either.

He can defend it in principle. But when it means he was responsible for investing in a company that disposes of aborted fetuses, and signed a filing for that particular company, you can see why he doesn't want to defend 1999 to 2001 in practice. It would destroy him with the pro-life base.

Here's a question worth asking, say, Kathryn Jean Lopez and the Catholic hierarchy: do you really support a candidate who invested in a company that disposed of the corpses of countless unborn children? Is that what your pro-life movement has really culminated in?