Friday, July 13, 2012

Wapo Fact Checker: 'Obama Campaign Is Blowing Smoke' On Bain Attack Against Romney

By Susan Duclos

Quick recap of yesterday.

The Boston Globe published an article suggesting that Romney remained actively involved with Bain Capital longer than he and his campaign claimed, which started a left side of the aisle stampede of writing and hand wringing with Team Obamas spewing suggestions that Romney must be a criminal!!!

Fortune, actually did a little homework and popped the over-sized balloon filled with nothing but hot air, on the left, by providing evidence that Mitt Romney has been telling the truth.

These claims are very similar to ones made last week by David Corn in Mother Jones, which we disputed at the time.

Now Fortune has obtained new evidence that supports Romney's version of events.
Bain Capital began circulating offering documents for its seventh private equity fund in June 2000. Those documents include several pages specifying fund management. The section begins:
Set forth below is information regarding the background of the senior private equity investment professionals of Bain Capital. Also listed are certain investment professionals responsible for the day-to-day affairs of the Brookside and Sankaty funds, which are affiliated funds of Fund VII.
It then goes on to list 18 managers of the private equity fund. Mitt Romney is not among them. Same goes for an affiliated co-investment fund, whose private placement memorandum is dated September 2000.

Then there is Bain Capital Venture Fund -- the firm's first dedicated venture capital effort -- whose private placement memorandum is dated January 2001. Romney also isn't listed among its "key investment professionals," or as part of its day-to-day operations or investment committee.
All of this could prove problematic for the Obama campaign, which has spent they day crowing over the Globe story (going so far as to hold a media call about it).

Jump to today and Washington Post's The Fact Checker, Glenn Kessler, addresses the Obama campaigns erroneous statements accusing Romney of being a criminal, gives Team Obama three Pinocchios and says "The Obama campaign is blowing smoke here."

Obama has been attempting to attack Romney over his former Bain Capital job association for weeks now, and each time, he has been declared, by Fact Checkers like Washington Post, as a liar, earning multiple instances of "four Pinocchios", using terms like unfair, misleading, untrue, campaign spin with little to back it up, etc...

4 Pinocchios For Obama’s Newest Anti-Romney Ad,” The Washington Post, 6/21/12)
Robert Farley and Eugene Kiely, “Obama’s ‘Outsourcer’ Overreach,” FactCheck.org, 6/29/12)
“Obama’s New Attacks On Romney And Outsourcing,” The Washington Post, 7/2/12)

Yesterday, Team Romney aggressively pushed back, in a campaign ad and supporting release which included links to fact checking organizations calling Obama a liar, asking "When the president doesn't tell the truth, how can we trust him to lead?"

I am with Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air on this, if this is all Obama and liberals have left heading into November,  "Team Obama is completely out of gas."

[Update] FactCheck.org  has weighed in on the latest Team Obama lie:

On the broader question of Romney’s involvement with Bain during this time, we concur with Kessler’s conclusion. “The Obama campaign is blowing smoke here,” he says, adding “the weight of evidence suggests that Romney did in fact end active management of Bain in 1999.”

[Update #2] John H. Sununu points out how dumb the Obama campaign  "felon" attack truly is:

“Can you imagine how dumb this president is?,” the former New Hampshire governor asked Sean Hannity on Fox News on Thursday night. “Introducing the concept of felony into the discourse, when this president comes out of Chicago politics, where felony and politics are sometimes a synonym?”

Sununu said that Obama is the one who has ties to felons.

“This is a president whose next-door neighbor was Tony Rezko, and President Obama’s first big revenue were real estate deals that had odd coincidences in time and space with a felon, Tony Rezko,” he continued. “This is a president whose political training was jowl to cheek with politicians like convicted felons like [former Illinois Gov.] Rod Blagojevich, and this president is dumb enough to introduce the concept of felon into the discourse, with a guy as clean as Mitt Romney.”

“This president is not smart at all,” Sununu concluded.

Ouch!