Romney haunted by his victims, cont’d
We talked yesterday about Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital and the millions it made while crushing a Missouri steel company called GS Technologies. Reuters called the fiasco the “ steel skeleton in the Bain closet.”
MoveOn.org has a new video highlighting some of Romney’s victims. One is Donny Box, whom we met on Thursday, and the other is Glen Patrick Wells, who spent a generation at the Kansas City steel mill Romney helped shut down.
“I spent 34 years in this steel mill,” Wells tells viewers. “They walked out of here with millions. They left us with nothing.”
What’s especially noteworthy about Wells is his political background. Greg Sargent talked to him yesterday and found that Wells is a self-identified conservative who voted for Bush and McCain. He’s so disgusted with Romney, though, that he’s willing to work with MoveOn.org.
Greg raised a related point that’s worth watching in the coming months.
As I’ve been saying, the battle to define Romney’s Bain years will be epic, as central to the general election as the war over the meaning of John Kerry’s war service was in 2004. And it’s already looking like there will be a cast of the layoff victims themselves who will be willing tell the story.
Indeed, if Dems have their way, these layoff victims will be this year’s version of the Swift Boat Vets — without the mendacity, that is — materializing out of Romney’s past to set the record straight about this central and defining episode in Romney’s life and career.
Quite right. It’s one thing to hear in the abstract about the mass layoffs Romney is responsible for, it’s something else to see these individuals, hear their stories, and consider their personal consequences after the Republican “job creator” entered their lives.
It’s not just two or three people, either. There’s a long list of Romney victims who will likely be eager to tell voters that if Romney does for America what he did for GS Technologies and companies like it, we’re all in a lot of trouble.
by Steve Benen |
