The moment is finally here: the anti-Romney documentary produced by a pro-Gingrich Super PAC has been released.
It comes as the pro-Gingrich group, Winning Our Future, unleashes a tsunami of ads based on the documentary against Mitt Romney in South Carolina, following a $5 million donation by the casino mogul Sheldon Adelson.
In recent days, many Republicans have started leaning on Newt to tone down the tenor of his attacks on Romney’s work in private equity, fearing it will play into the Democrats’ hands in the general election. And on the force of this documentary, their fears would seem to be justified.
The 28-minute documentary, “When Mitt Romney Came To Town,” details the corporate practices of Romney’s old company Bain Capital. Its scenes achingly depict the devastation caused to small-town America when profit-obsessed large corporations shut down local plants, and would not be out of place in a Michael Moore documentary.
Romney and Bain Capital are presented as marauders who abused the capitalist system, fixated on creating dollar figures for their own funds rather than on building genuinely workable manufacturing plants that could help sustain communities. Indeed, it suggests they serially ran up debts at many of the companies they took over before forcing them into bankruptcy, and then skipping away unscathed themselves.
The documentary features interviews with former workers at factories that are said to have been run into the ground by Bain. “I mean, just look, the man — he seems like an alright guy just to look at him,” says one woman. “People that didn’t know him would think, this guy’s okay. But okay, let’s look deeper. Let’s look deeper in his life. I think he’s a money man. And he’s gonna look out for the money people. He didn’t look out for us little peons, anyway. He didn’t look out for us, and we’re just a little group over there. So you put him in force up there over everything — then what? What’s gonna happen then?”
The video also makes heavy use of the famous publicity photo of Romney and his colleagues at Bain, all flashing cash to the cameras and smiling — plus the video from last year, of Romney’s “corporations are people” argument with a voter in Iowa. Of course, the odd thing here is that in a video produced by a supposedly conservative group, these are presented as bad things.
At the end, text runs across the screen:
NEARLY EVERY U.S. STATE EXPERIENCED JOB LOSS FROM THE ACTIONS OF BAIN CAPITAL UNDER MITT ROMNEY.
ROMNEY’S OWN FINANCIAL STATEMENT SHOWS HIS PERSONAL FORTUNE TO BE AT LEAST A QUARTER-BILLION DOLLARS.
NO ONE KNOWS FOR SURE…
THE BULK OF MITT ROMNEY’S PERSONAL WEALTH REMAINS IN BLIND TRUSTS AND OVERSEAS BANK ACCOUNTS.
The Romney campaign has bullishly maintained that these attacks will help make its candidate stronger and will mean the issue is old news by the time the election comes around, but Democrats are unlikely to miss the fact that by leaping on their themes Gingrich has helped provide a non-partisan gloss.
Who would have thought that in 2012, the first documentary laying out in detail the underlying philosophies of the Occupy Wall Street movement would be produced by…a super-PAC supporting Newt Gingrich!
To watch the video, click here.
