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Monday, July 9, 2012

2012 Obama Campaign Keeps Hitting Romney for Offshore Investments

Posted by Paul Constant on Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 12:35 PM

Here is a very good Obama campaign ad doing the media's job for the media: It asks some hard questions about Mitt Romney's offshore investments.

Daily Kos says the Romney campaign's response to this video is hilarious and over-the-top:

The Obama campaign’s latest unfounded character assault on Mitt Romney is unseemly and disgusting.

"Unseemly." Cool word, guys. These are legitimate questions that deserve legitimate answers, and I'm seriously starting to wonder if they'll ever be answered. I know most Americans will go way out of their way to excuse nauseating wealth, but the fact that a presidential candidate has money invested in China—and a secret trust in the Caribbean that he signed over to his wife in order to avoid disclosure—somehow seems relevant to the election.

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This is not "an Obama campaign ad doing the media's job for the media", it is an ad trumpeting work done by the media: Vanity Fair, as Ben makes plain in the first fifteen seconds.

Posted by gloomy gus on July 9, 2012 at 12:50 PM

"These are legitimate questions that deserve legitimate answers, and I'm seriously starting to wonder if they'll ever be answered."

No, they will not be answered.
Romney is running on the "not Obama" platform.
The people who are going to vote for Romney are going to vote for him whether he explains his finances or not.

Posted by fairly.unbalanced on July 9, 2012 at 12:52 PM

Don't you know that it's rich people's patriotic duty to hide their wealth from those leaches at the IRS?

Posted by MR M on July 9, 2012 at 12:55 PM

Obama should just call it what it is...tax evasion and prosecute accordingly.

Posted by Cato the Younger Younger on July 9, 2012 at 1:01 PM

Just wait till Rmoney renounces his US citizenship to avoid taxes.

Posted by Original Andrew on July 9, 2012 at 1:17 PM

Krugman angles on Vanity Fair's reporting too. Very nice. Opener:

Once upon a time a rich man named Romney ran for president. He could claim, with considerable justice, that his wealth was well-earned, that he had in fact done a lot to create good jobs for American workers. Nonetheless, the public understandably wanted to know both how he had grown so rich and what he had done with his wealth; he obliged by releasing extensive information about his financial history.
But that was 44 years ago. And the contrast between George Romney and his son Mitt — a contrast both in their business careers and in their willingness to come clean about their financial affairs — dramatically illustrates how America has changed.
Right now there’s a lot of buzz about an investigative report in the magazine Vanity Fair highlighting the “gray areas” in the younger Romney’s finances. More about that in a minute. First, however, let’s talk about what it meant to get rich in George Romney’s America, and how it compares with the situation today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/09/opinio…

Posted by gloomy gus on July 9, 2012 at 1:31 PM

Well it's the fact that someone as rich as Romney is not investing back into the US to create jobs for Americans. He's taking those jobs away and sending them overseas, while saying that Obama's not doing his job creating new jobs in the US. So yes, it is important to hit Romney on the fact that he isn't investing back into the US and make voters aware of that fact. If Romney wants this issue to stop, he should just come out, have a mea culpa and admit everything and explain his reasoning. But that's not going to happen ever.

Posted by apres_moi on July 9, 2012 at 1:34 PM

Nobody whose ads were unseemly ever got elected did they?

Posted by Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

on July 9, 2012 at 1:59 PM

Of course, when they say that a Democratic attack line is "unseemly", what they mean is "effective". Don't those Democrats know they're supposed to let the Republicans win? How unseemly of them to fight back!

Posted by I have always been... east coaster on July 9, 2012 at 3:08 PM

If he knows nothing about his own offshore accounts ... How much could he possibly know about our countries international affairs?

Posted by Brian1234 on July 9, 2012 at 5:02 PM