Bain is Mitt ROmney's Achilles Heel...
Much like things that brought down other Massachusetts politicians, it's devastating because it looks so bad and touches emotional chords.
I think a good comparison can be made to the Swift Boat Vets for Truth. John Kerry (a Massachusetts Liberal) tried to paint himself a certain way. He was the awesome war hero from Vietnam who was going to bring the fight to Bin Laden. (Except half his base wanted to surrender in that war.) Look at my medals. Aren't they impressive.
Except, of course, it was a deception. After he got back, he became an anti-war protestor, and when he got to congress, he never saw a military cut he didn't like. But pay no attention to that, I'm a war hero.
Until the Swift Vets called bullshit on that by pointing out how he gamed the system and slandered them after the war.
Equally instructive is the Willie Horton stuff. Now, the whole Massachusetts Furlough program was kind of silly, giving lifers with murder convictions weekend passes was beyond insane. And Al Gore was the first to point this out. Didn't really resonate for the same reason the Bain attacks aren't resonating so much now. Not the right target audience in the primaries. Democrats in 1988 thought criminals should be coddled. Republicans in 2012 really think Greed is Good.
In the general election, it was devastating, because they were able to humanize it with the story of Willie Horton and how he raped and brutalized a woman while on a weekend pass, and Dukakis actually opposed fixing the problem. Dukakis made his problem worse by affirming his oppositionto the Death Penalty even in the face of the hypothetical murder/rape of his wife.
Bain is a similar problem. Republicans can talk all day about how it's how business works, but when you have families just like yours ground up in the gears, it's a sympathetic things.
It's going to be ugly, and it's going to be awful.
Much like things that brought down other Massachusetts politicians, it's devastating because it looks so bad and touches emotional chords.
I think a good comparison can be made to the Swift Boat Vets for Truth. John Kerry (a Massachusetts Liberal) tried to paint himself a certain way. He was the awesome war hero from Vietnam who was going to bring the fight to Bin Laden. (Except half his base wanted to surrender in that war.) Look at my medals. Aren't they impressive.
Except, of course, it was a deception. After he got back, he became an anti-war protestor, and when he got to congress, he never saw a military cut he didn't like. But pay no attention to that, I'm a war hero.
Until the Swift Vets called bullshit on that by pointing out how he gamed the system and slandered them after the war.
Equally instructive is the Willie Horton stuff. Now, the whole Massachusetts Furlough program was kind of silly, giving lifers with murder convictions weekend passes was beyond insane. And Al Gore was the first to point this out. Didn't really resonate for the same reason the Bain attacks aren't resonating so much now. Not the right target audience in the primaries. Democrats in 1988 thought criminals should be coddled. Republicans in 2012 really think Greed is Good.
In the general election, it was devastating, because they were able to humanize it with the story of Willie Horton and how he raped and brutalized a woman while on a weekend pass, and Dukakis actually opposed fixing the problem. Dukakis made his problem worse by affirming his oppositionto the Death Penalty even in the face of the hypothetical murder/rape of his wife.
Bain is a similar problem. Republicans can talk all day about how it's how business works, but when you have families just like yours ground up in the gears, it's a sympathetic things.
It's going to be ugly, and it's going to be awful.
