We have repeatedly shared the opinion that Mitt Romney is specifically who the Obama administration and re-election team want to run against.   After a failed Senate bid, and a failed presidential bid, there is a huge amount of opposition research that has yet to be used or even found out.   Most of it stemming from his life as a businessman who gained wealth by deconstructing companies and selling off the assets.   All of which is perfectly legal, but still a highly unpopular professional undertaking in the mind of the average voter.

We know that Ted Kennedy had a huge amount of research ready to aim squarely at Romney, including production run commercials, but it was never needed.   Now, some of that information, and more, is beginning to come out.   The Daily Beast has an article highlighting some of the new material which includes an almost 30 minute professionally done video highlighting some of the more unscrupulous bits of Romney’s time at Bain Capital.   I strongly suggest you read it, and share it quick against the backdrop of how damaging this would be to an election run against President Obama.  

Unfortunately, as Professor Jacobson states in his recent post this Bain Capital stuff is coming out in drips, and drips:

It’s so frustrating, the failure of conservative media and Republican campaigns to vet Mitt Romney’s Bain days.

Instead of hiring cartoonists to turn Newt into Marvin the Martian, National Review should have been digging deep into the public filings, court filings, and the financial history of the companies Bain acquired and sold.  You better believe there isn’t a court document or SEC filing which the Obama campaign hasn’t digitized and analyzed.

Maybe there is nothing damaging, but my gut tells me otherwise.  That Romney inexplicably refuses to release his tax returns should have leading conservative pundits screaming warnings at the tops of their lungs; instead we get psycho-babble comparing Newt to Ahab seeking the Great White Mitt.

In Bain drip drip I noted a NY Times article about Romney’s post-Bain deal participation.

Now Reuters has a damaging story about how one of the companies bought by Bain left the feds to deal with underfunded pensions, Special report: Romney’s steel skeleton in the Bain closet:

The young men in business suits, gingerly picking their way among the millwrights, machinists and pipefitters at Kansas City’s Worldwide Grinding Systems steel mill….

Apparently they liked what they saw. Soon after, in October 1993, Bain Capital, co-founded by Mitt Romney, became majority shareholder in a steel mill that had been operating since 1888.

It was a gamble. The old mill, renamed GS Technologies, needed expensive updating, and demand for its products was susceptible to cycles in the mining industry and commodities markets.

Less than a decade later, the mill was padlocked and some 750 people lost their jobs. Workers were denied the severance pay and health insurance they’d been promised, and their pension benefits were cut by as much as $400 a month.

What’s more, a federal government insurance agency had to pony up $44 million to bail out the company’s underfunded pension plan. Nevertheless, Bain profited on the deal, receiving $12 million on its $8 million initial investment and at least $4.5 million in consulting fees.

Not illegal, part of that “creative destruction” thing.  I get it.  And I’m sure there is plenty of blame to go around.  My concern is we’re only hearing about it in drips.  You can be sure Team Obama is holding the good stuff back.

When Newt raised the negatives of Bain deals, Charles Krauthammer claimed Newt was talking like a socialist, and that was one of the kindest things said by the conservative media.

We are heading headlong into the unknowns.

Just look at how thin Romney’s skin is when confronted about his verbal semantics regarding lobbying.   Do you really think this guy is going to be able to withstand the full frontal assault of the Obama machine complete with Obama loving media?

From The Daily Beast we learn:

The effort to derail Mitt Romney’s presidential quest heightened dramatically on Friday when a super PAC associated with Newt Gingrich outbid all comers for the rights to a scathing 30-minute attack video depicting Romney as a greedy, job-killing corporate raider “more ruthless than Wall Street.”