What are the jobs numbers (created vs. destroyed)?

Daniel Greenfield makes a good point in "The Bain of Romney":

 

First things first. Criticizing the way a politician ran a company at a time when he is running for office on that record isn't radical leftism, it's Politics 101. Unless any of Romney's rivals have called for him to have to pay higher taxes or be closely regulated by the government, then they have nothing in common with Occupy Wall Street and suggesting otherwise is a talking point that doesn't hold up.

Romney was the one who brought in his record as a job creator. It's entirely legitimate for his opponents to question whether he really created jobs or destroyed them. Asking whether a candidate's record holds up isn't class warfare, it's common sense. And it's ridiculous that some of the same figures who turned Gingrich's personal spending into a campaign issue are suddenly insisting that Romney's time at Bain Capital is off limits.

A commitment to free enterprise does not mean supporting anything that any company does. It only means supporting their right to do it. Just as a commitment to free speech does not mean agreeing with everything that everyone says. It means supporting their right to say it. Believing that the total effect of free enterprise is better than any other system does not mean that individual companies are protected from criticism. There is a basic difference between criticizing how a company goes does business and calling for it to be regulated by the government....

.... This isn't about class warfare, Marxism or Socialism. Romney, Gingrich and Perry are not poor men. This is about whether Romney can turn his record into an asset or will be stuck limping around with it attached to him like a chain. If he can't defend the productive and constructive value of his work at Bain Capital now and win over voters, then what hope does he have of doing it in the general election?

 

 

Comments

[Mannie Sherberg]

Thanks for printing this, Yael. Daniel's exactly right. All the feigned shock and faux consternation over Gingrich's "attacks" on Romney have been disingenuous at best and ridiculous at worst. Gingrich is playing hardball -- which is precisely what American politicians typically do during campaigns. He has not repudiated the capitalist system or rebuffed the notion of free enterprise. He has simply found a chink in Romney's armor and is trying to exploit it. So what else is new? The Romney camp should stop the hand-wringing and the hyperventilating and come to grips with the fact that their guy has some vulnerabilities -- and those vulnerabilities had better be addressed soon. What Romney is engaged in with Gingrich is nothing more than a sparring match. If he can't deal with that, what's he going to do when the real 15-round main event begins -- and the guy in the other corner isn't Newt Gingrich but Barack Obama?

[yeshiva son]

Gingrich said himself in an interview with Hannity that he realized that this route is not getting him anywhere, and he made an interesting point explaining why. He said that since Obama has ratcheted it up the class warfare rhetoric, and basically just blasting our whole capitalist system, people on the right are so freaked out by it that they can't stand to discuss this topic at all. I think that's why all the criticism of Gingrich and Perry is phrased like "This sounds like the language of the left" and "You sound just like Barack Obama" instead of actual conversation about the topic itself.

[yeshiva son]

clarity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAegVFdMsm0&feature=youtu.be