Romney hits back on Bain attacks

July 14, 2012 at 12:00a.m.

Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES

Mitt Romney accused President Barack Obama on Friday of stooping to reckless and undignified campaign tactics, saying he was spreading false information to tarnish his rival’s record as chief executive of a Boston private-equity firm.

Romney, who rarely takes questions from the news media, made his remarks in an extraordinary round of hastily arranged TV interviews Friday with ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News and CNN.

His sudden willingness to speak with every major TV news outlet was part of Romney’s effort to contain the damage from Democrats’ attacks on his record at the helm of Bain Capital, the firm where he built a personal fortune of as much as $250 million.

Obama’s Republican challenger hammered the president for the statement Thursday by his deputy campaign manager, Stephanie Cutter, that Romney might have committed a felony by telling the Securities and Exchange Commission that he was Bain’s sole owner, board chairman, chief executive and president at a time when he now says he no longer played any role in the firm.

“Is this the level that the Obama campaign is willing to stoop to?” Romney said on CNN. “Is this up to the standards expected of the presidency of the United States? I don’t think the American people think so. I certainly don’t think so.”

Romney’s newly aggressive response to the Obama attacks — he launched TV advertising portraying the president as a liar this week — comes as some Republican leaders have begun fretting over the effectiveness of his strategy. Romney’s attempt to ignore Obama’s assault on his record at Bain has prompted much of the second-guessing.

In a blitz of TV ads running in Florida, Ohio and other swing states, the Obama campaign has portrayed Romney as a corporate raider who enriched himself by shipping American jobs overseas. At the same time, Obama allies have run emotionally charged ads showing laid-off blue-collar workers seething at Romney for making money in Bain takeover deals that cost them their jobs and devastated their communities.