I find a certain humor in the sequence of articles posted here on Memeorandum. It's about the assault from Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry on Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital. Their attack and the subsequent piling on by lefties has had the unintended consequence of uniting an array of conservatives in Romney's defense. Here's Rick Klein of ABC News.
...if you need evidence that the attacks on Romney’s record at Bain have backfired, and may be doing more to unite conservatives behind Romney more than anything Romney himself could have done, consider this partial list of those who are defending him — and chastising Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry for their “vulture capitalist” attacks:
Rush Limbaugh
Sean Hannity
Laura Ingraham
Jim DeMint
Karl Rove
Mike Huckabee
Rudy Giuliani
The US Chamber of Commerce
The Club for Growth
The Wall Street Journal editorial page
That’s quite the conservative Murderers’ Row, to borrow a baseball term, that’s lining up in an aggressive defense of capitalism, coming in the context of the attacks on Romney’s business record.
Naturally, as lefties joined the chorus against Bain and Romney, others like John Hinderaker of Power Line Blog began looking into what really happened to one of the center pieces of the anti-capitalism campaign — Bain's closing of a Gaffney, South Carolina picture frame factory. In the lefty version Bain took over the company for the purposes of shutting it down to sell off the assets for a profit. It turns out, the factory that was shut down as part of a cost cutting effort under Bain Capital, was also opened under the management of Bain Capital four years earlier while they were trying to grow the company.
In the late 1980s, Holson was in deep trouble because of competition from cheap imports. Bain helped to save the company, then encouraged its merger with Burnes:
Partly because of the import problem, the Holson family sold out to Bain Capital in 1986; however, the Holson Company, which was still managed by family members, continued to have problems under the Bain umbrella. To return the organization’s competitive edge, Bain called in a series of consulting teams, including one from Price Waterhouse. Among the members of the Price Waterhouse team was Hoffmeister. Bain asked Hoffmeister to join Holson as head of the company in 1988 to effect a turnaround.
In the same year, 1988, Holson opened a factory in Gaffney, South Carolina, where photo albums were produced. The factory initially employed 100 people and eventually around 150–all brand-new jobs that were created by Holson under Bain’s guidance.
Unfortunately, the new company, Holson Burnes, was losing money, suffering net losses in both 1991 and 1992. The new management “worked to streamline the company, eliminate overlap, cut production costs, and jettison poorly performing units.” Those efforts succeeded in making Holson Burnes profitable; they also resulted in closing the Gaffney plant in 1992, after four years of operation.
Generally speaking, accuracy is the last thing on lefty minds when conservatives offer a juicy target. Generally, but not always. Oddly enough though, as the left leaning Huffington Post finds occasion to offer a defense of the man bankrolling Gingrich's attack on Romney and Bain Capital, we find HuffPo reporter Jon Ward taking extra care to provide clarity.
WASHINGTON -- A source close to wealthy donor Sheldon Adelson, who is under fire for giving $5 million to a pro-Newt Gingrich super PAC that began running TV ads attacking Mitt Romney's career in private equity, distanced the Las Vegas casino magnate from the ads on Thursday.
"Some people have made this leap that Sheldon Adelson gave $5 million and every penny of that is being used to hit Mitt Romney over Bain Capital," said the Adelson source, who asked not to be identified in order to more frankly discuss Adelson's thinking on the subject. "Aren't people getting in a tizzy here about something that maybe isn't completely accurate?"
Funny you should ask.
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