President Barack Obama is casting Mitt Romney as a greedy, job-killing corporate titan with little concern for the working class in a new TV ad debuting today.
In the president's most forceful attempt yet to sully Romney before the November election, the ad recounts the demise of GST Steel under Bain Capital, the Republican's private equity firm.
750 workers lost their jobs, health insurance, severance pay, even pensions when the Kansas City, Missouri, company closed in 2001.
"It was like a vampire," says Jack Cobb, a steelworker for 30 years. "They came in and sucked the life out of us."
The ad, at the unusual length of 2 minutes, will run in five battleground states: Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Colorado.
Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul points out that hat the bankruptcy and layoffs at GST Steel occurred after Mr. Romney had left Bain in 1999. But, of course, Romney maintained a financial interest in the company after departing to run the Salt Lake City Olympic Games.
Steven Rattner, who oversaw the auto rescue under President Obama, called the Obama ad "unfair" on today's MSNBC's Morning Joe because it assumes that companies should care about their employees.
But Rattner also pointed out that Romney has claimed Bain has a strong overall job creation track record, saying "Mitt Romney made a mistake ever talking about the fact that he created 100,000 jobs." Watch it:
By the way, the Obama ad may look familiar because it's quite similar to the 28-minute documentary King of Bain, released in January 2012 by Romney's GOP rival Newt Gingrich just before the South Carolina primary. Watch it:
And that makes the Obama "Romney is a job destroyer" attack line BI-PARTISAN!
Ed will discuss the new Obama ad tonight on The Ed Show at 8pET on MSNBC with Dave Foster, a union leader who was there at the time.