Pro-Gingrich super PAC Winning Our Future has released its 30-minute film, When Mitt Romney Came to Town, which casts Romney as a greedy, heartless villain. The film was previewed ahead of the New Hampshire primary, and its full roll-out has been bankrolled by Gingrich supporter Sheldon Adelson. The central theme, as Jonathan Chait wrote this week, is that Romney’s private-sector experience consists of looting companies and destroying the livelihoods of working-class people.
The subjects of the documentary are the people who worked at companies that private-equity firm Bain Capital bought — and according to the documentary, pillaged — during Romney’s tenure. The companies include UniMac, a manufacturer of laundry equipment that was based in Florida; KB Toys, and Ampad, a office supply manufacturer.
The interviewees appear broken and sad. They connect Romney to Bain and Bain to the death of their jobs, gutted companies, ruined families, lost homes, skipped meals, and Christmases without presents. And then those interviewees connect all of that back to Mitt Romney, which is what the filmmakers set out to convey.
In an ominous voice, the narrator describes Mitt Romney’s attitudes towards the American worker, and actually referenced Benjamin Wallace-Wells’ piece in New York from the October 23, 2011 issue.
The narrator says (near the five-minute mark), “Romney’s Bain colleagues had a high disdain for American businesses and their workers, describing them as sloppy and lazy.” With greater context from Wallace-Wells’s story titled The Romney Economy:
When I interviewed Romney’s early colleagues about the business world that they surveyed during this period, they tended to adopt an attitude of high disdain. “Sloppy,” one told me. “Complacent,” said another. “Lazy,” said a third, “and out of tune with the change that was going on in the world.”
Predictably, the documentary twice ran the infamous scene where Romney matter-of-factly declared at a campaign stop that “Corporations are people.”
And during the film’s quasi-closing credits, the following text appears: “Nearly every state in U.S. suffered job loss from the actions of Bain Capital under Mitt Romney.”
No doubt, the Obama re-election campaign watched intently, with popcorn, smiling.
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