Romney’s corporate past comes under fire
The candidates were all but tripping over each other, concentrating their day in the southern half of the state.
The one exception was Texas Governor Rick Perry who campaigned in South Carolina but joined Gingrich from afar in going bluntly after the frontrunner’s private-sector credentials.
“I have no doubt that Mitt Romney was worried about pink slips — whether he’d have enough of them to hand out,” Perry told patrons in Anderson, South Carolina. That was a slap at Romney’s recent comment that he worried about getting his job terminated during his executive career.
Perry cited South Carolina companies that downsized under the control of Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney ran, and said it would be an “insult” for Romney to come to the state and ask for voters’ support in easing economic pain.
“He caused it,” Perry said, describing himself as best positioned to untangle the “unholy alliance between Washington and Wall Street.”
Among the half dozen contenders, Jon Huntsman, who needs a strong New Hampshire performance to stay viable in the race, had perhaps the most frantic pace, with seven stops on his itinerary from Lebanon near the Vermont line to the seacoast.
The former Utah governor visited a Lebanon truck stop and took the phone from an employee behind the counter who was speaking with a milk delivery driver. He said he’s looking for votes wherever he can find them. “I’m the underdog,” he said, a label that applies — at least in New Hampshire — to anyone but Romney.
Knocking Romney off his perch today won’t be easy. He has spent the better part of two years essentially adopting the state as his own and held a comfortable lead in pre-primary polls as his rivals essentially battle for second place. Romney won the Iowa caucuses last week by a scant eight votes over Rick Santorum.
In Nashua, Romney kept above the Republican fray at one stop and went after the Obama administration for the soured taxpayer investment in Solyndra, a solar energy company that went bankrupt and laid off its 1,100 workers after getting a $528 million (€414m) Energy Department loan.
He said government should support the conditions for letting the private sector work freely, not interfere on behalf of specific companies. “Let markets work,” he preached.
Gingrich, still smarting from a damaging barrage of negative ads in Iowa by Romney allies, vowed to draw a “very sharp contrast” with Romney, political shorthand for counterattacking. That effort was evident in weekend debates, when the former House speaker upbraided Romney for “pious baloney”. Romney has bragged about creating more than 100,000 jobs at companies he helped start up or turn around while at Bain Capital but has not substantiated the claim.
Gingrich said that voters deserve more than that.
“He owes us a report on his stewardship” in the private sector, Gingrich said.
As for his own prospects, Gingrich said he expected to do “well enough” in New Hampshire.
