Obama paints rival as job-killing corporate titan

President Barack Obama is casting Mitt Romney as a greedy, job-killing corporate titan with little concern for the working class in a new, multi-pronged effort that seeks to undermine the central rationale for his Republican rival’s candidacy: His business credentials.

At the centre of the push — the president’s most forceful attempt yet to tarnish Romney before the November election — is a biting television ad that aired last night that recounts through interviews with former workers the restructuring, and ultimate demise, of a Kansas City steel mill under the Republican’s private equity firm, Bain Capital.

“They made as much money off of it as they could. And they closed it down,” says Joe Soptic, a steelworker for 30 years. Jack Cobb, who also worked in the industry for three decades, adds: “It was like a vampire. They came in and sucked the life out of us.”