Republicans, Stop Bashing Romney for His Work at Bain

Newt Gingrich and company should know better: National Review
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 10, 2012 1:47 PM CST
Republicans, Stop Bashing Romney for His Work at Bain
Mitt Romney gives a thumbs up as he campaigns on primary day outside of a polling station at Webster School in Manchester, N.H., Tuesday.   (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

The conservative National Review comes to Mitt Romney's defense over his work at Bain Capital. His Republican rivals are in a "perverse contest" to see who can paint his tenure at the private equity firm in the most "asinine" and evil terms, complain the editors. "To abominate Mitt Romney for having been a success at the business of investing in struggling American companies, connecting entrepreneurs with capital and producers with markets, is foolish and destructive," they write.

Newt Gingrich and the others either don't know or choose to ignore the way Bain operates. It "is involved in, among other things, leveraged buyouts, meaning that the firm and its investors borrow money from banks to acquire companies, usually firms that are in trouble but believed to be salvageable." Sometimes the companies prosper—it's the "creative destruction of capitalism." (Bain was able to breathe new life into big names like Staples, Burger King, and Dunkin Donuts, for instance.) And sometimes they go under because they were ultimately too feeble to be saved. That Romney is taking flak for this on the right is a "disturbing commentary" on the GOP field. Click to read the entire piece. (More Mitt Romney 2012 stories.)

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