Obama Campaign Attacks Bain Outsourcing In New Ad

Obama Campaign Attacks Bain Outsourcing In New Ad

The attacks on Mitt Romney's tenure at Bain Capital may seem like the main line of argument emanating from the Obama campaign. But through the early stages of the general election, the president's team had barely put any resources behind the effort. Priorities USA Action, the Obama-allied super PAC, spent $10 million on a Bain-related ad campaign, while the campaign itself had devoted a mere $100,000.

With polling data showing that the Bain attacks work, and with the conventional wisdom changing on the matter --shifting away from the complaints of several Northeast Democrats who said that the attacks were unfair -- the Obama campaign has dramatically increased its engagement.

On Tuesday morning, it put out a new ad, contrasting the outsourcing that took place at companies where Bain invested with the president's commitment to "insourcing."

"Mitt Romney's companies were pioneers in outsourcing US jobs to low-wage countries," the ad says. "He supports tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas. President Obama believes in insourcing."

Titled "Believes," the ad is airing in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. But it remains to be seen whether there is a lot of money behind the effort or whether -- like the first round of Bain ads -- the campaign is hoping that the topic will generate a lot of media attention and, by extension, free airings.

"The Obama campaign continues to try to mislead voters with ads that independent fact checkers have repeatedly proven to be false," said Amanda Henneberg, a spokeswoman for Romney. "We are happy to put Governor Romney's record of job creation in the private sector, and as governor, up against President Obama's any day. Spending millions of dollars on untrue ads won't change the fact that President Obama's policies have left more than 23 million Americans struggling for work."

Jerrold Nadler

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