After Criticism for 'Playing It Safe,' Romney Hits Back
President Barack Obama's reelection campaign has accused Republican rival Mitt Romney, based upon a Washington Post article, of being a "pioneer" in outsourcing American jobs to other countries. Conservatives have recently criticized Romney's campaign for not defending himself against the charges. Romney is now accusing Obama of sending jobs overseas using, in a stroke of irony, a Washington Post article.
"For weeks, President Obama has been spreading falsehoods and distortions about Governor Romney's record of job creation -- and now we know why. President Obama's policies have encouraged American jobs to move overseas and he's sent taxpayer dollars to foreign-owned companies. Sometimes the truth hurts, and it's clear the President's failed economic policies are hurting American workers," Romney campaign spokesperson Andrea Saul said Tuesday in a statement.
Saul and the rest of Romney's campaign team had been harshly rebuked over the past week for not standing up to the Obama campaign's attacks.
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"Team Obama is now opening up a new assault on Mr. Romney as a job outsourcer with foreign bank accounts, and if the Boston boys let that one go unanswered, they ought to be fired for malpractice," the editors of The Wall Street Journal wrote last week.
Similar concerns were expressed by conservatives on Sunday's talk shows. George Will said Romney was "risk averse," a characteristic that he warned was not conducive to winning a close election. Bill Kristol said that the campaign's play-it-safe strategy made him "nervous" about his team's chances of winning.
The Obama campaign's accusations that Romney was a "pioneer" in outsourcing American jobs to other countries was based almost entirely on a Washington Post article about Bain Capital, the company Romney founded and ran.
The Romney campaign had tried to get The Washington Post to retract the story, but it refused. The Washington Post's own fact checker, Glenn Kessler, though, said that the Obama campaign's charges misrepresent the article.
FactCheck.org also labeled the Obama campaign's charges false. The Obama campaign responded with a letter to FactCheck.org taking issue with some of FactCheck.org's facts. FactCheck.org responded with a post, FactCheck to Obama Camp: Your Complaint is All Wet, defending its original claim.
When Obama campaign senior adviser Robert Gibbs was asked about the response from FactCheck.org and Kessler Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union," he said, "I think FactCheck.org ought to read The Washington Post."
FactCheck.org's article actually directly addresses The Washington Post's article on several occasions.
Now, The Washington Post has run a front-page story Tuesday saying that the Obama administration has done little to slow the spread of overseas outsourcing.
"While White House officials say they have been waiting on Congress to act, Obama's critics, primarily on the political left, say he has repeatedly failed in other ways to protect American jobs from being moved overseas," wrote Tom Hamburger, Carol D. Leonnig and Zachary A. Goldfarb.
Saul's statement uses this quote and others after stating, "Why Has President Obama Resorted to Spreading Falsehoods? His Own Policies Have Driven American Jobs Overseas."
The Mitt Romney campaign's website now prominently features a 10-page document on "The Facts on the Washington Post Story." The document was on the website already but had been difficult to find.
Additionally, the Republican National Committee has created a website, obamanomicsoutsourced.com, that purports to trace overseas jobs that have been supported by Obama policies.
There is no word yet on whether or not The Washington Post believes the Romney campaign is, like the Obama campaign, misusing its articles for a political attack.
