Obama campaign flops on “outsourcer’ claims against Romney

In case you missed it, President Obama’s campaign flubbed an opportunity to skewer Mitt Romney on the issue of jobs, and then made matters worse when Factcheck.org pointed out that their anti-Romney ads on outsourcing were inaccurate.

The situation took hold when The Washington Post on June 21 published a lengthy article that reported Romney’s Bain Capital firm in the 1990s invested in companies that were the “pioneers of outsourcing.”

The Obama campaign team took that information and created swing state TV ads that said Romney personally was a pioneer in shipping jobs to China and India and that, as president, the former venture capitalist would be the “outsourcer in chief.”

Factcheck.org quickly called the ad false because it was Bain that invested in firms that specialized in outsourcing, not Romney personally.

Next, the Obama campaign worsened the situation by sending a letter to Factcheck asking for revisions to their review of the ads, claiming that the ads are, in fact, accurate. Factcheck responded with a terse summary: “Your complaint is all wet.”

With regard to the arguments made in the six-page letter, the Factcheck researchers said: “We strongly disagree. We find the Obama campaign’s evidence to be weak or non-existent, and contrary to statements Romney has made on official disclosure forms under pain of federal prosecution.”

Meanwhile, the Post has refused the Romney campaign’s request for a correction. And it’s abundantly clear that the Obama camp had a great piece of ammunition – a Romney flip-flop on outsourcing jobs, and a major black mark on his Bain experiences – and instead they let it blow up in their faces.

The Post, in defending their story, modestly restated the basic information that team Obama fumbled:

“The companies cited in the article -- including Corporate Software, Stream International and Modus Media -- emerged in the 1990s as specialists in the outsourcing of work and logistics for companies worldwide.

“By investing in these companies, Bain was prescient. It caught an outsourcing wave that would transform the global economy, prove highly profitable for many firms and reduce prices for many consumers. But work opportunities for Americans in some industries would diminish as the trend accelerated, making the practice politically unpopular in many places.”