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Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks during news conference in front the shuttered Solyndra solar power company's manufacturing facility Thursday.
SAN DIEGO -- The Romney campaign has moved quickly to exploit the candidate's unannounced visit to bankrupt solar energy company Solyndra, producing a web ad entitled "Symbol of Failure," designed to highlight the president's role in the failed business.
The ad intersperses audio from national news broadcasts' coverage of the bankruptcy and subsequent federal investigation of Solyndra (including NBC's coverage), with clips of Barack Obama visiting the plant in 2010, and Romney's press conference there Thursday.
Graphics highlight what the Romney campaign is presenting as the vital statistics of the Solyndra failure, which took place after a series of federal loan guarantees were put in place which Republicans decried as the height of cronyism: 1,100 employees laid off, $535 million in taxpayer dollars spent.
After Tuesday's Texas GOP primary, Mitt Romney was able to clinch the party's nomination with more than the 1,144 delegates needed. Vanity Fair's Carl Bernstein and the Washington Post's David Ignatius join a conversation on why the race between Romney and Obama is so close. The panel also discusses Romney's recent hits against Solyndra.
The quick-turnaround ad comes as the Romney and Obama campaigns are concluding a week spent battling over Romney's record as governor of Massachusetts, and the salience of his role as CEO of Bain Capital when it comes to expertise creating jobs -- not just wealth for investors.
Thursday, the political theater reached its zenith (or nadir - depending on your perspective) with dueling press conferences on the East and West coasts, as Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod attacked Romney's record as governor in Boston, and Romney attacked the president's record, standing on a highway median in front of the vacant Solyndra headquarters in Fremont.
“Two years ago, President Obama was here to tout this building and this business as a symbol of the success of his stimulus. Well you can see that it’s a symbol of something very different today. It’s a symbol not of success, but of failure,” Romney is shown saying near the close of the 1:38 second web video, as uplifting music begins to play.
"I can tell you that my experience in the economy tells me how it is businesses make decisions to hire people in America. I want to use that knowledge to get Americans working again. The idea of 23 million American families out of work or stopped looking for work or underemployed is unacceptable and crony capitalism like this did not help,” the ad concludes.
Leave a Comment:
Let's keep Romney the snake oil salesman out of the White House.
If you really think he gives one damn about creating jobs you deserve to have a crappy economy and a bad government.
All he's interested in doing is giving more money from working people to his rich friends, the so called 'job creators.'
Then when the economy doesn't improve he'll just blame it on Obama and we're supposed to be all excited.
We already have a crappy economy in case you haven't noticed. And in case you haven't also noticed, Oblamo is rich too and with the very same 'rich' friends as Romney. He doesn't speak for me either. Some of the richest Blame'o's in the Senate and house are liberal democrats so they stand to gain from the Romney montras too. Greece here we come if something doesn't 'change' soon.
We already have a crappy economy in case you haven't noticed.
Versus net negative jobs every month, it's not nearly as bad as the final months of GW Bush's Presidency.
there will come a day when...never mind the libs will always think obama can do no wrong...even when they are in the welfare line....obama will save you.....hows that working for ya
It's all Bush's fault. I don't really give a cr@p what Bush did. Fix the country now! Yes I guess you libs will never get it EVEN when you're homeless and can't collect welfare because you make too much of nothing.
we have a crappy economy and a bad government right now. I'm willing to try practically anything else now. As an independent - I can tell you that if what we have right now isn't working (Dem or Rep) vote 'em out and try again. What we have right now clearly isn't working. The statute of limitations on blaming the guy before runs out after year 1 in office. Obama hasn't stopped blaming everything that moves ... Bush, rich people, republicans, democrats that don't agree with him, well ... really anyone that doesn't agree with him, any press that asks the hard questions etc. I had some hope that he was the right guy four years ago. No longer ... Obama is nothing more than a big pile of incompetence, divisiveness and blame. Time to vote 'em out and try again.
after all, without the rich failures Obame'o wouldn't have other people's money to waste. I guess that means he needs the rich more than we do.
IndyRealist,
I agree with you but we better watch out, Oblame-oh will send the IRS after us if we disagree with him. Reagan didn't blame Carter nor Bush blame Clinton but Oblame-oh didn't get the memo. I'm sure Romney won't blame Obozo in January either.
Anyone but Obumber 2012.
The country is just like a household. If you budget and spend your money wisely you can live a good life. If you spend your money until it's gone and keep borrowing more than you can pay back, you will go bankrupt. We're ALL headed for bankruptcy, ALL OF US. We won't have a country to fight over. It doesn't take an economist to figure it out. If this guy can't do the job he should be fired like any other job or we will all fail.
The country is just like a household. If you budget and spend your money wisely you can live a good life. If you spend your money until it's gone and keep borrowing more than you can pay back, you will go bankrupt.
Patently absurd. The U.S. cannot go 'bankrupt' because unlike people, the U.S. government is an entity that lives forever to pay back its obligations.
Bankruptcy? Who do we declare 'bankruptcy' to exactly?
If this is your rationale for austerity, we're just going to drag out this economic recovery at a fraction percent growth for the next 20 years. Look at what's going on in Europe.
Obviously there is a huge misunderstanding by the Romney supporters. You can't seem to get with the fact that he lies constantly. That Solyndra deal was begun in 2005 by the Bush Administration, not Obama. The problem has to do with allowing the Chinese, under cover of globalization, to take over the solar energy business because the Republicans are too commited to the oil companies to let that work for us.
Globalization was begun too soon and In the worst way. It used to be that countries that want to export to us were charged a high tarrif to keep the cost comenserate with our labor costs and not China's slave labor. I call it Preemptive Globalization that has made fat cats out of International Corporations while it has destroyed our economy, .... with the help of a crooked Wall Street.
Let's get real. For you commited Concervatives, we need you but the Republican Party is no longer Conservative, it has been supporting a Fascist agenda like we see in place in Michigan, Florida, Wisconsin, Ohio, Kansas and Texas to name a few.
Are we going to let the few that don't give a crap about us rule the many?
If the President gets involved in capitalism he's a socialist. If he doesn't, then he doesn't care about the economy. What is with you people?
Solyndra/America, what's the difference? He's failing with both of them. Let's just punish success and reward the lazy, that'll do it.
The Tea Party,Bohner,Paul Ryan,Trump, is the symbol of Romneys FAILURE.
That doesn't even make any sense. Set the Kool-aid down and snap out of it.
If those are your example of failures I guess I'd rather be a failure and live the good life like Trump but then you libs consider success a failure. Obozo is still a failure since he can't succeed at anything so he loses either way.
hey wait.....obama didnt pay my rent....oh thats right...its because im white......
or illegal.
Renter? Oh that's right ... is's because you're not part of Duhbya's "ownership economy".
There is plenty of blame to go around, the original loan request came in under W's term, BUT Approved under Obummer. Can All incumbents come November, clean house, take names.
Guess what,the Untied States systems are programmed to protect English speaking,born in the U.S.people.If the system detects the English speaking born in the U.S. people are hungry,homeless and that people that can't speak "good" English have new cars an mini-mansions-NO ONES GONNA WORK-really-and it might call a hit on the President.A dead Obama can't help Guatemalan war criminals armies-that is how some of the systems work,and if Romney doesn't stop stealing from the people that invented and programmed the systems-he might get it too,what he is doing is internationally embarrassing to him,he doesn't know what the old high intel. families know,in other words ,he has already proved to be the biggest ,most treasonous scumbag ever-stealing from important catholic and military little girls held hostage by jews with brain tumors,that have been classified by U.N. as known rapists-he is extremely ignoble internationally-he won't be able to do a thing for the U.S.
As a vulture capitalist, Romney should know better that anyone that 20 percent of the plays you take are real stinkers. So Solyndra was a stinker - so what. The GM & Chrysler bailouts were both Obama walk-off grand slams that Romney totally struck out on. I guess those are Romney's "Symbols of Failure", along with his "winning" personality. So Obama is still hitting 310 with about a 1,000,000 RBIs (manufacturing jobs saved) and Romney is sniping from the bench with a dismal record of cutting jobs in the US and creating jobs in Mexico. The words "minor leaguer" & "bench warmer" come to mind.
If Romney ignoramous was president,nobody would be able to pay rent.
And he has lots more that are too numerous to mention for everything he has done is a failure.
Hmmm, on that basis, I guess you have to call Massachusetts Romney's "Symbol of Failure," eh? LOL
And axelrod tried to ambush Romeny in Massachusetts and failed, just like his master, obama, who is a "big time failure." He got heckled. But if you say Massachusetts is a failure, then you better ask the residents for they are currently enjoying the benefits of Romney's failure? I wonder if you comprehend this?
It would be better if we stopped claiming that the national economy was like a household budget. Argument by analogy can be very misleading.
Time is like a river. Since I can travel upstream in a river, I can travel forward in time and tell what's coming.
If you insist on comparing a national economy to a household budget, then you have to take into account that there is a money-printing machine in the cellar, a dumb high-school dropout doing drugs in his bedroom, and a millionaire occupying the entire second floor without paying for rent or food. Not to mention the sick baby in the nursery who needs medication and treatment.
Sylondra is the poster child for the inept functioning of Democrats in power. Republicans have their own children well hidden...but they are there.
To the brain dead republican conservative religous zealots, did you ever hear of CHINA?
The government of CHINA subsidizes, supports economicaly, the solar manufacturing industry in CHINA!
CHINA then sells solar panels worldwide at a price less than it costs to make them in CHINA, you know inexpensive Chinese products.
AS A RESULT the SOLAR PANEL MFG INDUSTRY, WORLDWIDE has been FORCED TO CEASE PRODUCTION since that INDUSTRY CAN NOT EVEN BREAK EVEN.
If some of you nut jobs would become informed of facts, you would not make such ascinine statements or beleive the LIES OF ROMNEY!
concernedusa5031 - Are you apologising for Obama for pissing away taxpayer money in his Solyndra venture capital scam as acceptable because he was "brain dead" and had never heard of "CHINA"?
As is clear, the solar energy market is a volatile sector. So what? At least the bets are for honest hope of improvement in our energy production and distribution. Let's note that all shills for BIG OIL like Etch-a-Sketch Willard, have a paid for task to denigrate any and all competing energy sources and technologies. Why should we trust Mitt here?
Better to have a fair number of screwed workers from the Bain rapes join Mr Obama out front of all the old shells gutted by Mitt and left to die!
Unfortunately the brain dead will remain brain dead as the republicans transform the Democracy known as the U S A, is transformed into the Dictatorship U S A!
Keep drinking Jim Jones republican fruity juice!
If you can not understand the REPUBLICAN TRAGEDY of 2008, and you like Economic regression, as EVERY REPUBLICAN ADMIN has done {fact}, you must also like losing 750,000 jobs per month as opposed to returning 150,000 jobs per month. I am certain that you also do not understand that the OBAMA ADMIN stopped the DEPRESSION OF 2008, caused by the rain of terror from 2000 through 2008.
THANK YOU, OBAMA ADMIN for saving the U S A & the WORLD from total ECONOMIC RUIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
....or at least Romney WOULD LIKE it to be that symbol.
He needs something to point at.
To quote a famous Mormon visionary,..."One bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch, girl" -Osmond
Given the smouldering pile of cr*p that GW Bush handed Obama,...and the unprecedentedly OBSTRUCTIONST GOP he faces, he has done exceptionally well.
Try again,...slimy profiteer with no clue of how to run a nation rather than a business.
NEWSFLASH: This just in,...a "Nation" and a "Business" are NOT,...reapt "ARE NOT" the same thing, and take different strategies, skill sets and priorities to get them to run well.
If we need a business run,...we'll call Willard.
Here you go, 10 billion worth of bad apples:
Maybe someone who knows how to run a business can keep the country from making so many bad bets on businesses, just maybe. I guess if you don't pay any taxes, you're OK with pissing away hard earned taxes to your bundlers.
A) What percentage of that industry do those companies represent
and
B) What percentage of all businesses fail
If you take many things out of context you can infer a lot of untrue self-serving BS,....but then we all know that is the way the GOP fights.
tunanut continues to "cherry pick" the data, building his fragrant "cowpie of distortion"!
Cherry pick, hah! I just googled "Obama failed solar companies" I'm sure you ask such tough questions about Mitt's couple failures. Obama sure has racked up quite a list of failed government investments, these are just the solar companies. I just wish it wasn't my money.
Well, you formed the question is ensure that you were "cherry picking"! If you had the intellectual honesty to investigate fairly, then the search might have been "rate of business failures in solar energy", or "recent successes and failures in solar technology". ROFLMAO
Just like your boy Obama did on Romney's one failed steel company GST , right? Hypocrite much? How many steel companies went out of business during that time frame? Anyway you slice it, it's a mistake for Obama to go after Mitt's business record considering his own failures make Romney's look petty. Oh, and the rate is 5%: year/10years. Obama's still way above average in picking loosers. Still laughing?
at you, yes, indeed ... since you still haven't bothered to cite any real, credible and independent data.
Mitt's track record is always going to be fair game, either in business or as a Governor. The stinky thing about Bain and Mitt is not that companies failed, but that Bain came in, ran up the debts even more, then gutted the companies and squashed the employees.
That's real "vulture capitalism" (in the words of shoot and scoot Newt) and Mitt can't run away from that dismal ethical record!
In true liberal fashion, when your record sucks the two hole; attack your opponent. Doesn't matter how you spin it, trillions wasted, 20 million Americans out of work and your boy's plan to fix it is tax the rich because they don't pay their fair share. Give me a break.
We'll see who's laughing in November.
Yet another steaming cowpie of distortion there tunanut.
It is Mitt who attacks because he has no serious record. It is Mitt who lies without shame about what has and has not been done by Mr Obama. Unemployment is in a hole made by the Republican policies and slow to come out because there is no serious effort by the Congress to produce viable policies and budgets. In Congress we are faced with a level of subversive obstructionism totally committed to the ruin of this Presidency independent of any facts, indifferent to the needs of the American people, and locked into the Koch-sucking program to ruin the American middle class through trickle down voodoo economics.
Mr Romney (he who likes to "fire" you, like the BBF Trump) will not ever consider the long term pull to correct a fiscal imbalance. He will only consider the hack and slash of a vulture capitalist (in the words of shoot and scoot Newt) because that is what he is!
Romney can surely run things, even without a teleprompter (because he will never utter any thought complex enough to benefit from one), but he is no leader in comparison to Mr. Obama. All Romney's training and experience tells us that he is structurally incapable of the empathy, long term vision, and intellectual honesty needed to sustain the kind of leadership we need to correct our economy.
OK, just to be fair I googled "obama's successful solar company" and after a dozen or so pages of links, I can't find any. Please point me in the direction of his successes.
Wow! Bill Clinton is getting rather truthful about Romney...
OUCH!
Former President Bill Clinton,
"I don't think that we ought to get into the position where we say 'This is bad work. This is good work,'" Clinton said of the private equity industry.
Clinton said there was no question Romney was capable of performing the "essential functions of the office."
"The man who has been governor and had a sterling business career crosses the qualification threshold," Clinton said.
Looks like Clinton forgot to put some sugar in the Kool Aid last night.
Former President Bill Clinton, a stalwart backer of President Barack Obama who's already helped the incumbent Democrat raise funds for his re-election bid, said Thursday that Mitt Romney had a "sterling business career" as chief executive of Bain Capital.
–"I don't think that we ought to get into the position where we say 'This is bad work. This is good work,'" Clinton said of the private equity industry. On Thursday, Clinton said Romney's record at Bain was less important than his ideas for the country.
"I think the real issue ought to be, what has Governor Romney advocated in the campaign that he will do as president?" Clinton said. "What has President Obama done and what does he propose to do? How do these things stack up against each other?"
Clinton said there was no question Romney was capable of performing the "essential functions of the office."
"The man who has been governor and had a sterling business career crosses the qualification threshold," Clinton said.
Suck it!
Crickets..... LMAO!
Even Hilary said she won't work for Obama after this year. How many key staff has Obama lost in 3 years??? There's your sign. If he knew what he was doing, people wouldn't leave.
Now what? This election is over boys and girls.
President Obama this week... I think his payments are abot 42 months behind.
"I think it's fair to say that every president is acutely aware that we are just temporary residents — we're renters here," .
In Chicago Friday, he told a crowd of donors gathered at the Chicago Cultural Center: "It's good to be home. The White House is nice, but I'm just leasing."
Social Justice ... yes, indeed, you suck .. a grand cowpie of distortion from you.
Clinton also said that while Mitt was "qualified", his policies were all wrong for the country!
idiot
Wow! I thought you libs would try to go grammar nazi on that thread... But hey... what about the other stuff Clinton said and actually paised Romney for? I'll wait for another few hours of crickets. This game is over.
By the way... The Job numbers just released prove Obama's policies suck. Can you say Double dip?
Can you say The Great Bush Depression which will likely improve by 2014.