Tea Party Leader Sen. Jim DeMint: Mitt Romney Should be More Empathetic
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ABC News
Republican Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, who has yet to endorse a GOP presidential candidate, said today he thinks Mitt Romney needs to work on his empathy.
DeMint dismissed attacks that portray Romney as a greedy capitalist, calling them “political talk” but he told ABC News Romney needs to better explain layoffs that occurred while he ran Bain Capital and express empathy for those workers.
“I know I had to do it a few times in my career and I had sleepless nights and it killed me to do it but I was doing it to save the other employees in my company and keep it going,” DeMint said. “If he doesn’t explain this well he’s going to see this again if he’s the nominee in the general election.”
Romney has repeatedly said companies Bain invested in went on to create 100,000 jobs but his campaign has declined to say how many employees were laid off during that time.
Any political attack ad that targets Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain “really bothers” DeMint.
“Successful companies have leaders who are willing to make hard, difficult, unpopular decisions for the good of the company,” DeMint told ABC News Radio in an interview to promote his new book “Now or Never: Saving America from Economic Collapse.”
Listen to the full interview here.
Sen. DeMint said he would not endorse a GOP candidate before Saturday’s primary in South Carolina, though he said he would not completely rule it out.
“The only way I could have been dragged into it is if we had two candidates and one was just completely on the wrong track and the other was moving in the conservative direction.”
DeMint said he has not talked to Romney in a while but emails frequently with him and with Ron Paul.
“I think he is in it to win or at least in it for the long haul.”
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McCain Hit Romney on Bain in 2008
1/13/2012
Defends him today. In ’08 ” strip away the jobs”
Posted by: Which is true? | January 13, 2012, 10:57 am 10:57 am
Empathy? From a Republican? From a guy who strapped his dog carrier AND DOG to the roof of his car for a 12 hour road trip? Yeah, right.
Posted by: A Cynic | January 13, 2012, 11:03 am 11:03 am
Romney needs to be more transparent, about his activities at Bain. Pure and simple.
That record demands scrutiny.
Posted by: Rick McDaniel | January 13, 2012, 11:16 am 11:16 am
When will the Romney ads with people whos jobs were created or saved as a result of Bain begin? The tag line will be “Creating and saving jobs takes tough business leadership”!
Posted by: Common _ Sense | January 13, 2012, 11:45 am 11:45 am
When will the Romney ads with people whose jobs were created or saved as a result of Bain begin? The tag line will be “Creating and saving jobs takes tough business leadership”! Posted by: Common _ Sense | January 13, 2012, 11:45 am.
If Romney is smart he will never, ever go there. For every job he saved, there’s a guy out there who lost a job. And his political opponents would make damn sure to counter any adverts he does with ones spotlighting some poor schlub in Kansas who lost his job after Bain came to town. The best Mitt could hope for is that people have short memories. I can’t see him stirring that pot on his own, unless he’s not as smart as I give him credit for.
Posted by: A Cynic | January 13, 2012, 12:10 pm 12:10 pm
The companies were going belly up. What difference does it make how many were laid off? They were losing their job anyway.
Posted by: uisignorant | January 13, 2012, 12:24 pm 12:24 pm
People cannot claim the companies were going belly up automatically. Most companies were approached by Bain. Once Bain got a foot hold on the companies, they bleed the pensions and then sold off pieces of the companies until it was no more. I work with venture capitals and there is a differences between Angels, venture and vultures. To make this simple for the people who dont get it. Vulture capitals do mostly hostile takeovers or simple lie to companies about what they will do for them. I have personally seen vultures do this to more than one company. If you dont trust what im saying just looking into each of the companies that Bain took over and look at how they dismantled each company. Last thing, Romney is claiming job numbers from after he left the helm of the company. Can someone ask him to explain this please.
Posted by: PartyAndBulshiz | January 13, 2012, 12:35 pm 12:35 pm
Solyndra was one of 28 companies that were funded by the Energy Department to create or expand green sector jobs. The companies were not formed to create profit for the government. All profits were to be re-invested in the company.
Two failed including Solyndra. The other 26 are doing fine and have hired thousands of employees. ABC1 provides lithium batteries to the car manufacturers and is doing a booming business. The success rate of this Energy Department program is 93%.
Companies like Bain and MF Global are not in business to create jobs; they use every hole in the finance laws to get around regulation. They succeed when other companies fail. They are predatory.
A law should be passed that companies on the verge of bankruptcy cannot sell their stock. If they want to continue in business, go to a reputable investment firm, borrow the money to pay their bills, get expertise in how to improve the business and pay back the investment firm if they succeed.
Companies like Bain should not be allowed to buy control, strip assets and then sell the company to someone else.
Posted by: tmferretti | January 13, 2012, 1:07 pm 1:07 pm
From Index of Economic Freedom on why the USA is falling in the ‘freedom/liberty’ category:
“Rapid expansion of government, more than any market factor, appears to be responsible for flagging economic dynamism. Government spending has not only failed to arrest the economic crisis, but also – in many countries – seems to be prolonging it. The big-government approach has led to bloated public debt, turning an economic slowdown into a fiscal crisis with economic stagnation fueling long-term unemployment.”
Posted by: deanbob | January 13, 2012, 1:15 pm 1:15 pm
tmferretti | January 13, 2012, 1:07 pm 1:07 pm
…….”Companies like Bain should not be allowed to buy control, strip assets and then sell the company to someone else.”……Since you’ve read Marx and Smith, you may want to read some neutral writing on the importance of venture capital firms to performing the same function as vultures do. Are they 100 %? Nothing is.
Posted by: deanbob | January 13, 2012, 1:19 pm 1:19 pm
From Index of Economic Freedom……
Posted by: deanbob | January 13, 2012, 1:15 pm.
Who writes the ‘Index of Economic Freedom’?
Posted by: A Cynic | January 13, 2012, 2:03 pm 2:03 pm
Reputable venture capital firms are needed to provide start-up money for new companies that will compete with the existing companies (competition envisioned by Adam Smith). Most reputable firms such as Dreyhus and Gladstone seldom touch a company that is already going out of business.
Bain buys the company’s stock for pennies on the dollar. Their money is made from stripping assets, revenue increases gotten by laying off people for a short term gain. They then resale the company to a larger corporation that either absorbs the smaller company or closes it altogether.
The point is, companies like Bain are not job creators, such as other companies like Apple or Microsoft. Steve Jobs could have and Bill Gates can say they create jobs, Mitt Romney can’t
Posted by: tmferretti | January 13, 2012, 2:06 pm 2:06 pm
Are we really to seriously consider Mitt Romney as president, when he’s such a complete hypocrite? He’s against amnesty, yet his father (born in Mexico) became a US Citizen under prior amnesty. His family moved to Mexico to flee American laws against polygamy (it’s reported his grandfather had as many as 18 wives.) Ironically, years later (1912), grandfather Gaskell Romney returned to the U.S. after fleeing the Mexican Revolution. Romney’s father was actually born in Mexico and it’s reported that the family kept a secret ranch there for many years where the men in the family would keep their extra wives whenever law enforcement in the U.S. would focus in on them. He’s never served in the armed forces (he dodged the draft by staying in his family’s French Mansion outside of Paris), and his family has a legacy of fleeing this country at pivotal times. What type of leader is that going to make?
Posted by: jack | January 13, 2012, 2:34 pm 2:34 pm
Who writes the ‘Index of Economic Freedom’?
Never mind, I found it. The Heritage Foundation, naturally. The Index has been panned by people on both sides of the political aisle as unreliable and arbitrary.
Posted by: A Cynic | January 13, 2012, 3:57 pm 3:57 pm
How can you be empathetic with people that aren’t rich?
Posted by: chestermarx | January 13, 2012, 7:09 pm 7:09 pm
he has never developed empathy so he cannot demonstrate what he does not have….
Posted by: abby | January 13, 2012, 10:29 pm 10:29 pm
Unfortunately, we have allowed the true Bush 2.0 in the form of Rick Santorum to slip underneath the radar. Santorum is NOT a TEA Party supporter and should not be embraced by the South Carolina Tea Party at all.
Voted for taxpayer funding of the National Endowment for the Arts.
Voted against National Right to Work Act
Voted for minimum wage increases six times
Voted for Federal funding for anti-gun education programs in schools.
Voted twice for a Congressional pay raise.
Voted against hiring an additional 1,000 border partrol agents, paid for by reductions in state grants.
Voted against increasing the number of immigration investigators
Voted against a flat tax.
Voted twice for internet taxes.
Voted to increase spending for the Department of Education by $3.1 billion.
Rick Santorum is NOT the Tea Party candidate…’EARMARKS’ IS HIS NICKNAME!!
Posted by: JOE PTAK | January 14, 2012, 6:44 pm 6:44 pm
It is ironic that Jim DeMint and empathy are mutually exclusive.
Posted by: Larry Linn | January 15, 2012, 9:29 am 9:29 am
Hey DeMint. I still hold true to the Tea Party ideals of a limited federal gov’t and wise avoidance of foreign entanglements. That’s why I’m voting for Paul in the republican primary and general election.
No Romney bait-and-switch for this registered republican. In 2012 and beyond.
Posted by: dom youngross | January 15, 2012, 7:18 pm 7:18 pm