Saturday, July 21, 2012

Bain Capital

People within the Obama campaign are making comments about Mitt Romney’s involvement with Bain Capital. It is possible that Mitt Romney is much more heavily involved in his company than previously claimed, and that there may be legal grounds to prosecute Mitt Romney for such. Some even comment that the charges may rise to the level of felony.

The question is, if the Obama campaign is confident enough to make these allegations, why is the Obama administration not confident enough to press charges? If there exists sufficient grounds to suspect illegal activity, then there should be sufficient grounds to open an actual investigation into those potential activities.

Of course one could claim that opening up an investigation at this time would be clearly politically motivated. A stronger claim could be made that doing so after the convention, once Mitt Romney is officially the nominee, is politically motivated because to do so then would hamstring the Republican campaign. If an investigation is opened before the primary the Republican Party would have time to recover and potentially select a new candidate.

Another possible interpretation is that those making the claims against Mitt Romney know that sufficient grounds for an investigation do not actually exist, but that the public might become sufficiently convinced that the eventual vote in November can be swayed against him to a degree sufficient that Barack Obama is reelected.

Finally there is a lesser but real chance that there is substance to the accusations, but an actual investigation would not be launched unless it appears that Mitt Romney actually poses a threat to the Obama reelection campaign. Barack Obama won his first office primarily by having his opponents removed from the ballot on technicalities, so this would be in character.

A best case scenario would be if an investigation is launched before the Republican convention, tainting Mitt Romney sufficiently that a new candidate has to be found at the last minute. A sufficiently large number of delegates are either open or stealth supporters of Ron Paul, which would mean he has a very realistic shot at the nomination in that event. Since the Obama campaign is gearing up for a fight with Mitt Romney, this scenario would result in chaos all around. Still, it would be a chaos with a chance of producing a desirable outcome.

2 comments:

Thomas L. Knapp said...

"A sufficiently large number of delegates are either open or stealth supporters of Ron Paul, which would mean he has a very realistic shot at the nomination in that event."

There are no circumstances under which Ron Paul ever has had, has, or ever will have a realistic shot at the nomination.

That's just a fact, and no amount of fantasizing otherwise will change it. The two-party "system" has been purpose-evolved (above and beyond its inherent tendency) to preclude the nomination of candidates whose programs radically diverge from the status quo.

John0 Juanderlust said...

If the desirable outcome were to occur, I would conclude that there is a God, and that it has kindly dabbled in the affairs of the USA.