The Obama-supporting Priorities USA PAC has released anti-Bain ads before, but it’s reached a new level of dishonesty with this latest one. It features a former GST Steel worker blaming Mitt Romney for the loss of his job and health care, which he suggests led to his wife’s subsequent illness and death. Politico reports:
The commercial casts Mitt Romney’s business background in a severely negative light, but it’s not a typical slash-and-burn attack ad. Instead, it features former GST Steel employee Joe Soptic speaking to the camera about what happened when the plant where he worked shut down.
“I don’t think Mitt Romney understands what he’s done to people’s lives by closing the plant. I don’t think he realizes that people’s lives completely changed,” Soptic said. “When Mitt Romney and Bain closed the plant, I lost my health care and my family lost their health care. And a short time after that my wife became ill.”
He continues: “I don’t know how long she was sick and I think maybe she didn’t say anything because she knew that we couldn’t afford the insurance. And then one day she became ill and I took her up to the Jackson County Hospital and admitted her for pneumonia and that’s when they found the cancer and by then it was stage four. It was — there was nothing they could do for her. And she passed away in 22 days.”
The effort to link Romney to GST Steel’s collapse is fairly flimsy on its own, as the plant declared bankruptcy and shut down years after Romney left Bain. But as Politico’s Alexander Burns reports, the Priorities USA ad also suggests that GST Steel worker Joe Soptic’s wife died shortly after the factory closed, as a result of losing their health insurance. That timeline is misleading, according to Burns:
In the case of this particularly jarring super PAC ad, it may also be relevant that Soptic’s wife died in 2006, years after the GST factory closed down.
A 2006 story in the Kansas City Star reported the death of Ranae Soptic, a former champion roller skater: “Soptic went to the hospital for pneumonia, but doctors found signs of very advanced cancer, and she died two weeks later on June 22.”
I asked Priorities USA strategist Bill Burton to explain the connection between Romney, Bain and a cancer fatality that happened near the end of Romney’s tenure as governor of Massachusetts. The lapse in time between the plant closing and Soptic’s death doesn’t mean the ad is invalid, but it raises questions about the cause and effect relationship here.
The Washington Examiner also looked back at some of Soptic’s previous media appearances, and argues that details in his story have changed:
Why is Soptic upset? Primarily, its because his pension was cut. In this interview, Soptic clarified that his 401k was not affected but he lost $400 a month from his pension.
But in a January 2012 Reuters story, Soptic reportedly said that he only lost $283 per month from his pension.
Soptic isn’t a figure the GOP will have an easy time responding to, because his story is deeply personal and sad. But Priorities USA deserves all the criticism it’s getting for exploiting this story to launch a misleading attack on Romney. To insinuate that Romney was responsible for the death of Soptic’s wife seven years after he left Bain and five years after GST Steel shut its doors is a terrible slander, even by Priority USA’s usual standards.
The dishonesty matters to God, but not to the race itself, where it may prove devastatingly effective.
The Obama campaign has sunk to the gutter. He is no longer “presidential” in my opinion. He is a liar and a distorter, counting on the less educated of the population (his base) and rich liberals (his other base) to get him a second term. He is a failure and his attacks on Mr. Romney are revoltin. When I heard his latest radio ad about the woman who died of cancer, I went online and donated to Romney … and I have NEVER donated to any political campaign. It was against my principles, but with Obama playing Chicago defamation politics, I felt compelled to act.
Sorry, but Obama has always been in the gutter. That is the problem. I have not forgotten him using statements like 'lipstick on a pig' while giving the finger (pretending he was scratching his face – the audience and everyone else knew what he was doing). n nAbsolutely disgraceful. The media is too for letting it all slide past. The republicans MUST see how corrupt the media is. Never trust them. They need to be like Newt and hammer them – shine the light on the weasels.
The ad is effective because it is so raw. Still, the details are missing so, as Alana, notes, it's impossible to know when his wife contracted cancer, how old she was, if an early diagnosis would have helped, was she eligible for medicare or medicaid, or whether the woman even knew she was sick in the first place. It's quite possible, and often happens, that a person only learns he has cancer when it is too late. n nAnother effective point of the ad is that for people who are now unemployed and without health insurance it brings out their worries should any of them, or their families, become ill. n nIt is a losing battle to attack the ad head-on. Nonetheless, the Romney camp could show how Mr. Romney's plan for health care, and how our current safety net, would have helped this man's family. Mr. Romney can also speak about what is wrong with our health care system, what is drastically wrong with Obamacare, and how Mr. Romney will fix both of these problems. n nI don't see the ad as so much against Bain, as it is about health care, really, despite the direct reference to Bain. n n
Obama's people are very well aware that most of his voters are grossly ignorant human beings. Perhaps half of them could not read an ordinary article in the sports section if their life depended on it. Democrats have a monopoly on those whose intelligence can be easily insulted.
There is this thing called COBRA–for 1-2 yrs after you lose your company insurance you get that at a subsidized rate. Then after that you generally qualify for HIPPA, so you continue your insurance if you have pre-existing conditions. As it happens, however, she was working at a store and had 2 years of insurance afterwards. Possibly she gave it up. Possibly it lapsed. Possibly she didn't think she needed it. Possibly she actually had insurance and Soptic is confabulating. Possibly Harry Reid kiled her. Who knows?
CNN is apparently reporting that the woman had health care benefits—from her own job. The husband is outright lying.
There's nothing about this ad that is legit. It is disgraceful, but the Democrats are proving to be shameless. I think, however, they are playing with fire and putting at jeopardy their whole liberal/progressive agenda. If the "independent" voters see through this (and the other idiocies coming out of the party these days) the Democrats will be punished in November but, perhaps more importantly, voters will begin thinking more critically about their whole program. After all, a party reduced to outright (and outrageous) lies loses credibility, and by extension so do those things for which they advocate. Am I going to trust these people on global warming after this? nOf course, there is also the chance that the independent voter sees this ad (and hears Reid's accusations, etc.), decides Romney really is the antichrist, and Obama is re-elected. If that's the case, we're doomed.
His story is personal and sad? Yet he exploits his wife's death by lying about it without compunction. His politics is so important to him he can dishonor his wife to deceive the public. This is despicable and he is beneath contempt.
Well said. And hopefully most people will get this!
Good one, Besht2003! Let Reid disprove it…
It's disgusting the man would use his dead wife in a political ad, with all of its misleading statements. Romney needs to fight back hard.