George Will Schools Jennifer Granholm on Bain Capital and Solyndra
Former Democratic Michigan governor turned Current TV commentator Jennifer Granholm got a much-needed education Sunday about the difference between Mitt Romney's involvement with Bain Capital and President Obama's forays into green energy investment.
"When Bain invested," said George Will on ABC's This Week, "it invests money that it gets voluntarily to be invested. When the president throws a half-billion dollars away on Solyndra, it's money taken away by the police power of the federal government from unwilling taxpayers" (video follows with transcript and commentary)
JENNIFER GRANHOLM, CURRENT TV: I don't think Bain Capital is a side show, as the president says. This is the issue. This is the issue that he is running on.
(CROSSTALK)
LIZ CLAMAN, FOX BUSINESS NETWORK: Then why does he go to businesses that were helped by private equity?
GRANHOLM: That's not -- but that's the whole point, is that he's not going after free enterprise because he's attacking this man for his job experience. That would be like saying, you know, if you did a story I didn't like, free speech, I'm attacking free speech.
That's just not the case. He's attacking him for that experience, claiming that that experience is the experience that we should be looking to, to create jobs in America when it's clearly not.
GEORGE WILL: So, it would be fair for Romney to say, look at Solyndra, they laid off 1,100 people with no pensions, no severance, nothing else. And that's the result of the president's idea of green energy.
Indeed. Marc Thiessen had a fabulous piece at the Washington Post Thursday about how many jobs green energy companies Obama invested in have actually lost.
If liberal media members like Granholm think this is a winning strategy for Obama, they're going to be very surprised by the public's reaction. But I digress:
RON BROWNSTEIN, NATIONAL JOURNAL: And George, to your point, from before. I mean, those are the two competing frames that the candidates are offering for what's happening in America.
As you said, the Romney frame is that government is intruding on the private market and producing weaker results. The Obama frame is that the private market is not producing an economy that works for everyone.
GRANHOLM: And there is --
BROWNSTEIN: And that ultimately government has to be involved in trying to create more broadly shared opportunity.
GRANHOLM: There is a big difference with Solyndra, though. The president was not personally profiting. It was an effort to try to jump-start an industry and a business. You know, Romney was personally profiting and very well.
WILL: There's another difference, that is when Bain invested, it invests money that it gets voluntarily to be invested. When the president throws a half-billion dollars away on Solyndra, it's money taken away by the police power of the federal government from unwilling taxpayers.
Ouch. That's gonna leave a mark.
Why is it liberal media members have far less disdain for a President wasting taxpayer funds on failed projects than private citizens investing their own money for personal gain?
Yes, that's a rhetorical question.
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Comments
Huh?
Submitted by River City on Sun, 05/27/2012 - 1:53pm.
Didn't personally profit? You have got to be kidding me. What were all those kickbacks to the tune of millions of dollars, maybe even billions of dollars with all these loans to green companies in the name of political contribitutions to the president, the DNC & other fellow travelers? That IS personally profiting.
"Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality--the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind." Ayn Rand
You dont understand
Submitted by Boudin on Sun, 05/27/2012 - 1:58pm.
These cretins think WE profit when their crony-capitalisim results in huge campaign contributions to themselves
I know
Submitted by River City on Sun, 05/27/2012 - 8:31pm.
I am hick know-nothing waiting on my betters in NY & DC to give me instructions from on high.
We out number them & are by far much smarter than they are. It is time to put an end to their faux moral superiority. They are neither moral nor superior.
"Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality--the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind." Ayn Rand
It just isn't a fair fight,
Submitted by pilgrim4jc on Sun, 05/27/2012 - 1:56pm.
It just isn't a fair fight, there is no liberal that can compete with Will!
Realistically...
Submitted by Guapo Diablo on Sun, 05/27/2012 - 4:09pm.
No one can effectively counter his point - left or right. ABC would love to fire Will, but using logic and honesty to continually win arguments week after week is simply not grounds for dismissal.
Any
Submitted by bobsmom on Sun, 05/27/2012 - 2:19pm.
time I get to see our idiot of a former governor embarrassed, makes it a good day for me.
They THINK we're stupid.
Submitted by Annie Ashe Fields on Sun, 05/27/2012 - 2:58pm.
We KNOW THEY'RE stupid.
Amen sister
Submitted by ohio granny on Sun, 05/27/2012 - 8:20pm.
Amen sister.
What Romney is running on
Submitted by KC Mulville on Sun, 05/27/2012 - 3:00pm.
The liberals are up to their usual tricks.
Romney is running for president on the idea that his experience in business gives him a better insight into how to improve business.
They've used this tactic so often that it's self-parody now. They hear only what they want to hear, and base their public campaign on nothing more than the distortion that they themselves misrepresented. After a week goes by, they've repeated it so often that they forgot what the original fraud was, and then it becomes instant history. Ask them what really happened a year from now, and they'll have convinced themselves that Herodotus testified to it.
It isn't that The Big Lie convinces everyone. It just rebounds back on the the big-lie tellers. After they use the Big Lie, they come to believe it ... not anyone else.
Bain Bain Bain
Submitted by grammajane on Sun, 05/27/2012 - 3:00pm.
is another example of libs lying and bashing about a subject that is going no-where. They are in desperation mode as they have zero to run on. Failures don't make campaign goals or get people elected. Mr. Will is top notch and if he keeps this up, he will probably get fired.
Granholm
Submitted by mmilesll on Sun, 05/27/2012 - 3:33pm.
This moron ruined Michigan and she has the nerve to make fun of Bain? Libs only have one thing going for them--a lot of nerve.
We're still digging out of the massive hole...
Submitted by P. Aaron on Sun, 05/27/2012 - 4:18pm.
...that twit Granholm left us. Wherever she's teaching, don't send your kids there.
Bain is the new liberal code word for
Submitted by Paul G on Sun, 05/27/2012 - 4:02pm.
Haliburton.....
Exactly
Submitted by Guapo Diablo on Sun, 05/27/2012 - 4:13pm.
Even if Romney had only rescued stray kitties and puppies all his life and never made a dime of profit, the media & democrat party would have found some way to demonize him for the sole reason that he has the (R) associated with his name.
R = Guilty
So...
Submitted by amyshulk on Sun, 05/27/2012 - 4:55pm.
In lefty speak:
Pentagon spending, in the form of R&D to bring fledgling ideas up to concrete products/parts/etc. = BAD
Gov't spending to pick winners and losers in *established* concrete products/parts/etc. = GOOD
Private sector doing either - BAD.
Do I have it straight???
Ronald Reagan
Is it just me?
Submitted by tolstoyx on Sun, 05/27/2012 - 6:51pm.
Is it just me or does Jennifer Grandholm look strangely erotic with the beautiful face and the large monkey ears? Kinda like the planet of the apes. Just sayin.
Will on ABC This Week
Submitted by Tex Expatriate on Mon, 05/28/2012 - 7:30am.
Read the transcript, listen to the tape---here's a perfect example why a group of people cannot determine anything. There's usually only one of them who really knows the facts of the matter, and everyone else has some kind of screwy interpretation.
Granholm, like all Democrats, was and remains an ignorant fool about economics and America. The others might just benefit from a 1950s Junior High School class of civics and economics. Only Will (a person I suspect is often wrong on many things) knew what he was talking about here.
The fact that Granholm is employed by Gore's . . .
Submitted by Galvanic on Mon, 05/28/2012 - 10:55am.
. . . Current TV speaks volumes of her political perspective.
Her crowning achievement as Michigan governor appears to have been securing the bail outs of GM and Chrysler, and a hefty chunk of the stimulus bill. No wonder the UAW loves her.
Ford
Submitted by ecnirP on Mon, 05/28/2012 - 9:41pm.
…and thank heaven that we had a management team at one of the big three unwilling to cave to the government.