Romney Seeks Image Boost as Storm Stalks Convention (plus Bain protesters)

[ProSense]

Romney Seeks Image Boost as Storm Stalks Convention

By COLLEEN MCCAIN NELSON and PATRICK O'CONNOR

TAMPA, Fla.—Mitt Romney enters the most important week of his political career dogged by a nasty tropical storm but hopeful it will pass in time for a circle of friends and supporters to give his presidential campaign the powerful lift it has been seeking all summer.

Republicans have gathered here on Florida's Gulf coast for a convention that will launch Mr. Romney into a general-election campaign that will be short, intense and extremely expensive. More than that, it will offer the nation a stark choice in governing philosophies.

The convention stakes are high because Mr. Romney trails President Barack Obama in both national polls and polls in most of the crucial swing states that will decide the election. His campaign and party will have but three hours of broadcast television in total Tuesday through Thursday to start winning over a voting public that hasn't warmed to him through 15 months of regular campaigning.

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GOP officials such as Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who is scheduled to give a televised, prime-time speech, will help make the case. Mr. Romney recently gave hints of how he might approach that challenge himself. In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, he sought to paint a picture of how the country would be better under his leadership and to root the picture in his personal history. His plan for a "stronger middle class,'' he said, grew from watching the companies he bought through his private-equity firm thrive when people were given the skills to innovate.

- more -

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444506004577613662799622498.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Factory workers prepare to confront Romney in Tampa over Bain layoffs

Illinois car-part plant employees head to Tampa to protest outsourcing of jobs to China by parent company Bain Capital

Paul Harris in Tampa

To the four people sitting in church at a Tampa suburb, coming to the Republican national convention to protest Mitt Romney felt deeply personal, not just political.

For all of them are workers at an Illinois car parts factory whose parent firm Sensata is majority-owned by Bain Capital, the company once run by Romney and in which he still has millions of dollars of investments.

Now their plant in the small town of Freeport is being closed and
shipped piece by piece to China.

They have trained their Chinese replacements, watched colleagues get laid off and by the end of the year they will have lost their jobs too.

- more -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/26/sensata-employees-confront-romney-bain

RNC protestor says he was a Bain Capitol victim

Tampa Bay Business Journal by Mark Holan, Staff Writer

Mike Stuart of Philadelphia joined about 200 protesters in Lykes Gaslight Square Park Sunday afternoon.

"Some rain is not going to stop us," he said as the first bands of Tropical Storm Isaac blew through downtown Tampa.

Stuart said he works at Guitar Center in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, just across the Delaware River from Philly.

In 2007 the musical instrument chain store agreed to a $2.1 billion buyout from Bain Capital, the Boston-based venture capital firm co-founded by Republican presidential presumptive nominee Mitt Romney.

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http://www.bizjournals.com/tampabay/news/2012/08/26/Protestor-says-he-was-victim-of-bain.html

Romney Invested In Company That Is Outsourcing Jobs, Forcing Workers To Train...Chinese Replacements
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021195910

Nicely nasty new Obama video on Romney & GOP Convention
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021203578

[ProSense]

1. Kick! n/t

[ProSense]

2. Another for

Romney's victims.