Republicans love to insist that people need to take “personal responsibility” for everything. It’s one of their flagstone attacks against things like consumer protection, health insurance reform and any of number of social services. Yet when it comes to Republicans themselves, responsibility is something they never want to take. That also includes Mitt Romney, who seems to be claiming that he is not responsible for a company he was CEO, chairman and president of, Bain Capital:

And Romney also wants to disavow responsibility for many layoffs that Bain engineered after 1999, an issue he has had to deal with since running for Governor.

When the statements above are examined closely, however, it becomes clear that the Romney campaign may be treading a very fine rhetorical line here–one that it believes might allow Romney to dodge both bullets (the accuracy of his public statements and Bain’s decisions).

Specifically…

Note that the Romney campaign does not deny that Romney was “chairman, CEO, and president” of Bain from 1999-2002.

What the Romney campaign says instead is that Romney “left” Bain in 1999 and had “no input on investments or management of companies after that point.”

So, read to the legal letter, both of those statements may technically be true (or at least defensible).

Romney did leave Bain in 1999, at least for a leave of absence (he went to run the Olympics).
And it is possible that, once he left, he no longer had direct input into investment or management decisions.

However …

As “Chairman, CEO, and President” of Bain, he damn well would have remained responsible for these decisions. In which case, saying he had “left” and implying that he had no involvement or responsibility whatsoever is highly misleading.

Mitt Romney WAS responsible for the company, regardless of what him or his campaign says. But as I said earlier, Republicans always fail to take responsibility. Romney will become another Bush, in which everyone else was at fault for Katrina, other’s lied us into war and the economic collapse was caused by anyone but Bush.

Responsibility for Republicans? Hogwash! The buck don’t stop there, because they spend all their time preventing it from getting there. This is not a person ready to lead a nation, much less a Scout troop. Mitt Romney is nothing but a fraud, lying his way to the White House and there are countless Republicans out there ready to latch on. Well shame on you, because when we lose any responsibility in the Oval Office, it will be because of the Mittster and you little minions who voted for him.