Anti-Romney documentary might not be a bane for his campaign after all

Two weeks ago, Mitt Romney’s primary campaign — and perhaps his general-election bid as well — seemed threatened by a 28-minute video that promoted every bad stereotype about him.

But now, the former Massachusetts governor has absorbed the hit and survived. In fact, incredibly, the film seems to have actually strengthened him — one of those odd strokes of luck that have blessed the Romney campaign since its start.

{mosads}The video in question is called “The King of Bain,” and was released by the pro-Newt Gingrich super-PAC Winning Our Future. It was released in its entirety online, and the super-PAC took commercial-length cuts to air in South Carolina as paid advertisements against Romney.

That was accompanied by a fierce rhetorical war waged against Romney by Gingrich and Rick Perry. The two accused Romney of exactly what the film charged — that Romney got rich at workers’ expense, destroyed jobs and, generally, behaved like a predatory capitalist from a Michael Moore documentary. 

Or to be more exact — a “vulture”, which is how both Perry and Gingrich described him. 

The problem is — almost none of the film was true. In fact, if the film were released in theaters, Rotten Tomatoes would probably give it a freshness rating of about zero percent, because you would be hard-pressed to find a critic of any sort who had any sort of positive thing to say about it.

The Associated Press ran a fact-check on the film and, as many other outlets noted, pointed out that the central claims of the documentary — that Romney shuttered four firms — were out-and-out lies. In fact, Romney had already left Bain before three of the firms closed. 

USA Today’s Fact Checker said the film “overstates, or outright distorts, Romney’s culpability”; that it relies on “cherry-picking some of the worst Bain outcomes to portray Bain in the worst possible light”; and that it “strained” facts.

The Washington Post’s fact-checker awarded the film four “Pinocchios” for telling “whoppers”: “[It’s] such an over-the-top assault on former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney that it is hard to know where to begin” in refuting its claims. Refute, nevertheless, the newspaper does, calling the film “manipulative” and “completely off point.”

Moreover, the Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact claimed that the only true central claim of the film was that Romney tore down one of his personal homes to build a bigger one — a sign of success, yes, but not exactly evil incarnate.

In fact, reviews of the film were so universally bad that even Gingrich, whom the video was designed to help, eventually called on its distributors to stop running it or fix the falsehoods in it.

And thus begins the part of this story where “King of Bain” turns into a net positive and, potentially, a powerful one at that.

First, the film has done what was previously so elusive for Romney — it has engendered conservative sympathy. One of the most powerful storylines of this election has been the lukewarm-to-downright-hostile reaction to Romney from conservatives.

From the beginning, it seemed his healthcare plan, dubbed “RomneyCare,” was on trial — a bad story for Romney — but now it’s shifted to capitalism on trial, with Romney the defendant and Gingrich and Perry the prosecutors, borrowing from socialist talking points. 

Not only have Republican political figures like Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Sen. Jim DeMint (S.C.) and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee rallied to Romney’s defense, but important conservative intellectuals have as well.

For example, Peter Suderman, associate editor of Reason magazine, wrote that the attacks were “helping to unite conservatives in defense of Romney.”

But even more importantly, “King of Bain” could help mute key Democratic talking points against Romney in a general election. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has already begun a scorched-earth attack on Romney through daily missives against nearly every conceivable position he’s taken, but many suspect the committee was retaining the Bain angle for the general election. 

They may stick with the strategy, but there’s a potentially bad rub for the DNC. The universal condemnation of “King of Bain” could create some lasting perceptions among voters that all attacks on Romney’s time at Bain are merely the partisan politics of class envy. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t some real and challenging concerns about Romney’s time at the venture capital firm. What it does mean, though, is that voters may become numbed to the controversy.

In short, the Democrats’ most potent narrative might be losing some of its sting as we speak.

Heinze, the founder of GOP12.com, is a member of staff at The Hill.