After a day of Republican outrage — and Obama campaign missteps — the head of the Obama-supporting super PAC behind a controversial new ad that suggests Mitt Romney indirectly led to the death of an Ohio woman insisted the ad does no such thing.
The minute-long ad has not yet aired on TV anywhere, but it’s become the campaign controversy du juor. In it, an Ohio man describes losing his job at a after Bain Capital closed the GST Steel mill where he worked, connects his unemployment — and resulting lack of health insurance — to his wife’s death from cancer.
Republicans have used it as a rallying cry. Left-leaning pundits have denounced it. CNN found it to be inaccurate.
Bill Burton, a co-founder of Priorities USA, the super PAC responsible for the ad, told CNN Wednesday that the people who think the spot suggests Romney was in any way involved with or responsible for the woman’s death described in the ad are off base.
“You’re absolutely right, he is not,” Burton said. “That’s not what the ad suggests.”
He went on:
The point of this ad is that — it is to tell the story of one guy, Joe Soptic, and the impact on his life that happened for years, and to this day as a result of decisions that Mitt Romney made. This is one of a series of ads in which we talk about the very long lasting impacts that Mitt Romney’s decision had on these communities, on these individuals and their families. What that fact check did was it presupposes that if Joe’s wife had gotten sick right after he left that company, after he was fired from that company, somehow Mitt Romney would be culpable. If she hadn’t had health insurance for a short time in that intervening period, somehow Mitt Romney would be culpable. We’re not saying Mitt Romney is culpable for that. We’re saying he was fired from his job, couldn’t keep health care benefits promised to him. As a result when his wife got sick, he didn’t have it.
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