What If U.S. Government Got The Bain Treatment?

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Investors Business Daily:

Election 2012: Some Republicans are trashing presidential front-runner Mitt Romney because he has practiced in the private sector what they preach. In fact, it wouldn't be so bad if Washington got the Bain treatment.

It was only a matter of time before Michael Moore would do a number on Mitt Romney and his private equity firm, Bain Capital. Lost jobs, shuttered factories, whole communities laid waste — it sounds like a remake of "Roger & Me," Moore's anti-corporate classic of the 1980s.

But wait. That's not Moore putting out this stuff. It's Newt Gingrich. It's Rick Perry. It's Jon Huntsman. All are taking shots at Mitt Romney for being a practicing capitalist.

Capitalism is an economic system that, last we checked, all the Republican hopefuls heartily endorse. But lately they've been reading a script that sounds straight from the left wing of the Democratic Party.

Here's Huntsman, telling the Daily Caller why Romney's business record is fair game: "We need to expand the economic base, and private equity traditionally has not been famous for expanding the economic base."

Here's Perry, in Anderson, S.C., blasting Romney for the woes at South Carolina companies in which Bain Capital had invested: "There is nothing wrong with being successful and making money ... it's the American Dream. But getting rich off failure and sticking someone else with the bill is indefensible."

And here's Gingrich, calling Romney a brigand of corporate greed: "Those of us who believe in free markets and those of us who believe that, in fact, the whole goal of investment is entrepreneurship and job creation, would find it pretty hard to justify rich people figuring out clever, legal ways to loot out a company."

On NBC's "Today," the former House speaker demanded that Romney "walk through in detail some of the companies that Bain took over where they apparently looted the companies, left people unemployed and walked off with millions of dollars." A pro-Gingrich super PAC is readying a 30-minute video to drive these points home in lurid detail.

Maybe it's just opportunism talking. Or desperation.

Romney is slowly cementing his front-runner status, and the rest of the field is running out of time to catch him. Gingrich especially seems to have cast off all restraint. The more he and his PAC allies rant, the more firepower they'll provide for 10-megaton Democratic attack ads against Romney in the general election.

In trashing the work of private capital, they're also attacking a key link to the success of competitive free enterprise. Investment firms such as Bain don't just try to pick winners. They try to turn lagging firms into winners, too. Restructuring isn't painless, but without it the companies are probably doomed to failure. Cutting jobs now means avoiding the loss of more jobs later.

In fact, what Bain has done in the private sector could — and should — be applied to the biggest basket case in the land, the federal government.