Romney (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)TAMPA—After weeks of negative attacks from President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies, Mitt Romney's campaign has signaled that it is ready to launch a major pushback on criticism of Romney's record at Bain Capital.
On Thursday, the campaign unveiled a new website—SterlingBusinessCareer.com—which redirects to a page on Romney's campaign website that talks up what it describes as the candidate's "success in the private sector." It features testimonials from people who worked with Romney while he was at Bain, most of them employees of companies the firm invested in.
The site name is an obvious reference to former President Bill Clinton's defense of Romney in the wake of the Obama campaign's attacks on Bain. In May, Clinton told CNN in an interview that Romney has had a "sterling business career [that] crosses the qualification threshold" for the presidency.
The site was unveiled at the same time that a major portion of the schedule at the Republican National Convention on Thursday has been dedicated to a defense of Romney's time as a venture capitalist at Bain. Bob White, a longtime Romney friend and adviser who worked with him at Bain, will talk about Romney's time there. Another speaker will be Tom Stemberg, the founder of Staples, which was founded with seed money from Bain.
The candidate himself is expected to speak about his time at Bain—though aides would not indicate how much. Romney has struggled to answer attacks on his record at Bain—in part because of his own reluctance to discuss his history there.
But there have been signs that the Romney campaign is changing its strategy. Last week, on the eve of the convention, Romney authored an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal talking about the lessons he learned while he was at Bain.