Rove: Anti-Bain attack ads ‘clever’ but won’t hurt Romney’s campaign

GOP political strategist Karl Rove said attempts by the Obama re-election campaign to attack Mitt Romney's tenure as head of Bain Capital will ultimately fail to win voters.

“The problem is this is Romney's strength," said Rove on "Fox News Sunday" of Democratic attempts to target Romney’s private-sector experience. 

A recent Obama ad blamed Romney for the closure of a steel plant which Bain had invested in and likened the company’s private-equity practice to “vulture” capitalism.

"Romney invested $180 million in the company. The company made money for a while and eight years later after a flood of cheap end steel came into the United States, principally from China, it and a number of other steel companies went under," Rove said Sunday. "Two years after, over two years after [Romney] left Bain Capital."

"It's a clever [ad]," Rove said, "if you don't have a vision to run on."

The former adviser to President George W. Bush however predicted that Romney would survive the attacks, "as long as he engages" against the Obama campaign’s negative ads.

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