Like him or not, Newt is a master of framing issues for debate. Last night, in continuing to hammer at Mitt’s successful career, he laid out this frame for an argument against Mitt’s fitness to be in tune with the electorate. Of course, Mitt is associated with Bain Capital (which does LBOs, but also has a venture arm). In it, he makes an artful distinction between private equity and venture capital (h/t to Dan Primack):
I think there are specific cases… where Bain Capital’s model — which was to take over a company and dramatically leverage it, leave it with a great deal of debt — made it less likely to survive… And so I think the underlying model of that kind of investment, which is very different from venture capital, ought to be explained and those cases ought to be looked at.