Daily Kos/SEIU State of the Nation Poll: Majority think Romney was concerned with profits, not jobs

Republican defenders of Mitt Romney's tenure at Bain Capital are torn between two incompatible positions. On the one hand, they know that companies like Bain are purely in business to make a profit'and to them, that's a good thing, regardless of the damage they cause in doing so. On the other hand, they also know that the politically astute defense of Bain is to argue that its efforts created jobs'even though that was never a goal that occurred to a single Bain investor, and the claim is unverifiable at best.

Even Romney himself seems torn, both acknowledging he was in it for the profits:

"Certainly, the objective of the private sector by and large is to create return on investment for shareholders to build businesses, and as part of that process, businesses are able to hire and grow. That's the nature of the free enterprise system."

And also trying to spin himself as a job creator:

"The most recent attacks are really off target and I think they know. ... And of course they don't mention a couple of other things. One is that we were able to help create over 100,000 jobs...."

But confused, self-serving GOP rhetoric doesn't mean much. We wanted to find out what the American people believe.

Public Policy Polling for Daily Kos & SEIU. 5/17-20. Registered voters. MoE: ±3.1% (no trendlines):

Q: When Mitt Romney worked in the private sector as the head of Bain Capital, do you think he was more concerned with making a profit or with creating jobs, or do you think he cared about both equally?

Making a profit: 57
Creating jobs: 12
Both equally: 25
Not sure: 6

Voters simply aren't fooled by Romney's attempts to belatedly tout his highly questionable claims about job creation'something I'm sure he never spent a moment even considering until his first run for Senate in 1994. Interestingly, independents are very close to Democrats on this issue, and very far from Republicans. Seventy-eight percent of Democratic voters think Romney was more concerned with profits, compared to just 6 percent who say jobs and 10 percent who say both equally. Independents break down quite similarly, at 64-7-23.

GOP voters, though, seem as riven as Romney himself, with 28 percent saying Romney's chief aim was profit, 21 percent job creation, and 44 percent trying to split the baby and saying "both equally." The key point is, though, that the vast majority of voters think Romney was in it for the money. People simply aren't buying Romney's attempts to sell himself as anything other than a corporate profiteer.

P.S. As always, our approval and favorability numbers can be found on our weekly trends page.