Mother Jones Takes Another Swing at Romney With 1985 Video of Candidate Discussing Bain Strategy to 'Harvest' Companies

Following the release of the now infamous video of GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney's "47 percent" remarks, the liberal Mother Jones magazine has dug up 1985 video of Romney discussing his former company Bain Capital and its investment strategy to "harvest" companies at a "significant profit."

Just as with the last video, the left and the Obama campaign are using the comments to make Romney look like an out-of-touch elitist, focusing on the word "harvest" to create an uproar. The video is also edited, making the full context of the remarks impossible to gauge.

The comments were reportedly included on 1998 CD-ROM marking Bain & Company's 25th anniversary.

"Bain Capital is an investment partnership which was formed to invest in startup companies and ongoing companies, then to take an active hand in managing them and hopefully, five to eight years later, to harvest them at a significant profit," Romney says in the video.

He went on to discuss why Bain and Company got involved in the venture capital business:

"We recognized that we had the potential to develop a significant and proprietary flow of business opportunities. Secondly, we had concepts and experience which would allow us to identify potential value and hidden value in a particular investment candidate. And third, we had the consulting resources and management skills and management resources to become actively involved in the companies we invested in to help them realize their potential value."

Watch the 1985 video via Mother Jones below:

This is how Mother Jones is interpreting Romney's comments from 27 years ago:

"...this short clip offers a glimpse of Romney when he was at the start of his private equity career and saw businesses as targets of opportunity that could be harvested for the benefit of his investors, not as long-term job creators or participants in a larger community. His remarks were hardly surprising, but they did encapsulate the mindset of get-in/get-out private equity deal makers."

Responding to the video, the Romney campaign highlighted the GOP nominee's experience in the private sector, however, the campaign did not seem to address the "harvest" comment.

"In addition to starting new businesses, Mitt Romney helped build Bain Capital by turning around broken companies, creating and saving thousands of jobs. The problem today is that President Obama hasn't been able to turn around our economy in the same way," Romney spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg said in a statement.

The Obama campaign jumped at the opportunity to slam Romney and said the video was proof that the candidate used Bain to suck companies dry with no regard for employees.

Team Obama publicized the following statement Thursday from a former employee of a Bain controlled company:

"Today's video confirms what I and other workers fired by Mitt Romney's Bain Capital already know: that Romney's business experience was never about creating jobs... Romney's own words prove that his focus was putting profits before people from the very beginning, 'harvesting' companies to make a 'significant profit' for himself and his investors," Randy Johnson said.

Romney's tone in the 1985 video, however, doesn't seem to indicate that he meant "harvest" in a cold and calculated way. The video begins with Romney describing Bain as an "investment partnership" and he goes on to talk about helping companies realize their "potential value."

Either way, the Obama campaign and liberal pundits will likely be talking about the nearly 30 year old clip for weeks to come.

Rev. Al Sharpton led his MSNBC show with the Romney clip, saying the comments reveal the candidate's "world view."

"Harvest these companies for a profit. That was Romney's goal in business, to harvest companies the way you harvest organs, the way you harvest crops. Take out everything good, and leave the stalks behind," Sharpton said.

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MSNBC's Ed Schultz also pounced on Romney for advocating for "an economic model firmly rejected by the middle class of this county because they are the ones who suffer."