Bain is a private equity firm. That means that it buys other companies or at least invests in them. When it invests it protects its investment by buying control of the company. The PE firms make money by turning around struggling companies and selling them for a profit.
Companies that are thriving and have a bright future do not turn to private equity firms. Rarely is a well-run and profitable company bought by a PE firm. Corporate raiders buy up profitable and well-run companies in order to strip out the best assets and sell them for more than they paid for the company in the first place. The business models of PE firms and corporate raiders have nothing in common.
The Obama campaign, which knows better, has portrayed Bain as a corporate raider. Journalists, who are supposed to call liars on the carpet, seem to lap it up and continue spreading the lies. A PE firm that owns a company that goes bankrupt loses money. Bain does not lose money. Therefore, the idea that it is a corporate raider is nonsense.
Much has been made of Bain outsourcing some jobs, including outsourcing some overseas. If you thought that "outsourcing" only meant sending jobs overseas, that is not the case. Most jobs outsourced by U.S. companies go to other U.S. companies.
When jobs are outsourced, including sent overseas, it is to try and save the rest of the company. Sometimes this works, sometimes it does not.
Think of PE firms as surgeons who only take on the most difficult and serious cases. The highly qualified surgeons who do this lose patients regularly; they only hope to save as many as they can. So, too, does a PE firm only take on companies that would probably die without an infusion of money and turn-around expertise. The fact that so few of the companies wind up "dying" is a tribute to the skill and dedication of the "surgeons" involved.
You have answers saying that Bain is a corporate raider (absolutely untrue), or that confuses a PE rescue of another company with LBO (leveraged buyout). The liars trying to convince people that Bain is fundamentally evil know they are lying. But, as long as journalists will not call them on the lies they can get away with it.
I am not a Republican, I have not decided to vote for Romney. I am a business professional who knows a lie when he sees one.