Bain Controversy Dominates Sunday Talk Shows

On Sunday, Rahm Emanuel, President Barack Obama's former White House chief of staff and current mayor of Chicago, told ABC's This Week that the Mitt Romney campaign should stop whining about senior Obama campaign aide Stephanie Cutter's remark that the Republican candidate may be a felon.

Cutter was referring to questions about whether Romney really left Bain Capital in 1999, as he has always asserted. The Boston Globe has reported that he continued to be listed as the company's president, CEO, chairman and sole shareholder on Securities and Exchange Commission documents three years after he claims to have resigned from the firm.

What are you going to do when the Chinese leader says something? Or Putin says to you? You're going to whine as your way? You cannot do that. And as Mitt Romney said once to his own Republican colleagues: Stop whining. I'll give him his own advice: Stop whining, the Chicago mayor said.

On Fox News Sunday, Florida governor Rick Scott and his Iowa counterpart Terry Branstad, both Republicans, debated the Obama administration's change in the welfare-to-work requirements, which says that the poorest states can opt out of the work component of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program. Scott insisted that Floridians will be required to look for a job if they want welfare benefits, saying that we believe in personal responsibility, and we're going to have that in our state.

Branstad was less equable, saying that the White House's sidestepping of congressing is a huge step in the wrong direction ... I think it's illegal.

On the same show, Republican strategist Karl Rove said called the Obama campaign's use of SEC files to paint Romney as a liar about his Bain career is gutter politics of the worst Chicago sort. But like Emanuel, Rove, who was the driving force behind George W. Bush's presidential campaigns, had advice for the Republican nominee, saying that Romney needs to describe now what it is he will do when he becomes president if he hopes to beat Obama.

Ed Gillespie, Romney campaign senior adviser, will speak about that on MBC's Meet the Press. Gillespie also appeared on CNN's State of the Union, where, perhaps contrary to Rove's advice, he spoke about the squabble over when Romney stopped working at Bain Capital. Gillespie said that Obama's use of Romney's record shows that this president will say or do anything to keep the highest office in the land even if it means demeaning the highest office in the land.

It's pretty clear what Rahm Emanuel would say about Gillespie's interview.