Konarka: Mitt Romney's Solyndra?

A day after the Republican launches a high-profile attack on a failed Obama-funded solar company, a Massachusetts firm Romney backed goes belly up

Mitt Romney
(Image credit: Mark Makela/In Pictures/Corbis)

Mitt Romney surprised reporters last Thursday by making an unscheduled visit to the building that housed bankrupt California solar panel company Solyndra; Mitt used the empty headquarters as a backdrop to criticize President Obama for a $530 million federal loan to the failed company. But the very next day, Konarka Technologies, a Massachusetts solar panel maker to which Romney had lent $1.5 million in state money as governor, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. And Konarka is not the first belly-up solar firm Gov. Romney subsidized (see Evergreen Solar). Does Konarka neuter Romney's attacks on Solyndra?

Yes. Romney now has his own Solyndra problem: Konarka represents "an inconvenient truth" for Romney, says Taylor Marsh at her blog. His Solyndra attack on Obama was already based on "talking points that aren't supported by the facts, unless you get all your news from the Right and Rush Limbaugh." Now it just looks embarrassing and hypocritical. Romney clearly knows that "investments don't always pan out, especially on new and groundbreaking technologies" like solar, and after Konarka, he may be forced to acknowledge that.

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