In an appearance on Fox News this morning, Mitt Romney was asked if he agreed with Rush Limbaugh that Obama seemed ready to run a campaign against capitalism. Romney responded that it "certainly sounds like that's what he's doing."

Romney has spent the past week responding to White House attacks on his work at Bain Capital. Bain was a private equity company that bought up troubled businesses and refurbished them. As Romney pointed out today, Bain was successful about 80% of the time. The White House's focus on the minority of occasions when Bain was not successful seems to cross a line between attacking Romney and attacking the system itself.

It's not just conservative bloggers who've taken a dim view of the President's attacks. A number of Democrats, including Mayor Cory Booker, Former Rep. Harold Ford, Lanny Davis, ex-Car Czar Steve Rattner, Former Gov. Ed Rendell, and Gov. Deval Patrick have all taken issue with the tone of the ads. Even Senator Dianne Feinstein of California seems eager for the White House to move on.

The media has been somewhat confused by the Bain attacks, too. Washington Post fact Checker Glenn Kessler pointed out, "The big question, for us at least, is whether the story of one company — or a few — in some of Bain’s bad deals should negate a largely positive record of building businesses, sometimes in challenging economic climates." In other words, what's the alternative system from which we can judge Bain a failure?

The attacks on Bain are a critique of capitalism writ small. At some point, the White House needs to explain how it can judge Bain a failure without that judgment applying, implicitly, to every business which fires people when the bottom line isn't adding up.