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[h/t ThinkProgress]

Over the past few weeks we've seen a lot of employers telling their employees they need to vote for Mitt Romney if they expect to keep their jobs. The most recent stories come via Koch Industries, ASG Software, and Westgate Resorts.

It turns out they may have been listeners on this conversation, which took place on June 7, 2012. The NFIB (National Federation of Independent Business) held a conference call with Mitt Romney and members. At the end of the call, Mitt concluded his remarks with this:

I hope you make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections. And whether you agree with me or you agree with President Obama, or whatever your political view, I hope — I hope you pass those along to your employees. Nothing illegal about you talking to your employees about what you believe is best for the business, because I think that will figure into their election decision, their voting decision and of course doing that with your family and your kids as well.

He just squeaked through with that tossed off reference to agreeing with him or President Obama, but the implication was pretty clear, wasn't it?

Make your employees vote like their jobs depend on it.

Kind of sounds like the iconic threat: "We have ways of making you talk."

NFIB is not exactly a neutral player in the whole electoral landscape. You can find out more about them at NFIBexposed, but they're basically a US Chamber of Commerce for privately held companies, large and small. I'd give long odds that every listener on that call was a Romney campaign contributor.

Many thanks to In These Times for being patient enough to discover this. Everyone should share this with people so they understand how far the right is willing to go to intimidate people into electing Mitt Romney.

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From this Sunday's Meet the Press, Robert Gibbs called out former GE CEO, Jack Welch for embarrassing himself along with the other "jobs report truthers" who were touting that there was some grand conspiracy theory at work with the latest report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Even Chuck Todd had a few words about the fact that it's a "bad trend" when we've got conservatives out there getting traction with this nonsense.

But of course, since right-wing flame thrower Newt Gingrich was invited to the table, the waters on whether this sort of behavior ought to be tolerated or not were muddied up a bit, with Gingrich touting a far right, Koch-funded lobbying group and their "survey" as proof that "small business" he supposedly speaks to, don't believe the economy is getting any better. I believe this is the same group Chris Hayes and his panel mentioned on his show today and they said they were created because the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wasn't far enough to the right to suit them.

Dan Froomkin has more on that here -- NFIB Exposed: 'Voice Of Small Business' Is A Front, Group Charges.

What's really disgusting is that the likes of Gingrich keeps getting invited to these panels and treated like he's some senior statesman, instead of the shyster that he is, but then, he's far from alone when it comes to the list of terrible guests for these shows.

As Driftglass pointed out about this week's show, "The Gingrich Rules continue to remain in effect."

Transcript below the fold.

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