“House Of Bain”: GOP Rallies Around Vulture Capitalism, Not Mitt Romney
I’ve got to admit it: Liberals are at a disadvantage when it comes to judging where the GOP primary is headed. Last week I was sure that conservatives were settling on Rick Santorum, and his supposed blue-collar family values, as the official not-Mitt Romney candidate after his strong Iowa showing. Not quite yet. Sunday I was sure Newt Gingrich’s slashing “King of Bain” ad, attacking Romney as a looter and a job destroyer for his Bain Capital record, would be devastating in a country where the economy is the top issue and unemployment remains high.
It was devastating, all right. To Gingrich. The former House speaker got a beatdown from fellow conservatives this week, with Rush Limbaugh mocking him as an Occupy Wall Street supporter and the National Review harrumphing at the notion that Gingrich targeted Romney’s Bain success because he “apparently expect(s) Republican voters to regard that as a liability.” By the time he made his “I’m tied for fourth place!” speech in New Hampshire Tuesday night, Gingrich looked broken. He abandoned his slashing attacks on Romney’s career and stuck to decrying the “years of decay” under President Obama, recounting his alleged successes as House speaker in the ’90s, and rambling wearily about “innovation.” A few minutes later, over on Fox, a disapproving Sean Hannity smacked sixth-place loser Rick Perry for his attacks on Romney, and echoed Limbaugh’s sneering comparison with Occupy Wall Street ideology.
It’s an interesting moment. Multiple news organizations reported that even close allies are telling Gingrich to cut out the attacks on Romney, but he’s already purchased an estimated $1.5 million in South Carolina airtime for his “House of Bain” spots, plus a nasty ad claiming Romney had “governed pro-abortion” in Massachusetts. What’s Gingrich going to do? He hates Romney, but he loves predatory capitalism as much as Limbaugh does. He doesn’t believe his own Bain Capital attacks. Can he continue to hurt Romney without damaging his own chances to return to the right-wing gravy train when he goes down to defeat? Trust me, the monied interests are not interested in hiring anti-capitalist “historians” to not-lobby for them. Gingrich is torn between vengeance and greed. Sucks to be him. Fun to watch.
It’s also fun to watch conservative Republicans rally around Romney not because they like him but because he’s become the face of the hallowed free market. As he headed to conservative South Carolina, hotbed of Tea Party radicalism, Romney got a boost from its extremist Sen. Jim DeMint, who predicted the former Massachusetts governor would win the Jan. 21 primary. DeMint is staying neutral, he told radio host Mark Steyn Tuesday night, “because Republicans are not yet united and I want to focus on the Senate.” But he praised Romney’s victory speech for “hitting a lot of the hot buttons for me about balancing the budget,” adding “Frankly, I’m a little concerned about the few Republicans who have criticized some of what I consider free market principles here.” He went on: “Some of the others who might have had an advantage here have really crossed paths, crossed ways with some Republicans as they have criticized free enterprise concepts.” DeMint’s remarks could give other Tea Party leaders an excuse to back Romney, though they don’t trust him, in the name of defending capitalism.
I still think there’s a possibility the Bain attacks will resonate with some Republican voters, and maybe in South Carolina, which has a 9.9 percent unemployment rate, compared to under 6 percent in Iowa and New Hampshire. It’s possible Gingrich and Perry’s attacks will open up political space for Santorum, who’s been careful not to attack capitalism as he sticks to his blue-collar platitudes and culture-war campaign. It was great to see New Hampshire voters chasten Santorum by repeatedly challenging his homophobia in public forums and giving him a fifth place finish. But his campaign told the Huffington Post he’ll spend at least $1 million on advertising in South Carolina. Maybe he’s still got a chance.
It’s a tiny one. Super PACs connected to Romney are set to spend $6 million in South Carolina and Florida in the next three weeks. Meanwhile, as every non-Romney candidate vows to head to South Carolina, they split the conservative vote and increase the chances that Romney gets the victory. Perry claimed he’s soldiering on. So did Jon Huntsman, despite a third-place showing that wasn’t enough to make him a serious candidate, since he bet everything on New Hampshire. “Third place is a ticket to ride, ladies and gentlemen,” Huntsman told the crowd, but nobody believes that. Late Tuesday night, Huntsman’s father and financier reportedly hadn’t decided whether to keep bankrolling his son’s bid. (And people mock Romney for his wealth.)
If it weren’t for Ron Paul’s foreign policy views, we might be talking about whether conservatives could coalesce around his candidacy. He underperformed expectations in Iowa but he came in a strong second Tuesday night. As much as I loathe his domestic politics, I enjoyed hearing the crowd chanting “Bring them home” when he promised to get troops out of Afghanistan. Paul will stay in the race and, given his caucus strategy, he could rack up delegates. I don’t know where that will take him – is he dreaming of Vice President Rand Paul? – but it’s great to think about the Ron Paul crowd heckling Mitt Romney when he doubles down on his hawkish, expansionist foreign policy promises in Tampa.
Romney’s heading into a scorched-earth South Carolina primary, but he’s got to be feeling pretty good about his first two outings. In New Hampshire, he won the ultra-rich, of course, but he also got Tea Party members and evangelicals, according to exit polls. He gave a much better victory speech than he did a week ago, because this time he used his teleprompter. He hit not only Obama but his Republican rivals for practicing “the bitter politics of envy,” which has more zing than the standard GOP class warfare line.
The private equity mogul can’t understand that criticism of his Bain career — “restructuring” companies, cutting their workforce and forcing almost a quarter into bankruptcy — isn’t about jealousy, but justice. People are starting to understand that finance capitalism works for the top 1 percent, but not the rest of us. So while Gingrich’s attacks aren’t likely to help his candidacy, they’re a boost to the man he presumably wants to defeat more than Romney. President Obama has to look forward to running against a guy his GOP rivals called a looter and a vulture capitalist. The fact that all of those rivals are fighting on after New Hampshire helps Romney win the nomination, but it could also help the Democrats hold the White House.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, January 11, 2012
A “Majority-Minority” Country: Race Will Be A Major Issue For Mitt Romney
After strong showings in Iowa and New Hampshire, it seems likely now that former Gov. Mitt Romney will win the Republican nomination this year. His opposition is weak and fractured. And the strength of Rep. Ron Paul has made it even harder for one of the anti-Romneys to consolidate the very sizable anti-Romney vote.
So what is left to look for in the coming days? There will be a lot of discussion about the ability of Romney to win non-economic elites, evangelicals, and independents. As we head into the Sunbelt phase of the early GOP race, we will be reminded that since 1956 only twice have the Republicans nominated someone from outside the Sunbelt—Gerald Ford in 1976, Bob Dole Dole in 1996—and both times those candidates lost in the general election. We will hear more about what kind of capitalism and economy we want to have, something that will be central to the fall election.
But what may be most interesting is that the GOP field now moves on to three states—South Carolina, Florida, and Nevada—with sizable minority populations, something we did not find in Iowa or New Hampshire. If the campaign continues through early February, we should expect to see the Republican field have to address a subject not very comfortable for the modern GOP—race. There is a Republican debate next Monday in South Carolina on Martin Luther King Day. Campaigning in Florida and Nevada will force the candidates to confront the mess the GOP has made of its relationship with Latinos.
As our nation is on track to become a majority minority country by about 2040, crafting a governing philosophy that truly acts as if we are all in this together, “e pluribus unum” as our dollar bills says, is one of the great political challenges of our time. The Democrats so far are passing this test. The Republicans and particularly Mitt Romney—who has campaigned as one the most virulent anti-immigrant politicians of the modern era—not so much. While Mitt may appear unstoppable today in the GOP primary field, one thing that may stop him cold in the fall is his very reactionary and unappealing approach to race, Latinos, and the America we are becoming.
By: Simon Rosenberg, U. S. News and World Report, January 11, 2012
Economic Inequality: Pushing Worthwhile Questions Into “Quiet Rooms”
On NBC this morning, Matt Lauer asked Mitt Romney whether Americans with “questions about the distribution of wealth and power in this country” are necessarily motivated by, in the Republican’s word, “envy.” The host asked, “Is it about jealousy, or fairness?”
Romney was unmoved. “You know, I think it’s about envy,” he said. “I think it’s about class warfare.”
That’s rather remarkable, in and of itself. Plenty of Americans just want to have a conversation about rising income inequality, poverty, an unjust tax system, and wealth that’s increasingly concentrated at the top. For the likely Republican presidential nominee, those questions aren’t just wrong, they’re the result of “envy.”
And then it got worse. Greg Sargent has the video of the exchange:
LAUER: Are there no fair questions about the distribution of wealth without it being seen as envy, though?
ROMNEY: I think it’s fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms and discussions about tax policy and the like. But the president has made it part of his campaign rally.
I see. So, Americans are allowed to ask questions about inequality, so long as we’re not too loud about it. Let’s just stick to quiet rooms — perhaps Romney can loan us one from one of his mansions — where we can be told to stop being envious.
Greg added, “Romney was twice given a chance to nod in the direction of saying that concerns about these problems have at least some legitimacy to them, that they are about something more than mere envy or class warfare, and that they are deserving of a public debate. And this is the answer he gave.”
We’re getting a closer look at Romney’s ideology, and at this point, it’s looking rather twisted.
Remember, just last week, he argued that families who slip into poverty are, in his mind, “still middle class.” This is also the guy who takes a rather callous approach to firing people.
Romney is doing very well with wealthy voters. Why anyone else might vote for him remains to be seen.
By: Steve Benen, Contributing Writer, Washington MOnthly Political Animal, January 11, 2012
“Fighting Words”: Why Mitt Romney Will Regret His Tough Talk On Iran
Every presidential election season, it seems, is marked by flights of rhetorical fancy on foreign policy. There was John F. Kennedy’s mythical “missile gap“; Jeane Kirkpatrick’s “Blame America Firsters“ charge against Democrats; Bill Clinton’s evocative (and quickly backtracked from) “butchers of Beijing” line; and then my personal favorite — George H.W. Bush saying his dog Millie “knows more about foreign affairs than these two bozos” (the two bozos in question being Bill Clinton and Al Gore).
This year, however, with the notable exception of anti-interventionist Ron Paul, Republicans are pulling out all the stops on the one foreign policy/national security issue that seems to unite them like no other: Iran and its nuclear program. Consider for a moment the spate of off-the-wall statements each of the GOP aspirants has made about Iran this campaign season.
According to Mitt Romney, “The greatest threat the world faces is a nuclear Iran.” There is, he claims, “no price that is worth an Iranian nuclear weapon,” and he has pledged that if he is president, Iran will “not have a nuclear weapon.”
Fighting words indeed. But they seem downright sober when compared to Rick Santorum — who has not only advocated air strikes to eliminate Tehran’s nuclear aspirations, but has also said Iran is “ruled by the equivalent of al Qaeda on top of this country”; “the principle virtue of the Islamic Republic of Iran is not freedom, opportunity — it’s martyrdom”; and that oldie-but-goodie: “they hate us because of who we are and what we believe in.”
Yet, when it comes to sky-is-falling rhetoric, Santorum takes a back seat to Newt Gingrich, who in a GOP debate this fall hinted the United States might not “survive” an Iranian nuke and in 2006 actually compared the Iranian leadership to Nazis. “This is 1935 and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is as close to Adolf Hitler as we’ve seen,” Gingrich told Human Events magazine. He said at the time that the top priority of the United States should be “overthrowing the government of Iran” with force, if necessary. It’s an argument he has doubled down on this year with calls for killing Iranian scientists and “breaking up their systems” — actions that would be veritable acts of war. He has said bombing Iran is a “fantasy” and the only real way to prevent an Iranian nuke is to depose the regime via conventional war, if necessary.
The latter view was even endorsed by Jon Huntsman, who, when asked if he would consider boots on the ground to stop Iran from getting a bomb, said he wouldn’t be able to “live with the implications of not doing it.” According to Huntsman, all “options [are] on the table.”
It should be noted that such proclamations are, well, a bit divorced from reality. Iran is at best a second-rate power, with an outdated and not terribly advanced conventional military force that is barely able to project power outside its borders. This week, Iranian fisherman even needed the U.S. Navy to rescue them from the clutches of Somali pirates. As Fareed Zakaria noted earlier this month, sanctions have pushed Iran’s economy “into a nose-dive.” Its currency has plunged in value, housing prices are up by 20 percent, the cost of food staples has jumped 40 percent, and the country’s “political system is fractured and fragmenting.” And if 2009’s Green Movement is any indication, there is widespread — if underground — political dissent in the country.
Regionally, Iran has rarely if ever been more isolated. Its one ally, Syria, has its hands full dealing with a domestic uprising, the Gulf states have joined together under a U.S. security umbrella, the Saudis are buying billions in new weaponry from Washington, and the European Union is inching ever closer to a ban on Iranian oil imports — a move that could have a devastating impact on the already battered Iranian economy. Compounding all that is the fact that Iranian scientists are continuing to get killed in the streets of Tehran, and the country’s missile-development program may have just blown itself up.
So why, then, are Republican candidates treating Iran like it’s the modern embodiment of Nazi Germany, al Qaeda, and the Soviet Union, all wrapped up in a mischievous and explosive ball?
The long answer is Americans don’t like Iran, they are afraid of nuclear weapons and images of mushroom clouds, and Muslims with weapons of mass destruction are scary. Frankly, GOP primary voters care about threats to Israel — and sanctions and diplomacy are less impressive than the promise that American airplanes will soon be dropping bombs on reinforced bunkers.
But the short answer is this is pretty much all the GOP has. Want to claim that Obama has been soft on terror? That whole killing Osama bin Laden thing makes that a bit tough. Same goes for all the al Qaeda lieutenants who have been killed in drone strikes. What about pulling out of Iraq? Good luck finding many Americans who disagree with that decision. How about Afghanistan and Obama’s call to begin pulling out troops in 2014? First, it’s hard to argue that Obama didn’t give war a chance in the Hindu Kush; second, Afghanistan is a less and less popular war every day. How about the claim that Obama has thrown Israel under the bus vis-à-vis the Palestinians? That’s not going to make all that much of a difference. It turns out the two groups of voters most concerned about Israel (American Jewsand evangelical Christians) likely already have a pretty clear sense whom they’ll be voting for in November.
On the matter of reducing the defense budget — a dicey proposition in an election year — by getting Republicans to agree to military spending cuts as part of the debt limit deal, Obama largely neutralized GOP attacks on the issue. And it’s not as if many Americans desperately wantto see military spending significantly increased in an age of political austerity.
In the end, since there is no good near-term solution for stopping Iran from getting a bomb –and since Iran continues to engage in provocative behavior like threatening for the umpteenth time to close the Straits of Hormuz — it is the one issue that Republicans can try to pin on the Democratic president, claiming he is weak on national security.
In the end, however, such accusations are unlikely to have much staying power. As Scott Clement points out, even Republicans prefer diplomacy over the use of military force. In fact, compare the Obama approach to Iran (diplomacy, a regional security architecture, likely covert action, and crippling economic sanctions) with the Republican approach (diplomacy, a regional security architecture, likely covert action, and crippling economic sanctions). There really isn’t much of a difference, except for the threatened use of force and all the doomsday talk. But it’s there that the GOP rhetoric could have severe consequences.
As Republicans rattle their sabers this winter, they risk locking themselves into a dangerous position on Iran, should one actually win in November. Just ask Obama how pledging to devote more resources to the fight in Afghanistan in 2008 played out for his presidency.
With Romney et al. declaring that Iran will not get a nuke while they are president and with pledges of support for unilateral action on the part of Israel — including the use of military force — to stop Tehran from getting a bomb, Republicans may find themselves stuck with a dangerous policy on Iran that smacks of brinksmanship. Moreover, all the tough talk on Iran will also limit Obama’s ability to open negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear program if the opportunity presents itself. Considering the increasingly desperate economic and political situation there, this might not necessarily be so far-fetched.
In the midst of a feisty presidential campaign, the Republicans’ muscular rhetoric might seem a surefire way to create a political opening. But the ramifications of these existential threats have the potential to live on far past Election Day.
By: Michael Cohen, Foreign Policy, January 6, 2012
Why, And How, Mitt Romney Quit In ’06
My colleagues Josh Kraushaar and Alex Roarty have taken note of ex-Sen. Rick Santorum’s big-time loss in his 2006 bid for re-election — and rightly so, given just how badly Sen. Bob Casey beat Santorum across virtually all demographic groups and geographic areas.
But Mitt Romney’s re-election bid — or lack thereof — deserves its own scrutiny. Romney said Sunday morning he didn’t seek another term as governor of Massachusetts in 2006 because it wouldn’t have been consistent with the reason he ran in the first place.
“I went to Massachusetts to make it different. I didn’t go there to begin a political career, running time and time again. I made a difference. I put in place the things I wanted to do. I listed out the accomplishments we wanted to pursue in our administration. There were 100 things we wanted to do. Those things I pursued aggressively. Some we won. Some we didn’t,” Romney said. “Run again? That would be about me. I was trying to help get the state in best shape as I possibly could. Left the world of politics, went back into business.”
But there are plenty of signs Romney was contemplating another term before he announced he’d skip the race in December 2005.
Romney’s advisors were putting together plans for a potential re-election bid, the Boston Globe reported in November 2005. His campaign ran several radio ads touting his legislative success in late May, he ran a newspaper insert in the Globe in July, and his campaign polled the race in March, a poll that showed him trailing Reilly by a statistically insignificant margin. He even traded barbs with Attorney General Tom Reilly (D) over cost recovery for the Big Dig and welcomed former Deputy U.S. Attorney Deval Patrick — who would eventually beat Reilly and win the governorship — into the race.
At the same time, his advisors were denying his interest in a 2008 White House bid, apparently to keep his options open at home. Romney’s former chief of staff, Spencer Zwick — now the campaign’s finance director — told the Globe in October that his spending “doesn’t indicate he’s running for another office besides governor.”
Romney hinted a few times that he hadn’t ruled out another bid. “We’ll both be on the same ballot,” he said of then-Sen. Ted Kennedy, who was up for re-election himself in 2006. Most press accounts in early 2005 characterize Romney as intending to run for a second term, though they note his national ambitions.
Romney delayed a decision on whether he’d seek re-election until two things happened: First, he won election as head of the Republican Governors Association, a platform from which he could travel the country, introduce himself to big donors and collect favors he could later cash in. And second, he signed health care legislation into law — legislation his rivals this year once believed would derail his entire bid.
(A side note: Romney spent most of Fall 2005 urging the legislature to pass a comprehensive reform measure. Romney ended up signing the bill in April 2006, after vetoing several provisions and after he’d said he wouldn’t run for another term)
Then again, it would have been hard for Romney to mount a White House bid having just lost re-election, and Romney’s decision could have become much clearer given the public polls he was seeing. A State House News poll, conducted by KRC/Communications Research just a month before Romney announced publicly he wouldn’t seek a second term, showed him losing to Reilly (D) by 16 points. Just 42 percent of Bay Staters said Romney was doing an excellent or good job, while 53 percent said his performance was poor or below average (Hotline subscribers can see the full poll here, from our archives). Another poll, conducted by UMass in September 2005, showed Romney trailing Reilly by 15 points.
Those polls aren’t proof that Romney was willing to give up on the governorship. But Romney’s intentions to skip a re-election fight were pretty clear from the beginning. A review of Hotline archives shows the Massachusetts press corps taking then-Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey seriously as a candidate, and political insiders expressed surprise when businessman Charles Baker took himself out of the running in late August — three and a half months before Romney ruled out another bid.
Romney, with the help of former consultant Mike Murphy, began seriously exploring a presidential bid early in 2005 (In an ironic twist, Healey brought on Stuart Stevens — Romney’s lead strategist this year — to help her eventually unsuccessful bid to succeed her boss). He went so far as to promise Healey to endorse her if he decided not to seek another term, as early as June 2005.
Despite his insistence that he’d accomplished what he set out to do, Romney’s team, and the governor himself, left the door wide open to a re-election bid in 2006. It was only after he set himself up to build a national foundation — and after polls suggested he would end up as Santorum eventually did — that Romney made public his decision to take a pass.
By: Reid Wilson, The National Journal, January 10, 2012
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