Mitt Romney’s “Cold-Blooded Brothers”: Wall Street Backs One Of Its Own
Bankers are supposed to be the personifications of economic reasoning, but anyone looking at the financial reports of the presidential candidates and super PACs that have come out this week might conclude that there’s more to their political calculations than dollars and cents. Indeed, what these reports fairly shout is that Wall Street’s political picks have been swayed by offended egos and tribalism.
Of course, there’s a straight dollars-and-cents rationale for the bankers’ flight from Barack Obama to Mitt Romney. Obama wants to raise taxes on the rich; Romney wants to lower them. But the sheer extent of Wall Street’s support for Romney suggests that there’s even more in play than that. As Sam Stein and Paul Blumenthal of the Huffington Post have documented, Goldman Sachs employees, who gave Obama more than a million bucks in his first White House run, gave Romney $106,000 in the final quarter of 2011 and Obama just $12,000. Citigroup’s bankers, who gave Obama $730,000 in 2008, gave him just $3,842 in the last three months of 2011, while lavishing $196,000 on Romney. At Blackstone Private Equity, whose chair, Steven Schwarzman, compared the administration’s (tepid) efforts to raise taxes on private-equity firms to Hitler’s invasion of Poland, employees gave Obama just $7,618 while Romney raked in $90,750.
By one measure—the current popularity of Wall Street—Romney picked a poor year to likely become the first presidential nominee to hail from finance. But precisely because Wall Street is (finally! rightly!) under attack as it has not been since the early 1930s, Wall Street is looking for its own political champion as well as economic guardian, and Romney certainly fits the bill. And because Wall Street—both its people and its companies—can donate more than ever before, thanks to Citizens United, Romney also picked a very good year to run: His brethren can give him more than they could in any previous election.
The extent of their Romney support—and, as a corollary, the narrowness of Romney’s funding base—really becomes clear in the financial reports of Romney’s super PAC, set up by his backers to fund all those negative commercials that Romney himself wouldn’t want to endorse. By the end of 2011, it had raised $30.2 million from just 265 donors. Ten million of that came from just ten donors, each contributing a million apiece. Of the eight donors who are identifiable, as a New York Times article by onetime Prospect writing fellow Nick Confessore and Michael Luo documented, six are hedge-fund or private-equity executives. With a base like that, what are the odds that a President Romney is going to scrap the carried interest tax break?
The financial sharpies aren’t just giving to Romney, of course. Texas leveraged-buyout-operator Harold Simmons, who provided most of the funding for the swift-boating of John Kerry in 2004, is back. Last year, he ponied up a cool $7 million for Karl Rove’s American Crossroads super PAC. And casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson and his wife have kept Newt Gingrich’s campaign afloat by showering $10 million on the pro-Newt super PAC.
The big money is mobilizing against Obama, and it would be a mistake to assume that Obama will be able to outspend Romney come next fall. In the final quarter of 2011, Romney and the Republican National Committee raised $93.4 million while Obama and the Democratic National Committee raised $68 million, according to a story in The Wall Street Journal.
For Mitt Romney, it is the best of times; it is the worst of times. The public really dislikes big-time bankers, big-time shadow bankers most of all. Meanwhile, big-time bankers, and big-time shadow bankers in particular, like Mitt Romney, their very own big-time shadow banker, and thanks to Citizens United are able to shovel him more money than ever before. He’s their blood and they are his—cold-blooded brothers to the end.
By: Harold Meyerson, The American Prospect, February 3, 2012
Angry At Komen? You Should Be Furious At Mitt Romney And The GOP
My email inbox has been flooded over the last three days with messages of outrage over Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s surprise metamorphosis into a purveyor of right-wing culture wars – a change that the organization is now frantically trying to undo. Americans have been shaken by the news of a formerly respected and loved organization with a trusted brand turning on many of the low-income women who it had previously taken pride in serving.
I too am angry at Komen’s decision to put right-wing ideology ahead of its purported public health mission. But our deeper anger should be directed at someone else: the Republicans in Congress and GOP leaders who consistently make the same choices involving many times more money, and many times more women’s lives. The shock of the revelation of Komen’s new policies only highlighted how numb many of us have become to the larger, unrelenting attacks on women’s health by right-wing elected officials.
The grants to Planned Parenthood that Komen would have severed totaled $680,000 over the last year – a total that the organization thankfully made up in two days from contributions that have poured in in response to the Komen betrayal. Let’s put that in perspective. Last year, the House GOP voted to zero out the entire $317,000,000 Title X family planning budget – including about $75 million that would have gone to Planned Parenthood’s preventative care and treatment programs for low-income women.
Deciding that this plan wasn’t disastrous enough, the House also passed an amendment to eliminate all federal funding to Planned Parenthood, an estimated total of $363 million, much of which goes to care for the Medicaid patients who make up almost half of Planned Parenthood’s clientele. The amount that Komen would have cut from Planned Parenthood’s women’s healthcare was significant– but the amount that House Republicans were prepared to cut was 500 times larger.
The right wing understands this. Anti-choice groups have rejoiced over the Komen decision, seeing it as a stepping stone to what has always been their ultimate goal: eliminating women’s reproductive rights and destroying Planned Parenthood along the way.
Those who value comprehensive women’s health care need to make the same connection. What Komen did was wrong. What the Republican Party tries to do every chance it gets is hundreds of times worse.
I doubt that Mitt Romney will dare to take a stand on the Komen controversy. But it doesn’t matter. We know where he is on this issue — and not just because we know how he feels about poor people. Last year, Romney supported the amendment that would have eliminated 500 times as much money from Planned Parenthood’s health care services, cutting off a million and half of its most needy patients. So did Newt Gingrich. So did every other major GOP presidential candidate. So did all but seven House Republicans.
The Komen decision was shocking to so many because, in part, we expect more integrity from a nonpartisan women’s health organization than we do from our politicians.
But the stakes from our politicians are bigger. Planned Parenthood provides critical services to millions of American women each year. In 2010, it provided nearly 750,000 breast exams and 770,000 Pap tests to women seeking critical cancer screening. It provided more than four million tests and treatments for STIs. It provided affordable contraception to low-income women, preventing an estimated 584,00 unintended pregnancies. Planned Parenthood estimates that one in five American women has received care from the organization in her lifetime.
Without Komen’s funding, Planned Parenthood would have rallied. Without federal funding, nearly half of its 3 million patients – including many from disadvantaged neighborhoods and rural areas – would lose their care.
Yes, we should be angry at Komen for the Cure. But, like the Right, we need to recognize that this is ultimately a symbolic fight in a much bigger battle.
Today, Komen gave in to the overwhelming response it received from Americans who value women’s health over partisan politics. Our elected officials should face just as much pressure. Take the email you sent to Komen and copy Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell. They need to hear the same message, and face the same backlash, five hundred times over.
By: Michael B. Keegan, President-People for the American Way, Published in The Huffington Post, February 3, 2012
Who Needs “Poor People”: Records Show How Wealthy Shape Presidential Race
Groups known as “Super PACs” raised more than $42 million to back Republican U.S. presidential contenders in 2011, according to campaign filings that show how new donation rules are allowing a relatively few wealthy Americans to shape the race.
The reports filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) late on Tuesday offer a vivid picture of the impact of a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision that allows unlimited donations to political action committees (PACs), groups that are legally separate from the candidates they support.
The reports showed why the Super PAC supporting Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney, called Restore Our Future, has been such a force in the campaign – largely by running attack ads against Newt Gingrich, Romney’s top Republican rival.
Restore Our Future hauled in $30 million in 2011, and had nearly $24 million in the bank at the end of the year.
The group spent a big chunk of that during the past month in Florida, where its ad barrage against Gingrich was widely credited with helping Romney to victory in Tuesday’s primary. Florida was the latest contest in the state-by-state battle to pick a Republican nominee to challenge Democratic President Barack Obama in the November 6 election.
The pro-Romney group’s bankroll dwarfed the PACs supporting other Republican contenders, as well as the group that backs Obama. Priorities USA, the pro-Obama group, raised $4.2 million last year and had $1.5 million in the bank on December 31.
The funding disparity between the groups suggests the PAC supporting Romney could help the former Massachusetts governor overcome the Obama campaign’s formidable fund-raising advantage if the two meet in November’s general election. Contributions to candidates’ campaigns are limited to $2,500 per donor.
Obama’s organization continued its dominance in the race for cash among candidates’ campaigns, raising $130 million for the year. That topped the Romney campaign’s $57 million, which led the Republican presidential field.
Tuesday’s filings also revealed the growing warchests that independent Republican groups are building with the presidential and congressional races in mind.
American Crossroads and its affiliated group, Crossroads GPS, raised a total of $51 million in 2011.
“A HUGE EFFECT ON THE RACE”
Super PACs were forged from the 2010 Supreme Court ruling that erased longstanding limits on corporate and union money in federal elections as an unconstitutional restriction of free speech.
The ruling unleashed a flood of money into a political system coming off the most expensive presidential election in U.S. history in 2008, when candidates spent more than $1 billion. It also opened the door for wealthy individuals to prop up candidates by writing a check.
“Super PACs have fundamentally changed the way campaigns are run, and it’s had a huge effect on the race,” former Michigan Republican Party chairman Saul Anuzis said. “If you can find one donor who is willing to play in a big way, it can have an unbelievable impact.”
For the first time, the FEC reports revealed many of the wealthy donors behind the Super PACs.
Harold Simmons, a billionaire Dallas banker and chairman of Contran Corp, gave American Crossroads $5 million and Gingrich’s group $500,000. Contran gave another $2 million to the Crossroads group.
Peter Thiel, billionaire co-founder of the payment service PayPal, gave the Super PAC backing Texas congressman Ron Paul $900,000. Foster Freiss, a billionaire investor from Wyoming, founded the Red, White and Blue Fund that backs former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum and donated $331,000.
The reports did not include the donations by billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam, who poured a combined $10 million – $5 million each – into the pro-Gingrich group in January, after the period covered in Tuesday’s reports.
One of Adelson’s step-daughters gave Gingrich’s group $500,000 in 2011, and another gave $250,000, the reports showed.
The first check from the Adelsons came as Gingrich headed into a critical showdown with Romney in South Carolina. It helped pay for a movie and ads criticizing Romney’s work as head of the private equity firm Bain Capital – an issue that helped propel Gingrich to a big South Carolina upset victory.
By last weekend, the pro-Gingrich PAC had spent a total of $8.5 million – much of it, it appears, from the Adelson family.
‘SUPER-RICH PEOPLE’
“Super PACs are allowing a relative handful of super-rich people to have a disproportionate and magnified influence on elections,” said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a watchdog group dedicated to reducing the influence of money in politics.
Super PACs and other outside groups spent about $42 million on the presidential race through the end of January, according to independent expenditure reports filed with the FEC. Romney’s group has spend more than $17 million, compared with $8.5 million for Gingrich.
The filings also shed light on the scrambling by supporters of former House of Representatives speaker Gingrich in recent weeks.
Gingrich’s allies at Winning our Future raised just $2.1 million in 2011. But like Romney’s Super PAC, it raised and spent millions more in January. Much of that money went toward attack ads in South Carolina and Florida.
The flood of money drowned Gingrich in negative ads in Florida, where Romney’s Super PAC outspent Gingrich’s group by nearly 3-to-1 and aired ads questioning his conservative credentials, record in Congress and temperament as a leader.
Romney won Florida easily on Tuesday, beating Gingrich by about 15 percentage points to take a big step toward winning the Republican nomination.
“If you look at it in the simplest way, the role of the Super PACs has been to prop up candidates who in the past would have been forced out of the race because they ran out of resources,” said Anthony Corrado, a campaign finance specialist at Colby College in Maine.
The pro-Romney Super PAC fired back in Florida with a withering barrage of attacks on Gingrich as a Washington insider who peddled his influence to make $1.6 million from mortgage giant Freddie Mac.
Those attacks, and two strong debate performances by Romney, halted Gingrich’s momentum and fueled Romney’s runaway win in Florida on Tuesday.
SHADOWING THE CAMPAIGNS
The only restriction on Super PACs is that they are not allowed to coordinate their actions with the candidates they back. Romney has cited the restriction repeatedly when he has been asked to tell his Super PAC to pull down controversial ads.
In reality, however, most of the Super PACS are run by former staffers for the candidates who know what works for the campaigns without being told.
“I’ve known Newt for 12 years. I can dance with the campaign without coordinating with the campaign,” said Rick Tyler, a longtime Gingrich staff member who now runs the pro-Gingrich Winning Our Future group.
“I’m carefully watching what he’s saying in the public record,” he said. “It’s not hard for me to follow.”
Gingrich has been the target of more than $16 million in negative ads, while $5 million has been spent to hammer Romney, the FEC reports said.
The $57 million raised by the Romney campaign led the Republican candidates in the money chase in 2011. Gingrich raised nearly $13 million and Texas Governor Rick Perry, who has dropped out of the race, raised nearly $20 million.
By: John Whitesides, Reuters, February 1, 2012
“Do You Like Me Now?”: Money Changed Everything For Mitt Romney In Florida Primary
It was money that won the primary for Mitt, but it didn’t make voters like him—and it won’t make the GOP rank and file show up to the polls in November.
Romney and the super PAC supporting him spent more than $15 million on television ads. Team Gingrich spent about $3 million. Both ran almost entirely negative campaigns. One tally estimated that 93 percent of all the ads were negative. The other 7 percent were wasted.
Victory is always sweet, but this one could leave Romney feeling a little sour. Gingrich called Romney’s strategy “carpet-bombing.” Fair enough. But what then do we call Gingrich’s strategy? Kamikaze? Gingrich strapped on his helmet, slugged down some sake, jumped in his Zero, and dive-bombed into the SS Romney. He didn’t sink Romney’s aircraft carrier, but he did some serious damage. Romney is likely to list even farther to starboard, as he is forced to pander even more to the far right.
Gingrich and his allies called Romney “despicable,” “breathlessly dishonest,” and, worst of all, “liberal.” It was not enough to win, or even to make it close, but it was enough to damage Romney in November, should he emerge as the GOP standard bearer. One in four GOP voters in Florida expressed dissatisfaction with the field; a full 53 percent of Gingrich voters said they would not be happy with a Romney-led ticket. To be sure, they’re not going to jump ship and vote for Obama. But they could stay home. They could refuse to give money or make calls or turn out their friends and neighbors. If Romney is the nominee, a lot of Republicans are going to sit on their hands.
As Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama battled across 50 states and seven districts and territories in 2008 there was some bitterness, to be sure. But it was mostly confined to the upper echelons of Hillaryland and Barackistan. At the grassroots you heard time and again, “I’m for Barack, but I’m not against Hillary.” Florida Republicans voted against Newt Gingrich; they did not vote for Mitt Romney.
Money begets money. Romney not only has the greatest personal fortune in the GOP field, he has the most well-funded campaign. And perhaps even more important, the super PAC supporting him dwarfs those of his competitors. An analysis by the Wesleyan Media Project shows outside spending on Campaign 2012 is up 1,600 percent over 2008. Romney’s allies have mastered this new tactic. (Full disclosure: I advise the pro-Obama super PAC, Priorities USA Action.)
The campaign will now stagger through the February doldrums. Romney is very likely to win the Nevada caucuses, which he dominated in 2008. He will almost certainly continue to carpet-bomb Gingrich over the airwaves. But there’s a difference between persuading voters to hate Newt Gingrich—which, frankly, is pretty easy—and getting them to love Mitt Romney, which appears to be well-nigh impossible.
ByL Paul Begala, The Daily Beast, January 31, 2012
“A Monster Of GOP Creation”: Now Newt May Get Even Nastier
Thirty-four years ago, Newt Gingrich summed it up. In a speech to College Republicans—shortly before he would win his first election to Congress—the future speaker had a piece of fundamental advice for the young and impressionable GOPers: “I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, and loyal, and faithful and all those Boy Scout words.”
Nasty—that was a critical component of Gingrich’s formula for political success. And through the 1980s and 1990s, as Gingrich wielded his nastiness to overturn the Democratic order in Congress and seize the people’s House for the GOP, he was hailed by Republicans. Now, following his 47 to 32 percent loss to Mitt Romney in the Florida presidential primary and Gingrich’s promise—make that, threat—to pursue this nasty nomination contest all the way to the convention in sweltering Tampa in August, the Republican Party has a monster-of-its-own-creation in its china shop. (Imagine a Tasmanian devil in Tiffany & Co.) Despite Romney’s 15-point comeback victory, it seems that the GOP will still be burdened and discombobulated by the Wrath of Gingrich. During his concession speech Tuesday night—which was light on the concession—Gingrich vowed to contest every primary and caucus, as his supporters held up signs that said, “46 STATES TO GO.”
It’s not uncommon for political losers to hang on longer than they should. (See Rick Perry.) So Gingrich’s vow to ignore the play-nice-and-get-out pleas of the Republican establishment and battle all the way to the summer is not surprising. But if he is serious about vengeance, he will have to cling on for longer than a week or two. February’s primaries—Nevada and Maine (February 4); Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri (February 7); and Arizona and Michigan (February 28)—hold few opportunities for the goblin of Georgia. These states are Romney-friendly and not well-suited for Gingrich’s fire-breathing and not-so-coded rants against food stamps and Saul Alinsky. If he wants Romney’s blood, he will have to stay in the hunt until at least Super Tuesday, where he can try to work his dark magic on his home state of Georgia, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Idaho. Alabama and Mississippi come a week later.
This means another five or six weeks at least of Gingrich’s not-so-creative destruction, with him hurling his patented nastiness at Romney—and Romney both firing back and, more important, trying to keep up with Gingrich’s extreme anti-Obamaism.
The latter may be more of the problem for Romney than Gingrich’s direct slams on him. Candidates often pound at party comrades during hard-fought nomination contests, and the winner, even though dinged, usually ends up able to compete effectively in the general. (Barack Obama survived Hillary Clinton’s barbs.) But Gingrich is dragging Romney to the right in terms of, yes, nastiness. (During his victory speech in Tampa, Romney declared that Obama represents “the worst of what Europe has become”—of course, without explaining what that meant.)
The GOP primary electorate is in a foul mood. Many of these voters seem to want a candidate who feels their hatred for the president. (See Rick Santorum’s exchange with that lady who maintained Obama is a Muslim.) This whole primary campaign has been a game of revolving Obama-loathers. While Romney has tried to come across as not a hater—he’s disappointed in Obama; he doesn’t despise him—one by one, fire-breathing Obama-bashers who represent the dark and angry mood of their party’s base have risen to be the non-Romney of the GOP race, only to fall down due to their own limitations. And Gingrich is the last of these. (Ron Paul is essentially operating in an alternative universe; Rick Santorum is running on the fumes of Iowa.)
With his mean-spirited and extreme rhetoric, the former House speaker does embody the soul of his party at this point. Though Gingrich is burdened with a ton of baggage that obviously undermines his chances to win a general election—and many Republican voters do care about that—Romney still has to ensure that Gingrich does not run away with the hearts of GOP voters. Consequently, he has to keep the meanness/Obama-hatred gap that exists between him and the former Freddie Mac historian/consultant/strategic adviser from becoming too wide. Yet doing so makes Romney less acceptable to those fickle independent voters who yearn for candidates who can solve problems in Washington without partisan fighting. If Romney has to engage in such Newt-neutralization for weeks, if not months, he will further define himself in a manner likely to alienate independents and middle-of-the-road voters.
There’s an old-saying: Don’t get into a fight with a skunk; you’ll only come out smelling. Romney cannot remain in combat with Gingrich—even if he continues to win delegates—without being tainted by the stench of this skirmish.
Gingrich’s nastiness—now aimed at Romney—is an accurate reflection of the Republican Party. In recent years, Gingrich-style extremism has become its norm. Sarah Palin (who has been egging on Gingrich) claimed during the 2008 race that Obama had been “palling around” with terrorists. When the Democrats were poised to pass a health care reform bill in the House, GOP leaders of that body sponsored a Tea Party rally, where demonstrators chanted “Nazis, Nazis” in reference to the Dems. Donald Trump made GOP voters swoon with his birther talk. Gingrich himself claimed that Obama could only be understood as a fellow who holds a Kenyan, anti-colonialist view of the West. Death panels, a government takeover of the health care system, socialism—it’s been nasty for years in GOPland. Romney’s challenge is to win over these people, without fully endorsing the malice. (Thus, Obama=Europe.)
Now on the receiving end of vicious blasts, Gingrich has taken to whining that he’s the victim of lies and extreme attacks. After all his years of practicing gangster politics, he hardly warrants sympathy. (And many of Romney’s assaults on him have been accurate.) But he also has been trying mightily in recent days to depict himself as the personification of the conservative movement, arguing that an attack on him (by Romney, the Republican establishment, or the media) is an attack on the tea party. (This is a right-wing version of identity politics.) And he’s been saying that the conservative movement simply won’t stand for a “Massachusetts moderate”—or a “liberal” who supports abortion rights and gun control, as he dubbed Romney this week—as the Republican Party nominee.
It’s his last play—to try to ignite a civil war within the GOP. At the moment, with the smell of his Florida defeat still in the air, he seems rather serious about this endeavor. With his own record of flip-flops and his less-than-inspiring personal history, he’s certainly not the perfect leader for such a crusade. But if the dissatisfaction on the right is deep enough, perhaps he can be a sufficient vehicle.
Notwithstanding the loss in Florida—and with only 5 percent of the GOP delegates selected—Gingrich is still positioned to inconvenience, if not undermine, Romney. And he has choices. Will he try to rally conservative foot soldiers and lead a Pickett’s Charge against the front-runner, hoping to do better than Lt. General James Longstreet? Or will he go the way of a suicide bomber and become the doomsday device of the GOP?
With his Florida success, Romney is back on that path to the nomination. But Gingrich is a problem for the front-runner and the entire GOP establishment—and that’s because he’s following the scorched-earth playbook that he long ago developed for the party and that the party has embraced for years.
By: Davis Corn, Washington Bureau Chief, Mother Jones, January 31, 2012
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 