The Republican Clown Show Rolls On
The payroll tax cut that Speaker of the House John Boehner called “chicken shit” in the GOP House caucus would save the average American $1,000 per year. A grand doesn’t mean much to the speaker or his banker and billionaire buddies but to working families that’s a lot of money. John Boehner’s idea of soaking the rich is to jump in a hot tub with them after 18 holes.
I betchya $10,000 that working families know that former Gov. Mitt Romney doesn’t care about their financial problems. Mitt Romney speaks French. Does that make him a cheese-eating surrender monkey?
The GOP flying circus pitched its big top in Iowa last night. It was fun watching Mitt Romney juggle his positions on healthcare; former Speaker Newt Gingrich swallowing a sword inflamed by his own rhetoric, and Gov. Rick Perry driving the clown car.
The Donald jumps off another one of his ships just before it sinks. First, his presidential campaign and then his own debate. Things are really bad for Trump when even the clowns in the GOP presidential race don’t want to be in the same room with him.
Gingrich went to New York City to see The Donald and conveniently Tiffany’s is right next to Trump Tower. While in NYC, Gingrich had breakfast, lunch, and dinner at Tiffany’s. Where do you think Newt will be doing his Christmas shopping this year anyway? By the way President Obama got what he wanted for Christmas. Newt Gingrich.
Gingrich’s campaign is deeply in debt and he was in hock big time to Tiffany’s. And he calls himself a fiscal conservative. Gimme a break! Gingrich doesn’t know much about family values but he did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night.
I watched the Newt Gingrich-Jon Huntsman debate debacle. Do you think anybody will remember their debate 150 years from now? I don’t think so. Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas have nothing to worry about.
Rush Limbaugh would rather hug it out with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton than read this post. Bill O’Reilly would rather watch Keith Olbermann. Glenn Beck would rather see a Michael Moore movie than read this. A Tea Party-er would rather hook up with an Occupy-er.
By: Brad Bannon, U. S. News and World Report, December 16, 2011
“Handsome Swindler”: Romney’s Eerie Post-Flip-Flop Consistency
When Mitt Romney decided to get Republican ideological-purity cautionary tale and non-witch Christine O’Donnell to announce her endorsement of him, he was probably thinking about how useful it would be to have the support of another staunch conservative. He may not have been thinking about some of the secondary issues involved in this plan, such as the fact that it would require O’Donnell to talk, which would involve her saying awkward things like, “he’s been consistent since he changed his mind.”
The line actually gets to the nub of the conservative question on Romney. Since he changed his mind, he has indeed been dogmatically consistent. (In contrast to Newt Gingrich.) But why?
One of the most revealing stories I’ve seen on Romney was written by Jonathan Weisman last month in The Wall Street Journal. In it, Weisman chronicles the degree to which Romney simply flipped a switch in 2005, deciding virtually overnight to stop courting moderates and liberals he needed to get elected in Massachusetts and to start courting the right. The switch occurred across the board, on social as well as economic issues:
A gun-rights lobbyist, Jim Wallace, found himself battling the governor over firearms fees and hunters’ priorities. A low point for Mr. Wallace came one day in July 2004 when Gov. Romney was set to sign a bill that banned assault weapons but that also had some provisions gun-rights groups liked. Mr. Wallace had an invitation to speak at the signing ceremony.
At the last minute, a gun-control activist, Jon Rosenthal, got an invitation too. Not only that, but as Mr. Rosenthal rushed into the news conference, he says he saw Romney aides pulling up the name tags taped to the floor that showed where each guest was to stand —tearing up the paper with Mr. Wallace’s name and replacing it with one bearing his own name. The gun-control advocate was placed close to the governor and got the speaking slot that Mr. Wallace, the gun-rights lobbyist, had expected.
Yet in the following year, 2005, both sides on the gun issue noticed a change.
In May of that year, Mr. Romney declared a “Right to Bear Arms Day.” Mr. Wallace’s group, the Gun Owners’ Action League, began having nearly monthly meetings with the governor’s top aides, he says. Mr. Romney signed legislation cutting some red tape detested by gun owners in November 2005, and less than a year later he became a lifetime member of the N.R.A.
The positive interpretation of this narrative, if you’re a conservative, is that Romney will stay bought — he decided to ingratiate himself with the right, and he needs to retain the right’s support to accomplish anything. That’s more or less the argument Ramesh Ponnuru made in his National Review cover story endorsing him. The negative interpretation is that Romney is essentially running a con, though it’s impossible to tell if he was conning Massachusetts then or is conning Republicans now. (My guess, based on Romney’s admiration for his moderate father, is that he’s conning conservatives now, but I can’t really be certain.) When you’re running a con, of course you stay consistent – you have to keep up the front, no matter what.
The robotic consistency of Romney’s newfound conservatism does contrast sharply with Gingrich, who lurches between hysterical right-wing paranoia and bouts of bipartisanship. And yet the erratic character of Gingrich’s swings suggests that they’re unplanned, and thus that they spring from actual conviction, albeit momentary convictions. Gingrich actually believes what he is advocating at the moment he is advocating it. Nobody can plausibly say the same of Romney.
Romney is the handsome swindler who plots to win your mother’s heart and make off with her fortune. Gingrich is like the husband who periodically gets drunk and runs off to spend a week with a stripper in a low-rent motel but always comes home in the end. Which one would you rather see your mother marry?
By: Jonathan Chait, Daily Intel, December 14, 2011
Mitt Romney And Newt Gingrich Now Engaged In All-Out Class Warfare
The Occupy Wall Street protest may have petered out, but its antagonism against the nation’s wealthiest one percent lives on in the unlikeliest of places: a GOP primary race between two multi-millionaires. As Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich duke it out in the weeks leading up to the first primary contests, their attacks on each other are increasingly focused on one another’s vast wealth. It all started on Monday, after Romney called on Gingrich to return the money he’d earned from Freddie Mac, for his work as a, um, historian. Not because earning money is inherently bad, but because of where it came from — an organization that conservatives blame for the economic meltdown.
Gingrich responded by attacking Romney’s time at investment firm Bain Capital, while also mocking his tin-eared $10,000 bet during Saturday’s debate:
“If Gov. Romney would like to give back all the money he’s earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his years at Bain that I would be glad to then listen to him,” Gingrich told reporters after a town hall, referring to the company Romney ran. “And I’ll bet you 10 dollars, not 10 thousand that he won’t take the offer.”
Gingrich’s condemnation of Romney’s private-sector experience didn’t sit well with a lot of conservative observers. On Fox News, Charles Krauthammer said it was a line you might expect to hear “from a socialist.” The National Review‘s Jonah Goldberg called it “petulant, leftwing, bunk.” Indeed, there’s nothing conservatives hate more than when liberals engage in so-called class warfare against the wealthy, something Obama is accused of on practically a daily basis. So Romney’s rejoinder today, provided to CBS News between trademark fits of fake laughter/panting sounds, probably won’t make the GOP establishment any happier:
“He’s a wealthy man, a very wealthy man. If you have a half a million dollar purchase from Tiffany’s, you’re not a middle class American.”
Isn’t there a drum circle somewhere you two could join?
By: Dan Amira, Daily Intel, December 14, 2011
The New Republican Revolution: “Fundamentally” Transforming The GOP
Should former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) win the Republican nomination for president, the fiery revolutionary seeking to “fundamentally” transform almost everything will have upended the political system anew. Unlike Gingrich’s successful revolution of 1994, his battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party in 2012 might not lead to the White House. But his nomination would overhaul the Grand Old Party, altering it in unexpected and unprecedented ways, and Gingrich would make history once again.
Here’s how:
1. Republicans will no longer belong to the party of order: The long-held tradition of nominating next-in-lines will be broken. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, running for six years, will have been turned out for the unlikeliest candidate — a former congressional leader already rejected and retired by the party with no experience running a presidential campaign. Conservatives, who prize caution, will gamble on a political lightning rod.
2. Town halls and good ground games will be so yesterday: Debates rule, and they helped bring Gingrich back from the political dead. He rocketed to the top of the polls without building a campaign in Iowa or any early states. As he toured the country doing book signings and his documentary screenings he didn’t log the traditional hours on the ground in these places that successful presidential candidates and previous nominees have. Iowans may have insisted on face-time in the past, but Gingrich might well prove that media buzz, social networking sites and stellar performances in nationally televised debates are the new ingredients for winning over voters. 3. Republicans have turned a critical corner on immigration policy: Gingrich’s immigration proposal, to provide longtime, law-abiding illegals with a path to legalization but not citizenship, was expected to sink him. Yet the same Republican voters who scorned Texas Gov. Rick Perry for his willingness to aid illegals seeking a college education in Texas have largely sat quiet over Gingrich’s plan to provide what many hardliners would define as amnesty. If Gingrich becomes the leader of the GOP, the tide will turn on its immigration policy, which could be a huge political problem for Democrats.
4. The revolving door can keep swinging: According to Esquire magazine, in the first half of 2010, before he entered the race, Gingrich’s American Solutions raised more than double the money raised by the Service Employees International Union, making it “the biggest political-advocacy group in America.” His Center for Health Transformation is a for-profit outfit charging fees from healthcare giants, including the largest insurers, of up to $200,000 per year to connect to Gingrich. His $30,000 per month retainer with Freddie Mac proves that highly paid “strategic” advice fattens the wallets of former politicians, whether they call themselves lobbyists or not.
5. Evangelicals will embrace an adulterer: Gingrich polls well with evangelical voters — adultery, divorces and all. Should he win Iowa, and the nomination too, it will be because he won enough of these voters to secure the largest coalition. These voters hate the sin but love the sinner and have moved off of social issues to focus on the economy. And they love Gingrich’s steadfast defense of Israel and tough talk on Iran.
6. Flip-flops are fine for credentialed conservatives: Be it a mandate for healthcare, ethanol subsidies, man’s role in climate change, Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) Medicare reform plan or the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), Gingrich has changed his mind on conservative bedrocks. But he is the architect of a conservative victory that brought Republicans back to power after 40 years. Romney is a former governor of Massachusetts.
By: A. B. Stoddard, Associate Editor, The Hill, December 14, 2011
Why GOP Voters Love Irresponsible Newt
Newt Gingrich has done it again. With his new tax plan he has raised the bar from irresponsibility to recklessness.
Every dollar estimate I’m about to share with you comes from the independent, non-partisan Tax Policy Center – a group whose estimates are used by almost everyone in Washington regardless of political persuasion.
First off, Newt’s plan increases the federal budget deficit by about $850 billion – in a single year!
To put this in perspective, most forecasts of the budget deficit cover ten years. The elusive goal of the White House and many on both sides of the aisle in Congress is to reduce that ten-year deficit by 3 to 4 trillion dollars.
Newt goes in the other direction, with gusto. Increasing the deficit by $850 billion in a single year is beyond the wildest imaginings of the least responsible budget mavens within a radius of three thousand miles from Washington.
Imagine what Standard & Poor’s or Moody’s or Fitch would do if it became law. We’d go directly from a triple-A credit rating to triple X – the veritable porn star of fiscal mayhem. Interest on our debt would become larger than most of the rest of the budget.
Most of this explosion of debt in Newt’s plan occurs because he slashes taxes. But not just anyone’s taxes. The lion’s share of Newt’s tax cuts benefit the very, very rich.
That’s because he lowers their marginal income tax rate to 15 percent – down from the current 35 percent, which was Bush’s temporary tax cut; down from 39 percent under Bill Clinton; down from at least 70 percent in the first three decades after World War II. Newt also gets rid of taxes on unearned income – the kind of income that the super-rich thrive on – capital gains, dividends and interest.
Under Newt’s plan, each of the roughly 130,000 taxpayers in the top .1 percent – the richest one-tenth of one percent – reaps an average tax cut of $1.9 million per year. Add what they’d otherwise have to pay if the Bush tax cut expired on schedule, and each of them saves $2.3 million a year.
To put it another way, under Newt’s plan, the total tax bill of the top one-tenth of one percent drops from around 38 percent of their income to around 10 percent.
What about low-income households? They get an average tax cut of $63 per year.
Oh, I almost forgot: Newt also slashes corporate taxes.
I’m not making this up.
This might be amusing if Newt were just being old Newt – if this were another infamous hot-air bubble emerging from an always provocative, sometimes clever, often bizarre mind.
But it’s the tax plan of the leading candidate for president of one of the two major political parties of the United States.
And it comes at a time when America’s super rich are raking in a larger portion of total income and wealth than at any time over the last 80 years, and when their marginal taxes are lower than they’ve been in three decades; a time when the nation’s long-term budget deficit is causing cuts in education and infrastructure which will impair our future and that of our children, and when safety nets and social services are being slashed.
Can Newt get away with this?
Probably — because his plan also comes at a time when Americans are so cynical about the major institutions of our society that someone who offers huge, outrageous plans holds a special fascination: The whole system is so awful, people tell themselves, why not just jettison everything and start from scratch? Let’s throw caution to the winds and do something really big – even if it’s colossally stupid.
This is why the more outrageous Newt can be, the better his polls. The more irresponsible his bomb-throwing, the more attractive he becomes to a sizable portion of Americans so fed up they feel like throwing bombs.
History is full of strong men with dangerous ideas who gain power when large masses of people are so desperate and disillusioned they’ll follow anyone who offers big, seemingly easy solutions.
At times like this a nation must depend on its wise elders – people who have gained a reputation for good judgment and integrity, and who are broadly respected by all sides regardless of political affiliation or ideology – to call out the demagogues, speak the truth, and restore common sense.
The great tragedy of America today is the paucity of such individuals when we need them the most.
By: Robert Reich, Published in Salon, December 14, 2011. (This originally appeared on Robert Reich’s blog, December 13, 2011)
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