One of the big ironies of the anti-Bain attack on Romney is that Newt is the one doing what the Democrats should be doing, namely, painting Bain as part of the Wall Street problem:
“You have to ask the question, is capitalism really about the ability of a handful of rich people to manipulate the lives of thousands of people and then walk off with the money?” […]
The former Speaker is making the case that, in contrast to good old fashioned businesses who make stuff, Romney and his ilk have instead gamed the system to create a soulless machine that profits from the misery of others. […]
“I am totally for capitalism, I am for free markets,” Gingrich assured reporters on Monday. “Nobody objects to Bill Gates being extraordinarily rich, they provide a service.” What he instead is concerned about is when an investor receives “six-to-one returns, and the company goes bankrupt.”
I haven’t seen a Democratic attack on Bain phrased this crisply. Democrats attack Romney’s math on job creation and they are using Randy Johnson, who was laid off in Bain’s gutting of Ampad, as a spokesman. While it’s true that Bain laid people off, the fact that they did so doesn’t in itself make Bain a bad business. Good companies sometimes lay people off. Newt’s attack has more bite because he’s putting Bain in the same boat as the rest of the hated Wall Streeters who almost took this country to ruin and haven’t been punished for their actions.
If Democrats can make this connection, which seems to be an obvious one, they can harness some of the anger that remains over the mortgage crisis and the resulting Great Recession. I might have missed it, but I don’t see that happening. I wonder if it’s because Democrats are afraid of offending deep-pocket Wall Street donors, or because they are afraid of being cast as socialists, or simply because they’re generally inept. But so far, Newt is doing a better job than the DNC.
Mino
What Dems really need to spotlight is that this new crop of Republican governors is treating the public resources of their state like vulture capitalists treat companies they are gutting.
Egg Berry
Or because they’re keeping their powder dry for the general election campaign.
Cermet
Newt is a whore who hires out for any large sum – say a few million? – so maybe the DNC can give him a job and finally get some quick, good sound bites that hit home!
WereBear
Newt knows how to put the knife in. Targeting has never been his problem.
EconWatcher
Gingrich is perfectly setting the stage for the Dems, because he’s putting the GOP imprimatur on their line of attack. It has so much more sting this way: Even your Republican colleagues think you’re a soulless corporate raider. Even they say that you made your money from pillaging, not producing.
This is an unimaginable gift. Obama will get this.
BroD
What EconWatcher said.
Dave
Gotta wait for the general electsh. You should know this DougJ Jr.
Soonergrunt
There’s also the fact that Newt Gingrich knows only one kind of campaigning. He does slash-and-bun. Nothing else. How he got the reputation as an ‘ideas man’ is beyond me. He has no new ideas. He does have a complete disregard for anything approaching morality, dignity, decency, or honor. Nor does he have any compunction at all about saying whatever is necessary to smear or tarnish his opponent.*
In short, he’s the ideal Republican office-seeker, and that’s why he’s so good at the knife-fight politics.
*Not that his current target doesn’t deserve everything he can get, which I am enjoying immensely.
scav
To no small degree, letting them take out each other isn’t that bad a plan — especially as it undercuts one of the perceived long-term strengths of the party and not just one candidate out of many. Give ’em Enough Rope and that lot might come up with macramed and personalized nooses in no time and be fighting over the wood for building gallows (which they’re constructing in their own time).
Triassic Sands
It’s funny, I just woke up (or rather was summoned by one of the cats) and after hearing a radio report on New Hampshire, I came to BJ to make a comment — and found the perfect thread to do so, since what I was thinking about was that Newt has been saying what others have been thinking and should be saying.
Specifically, my thoughts were not about Bain, but rather the remark that Newt made telling Mitt to cut out the “pious baloney.” That seemed to me to be precisely the way Romney must have been striking his GOP opponents. When he opens his mouth it’s like he thinks he’s some exalted, above-the-fray being, looking down on all these dirty, unworthy creatures and making the momentous decision to give up life in heaven (despite the threat of pink slips and all the other worldly fears that Mitt shares with baser humans) to serve as the planet’s redeemer. Frankly, it would be sickening if it were even !% true, but it isn’t, and it’s simply barf-inducing. Kudos to Newt for saying it so well.
Yevgraf
Newton is a nasty fuck, but something is definitely in his craw about Romney. Something happened or some threat was made, because this line of attack is gutteral, and has the potential to send the GOP the way of the Whigs.
Think of it like this – for 40 years, they’ve been consistently on message regarding their support of unrestrained crony capitalism and bubble speculation, and have used culture and class wedges to seal support in the base. Newt may be tossing that away in a personal vendetta.
Keith G
I sure hope they give it a go, but I have my doubts. The Obama tool kit does not include anger, or populism for that matter. I would settle for righteous indignation. Further, how effective would this be since Obama has surrounded himself with advisers and functionaries who are so Blaine-like?
Nonetheless, the effort would be a pleasant change.
BO_Bill
Ron Bloom has been an investment banker and Czar of the Obama Administration.
Paul Volcker has been an investment banker (for none less than the Rothschilds, I guess being a former Treasury Secretary and eliminating the gold standard has its perks) and Czar of the Obama Adminstration.
Steve Rattner has been an investment banker and Czar of the Obama Administration.
Kenneth Feinberg has not been an investment banker but instead regulates investment bankers. He is Barry’s Pay Czar, and bills BP $15 million per year plus to, like, handle oil spill claims. As pay Czar he bills the taxpayer $120,820 a year to make sure people do not abuse the power of their office to make too much money.
None of these men are from Bain Capital.
The Democratic Party is therefore the Party of the working American.
Donut
I agree with comments above re: too early for Democrats to get too involved in the messaging. The old adage is basically, “when your opponent(s) are hanging themselves, give ’em some extra rope and stay out of the way.”
Axlerod and Plouffe will not fuck this up, I don’t think. Not so sure about the DCCC and DSCC.
Feudalism Now!
Gingrift is going to be an asset to the Dems for as long as his money holds out. He is blending worship of the Sainted Job (Steve?) Creators like Bill Gates while trying to forge a republican populism about the investor robber barons that have flourished since Ronaldus Magnus. It will work because Newt is running on high octane hate and overweening pride. He will be cut off by traditional race funding (RW donors like their 6 to 1 returns tyvm) but he may start a new method of grift hitting the fabled NASCAR family small donation pool.
WereBear
Newt is loyal to Newt, so he’s not tossing away anything. The man is over seventy, and has been cruising pretty good at whatever the heck he’s doing; adding “Giant Killer” to the resume can be valuable to certain parties.
Punchy
Wait….Romney canned The Big Unit?
Yevgraf
Another think – this is Newt’s “I got mine, fuck you” moment.
It may be as delicious as Haley Harbour exiting by pardoning his trustee ground staff.
Linda Featheringill
Many democrats are afraid of being accused of being soshulist. Since I am one, I’m not afraid of the accusation. However, Newt’s little 3-minute video “When Mitt Romney Came to Town” warmed the very heart of this aging Marksist.
Go, Newtie! Go!
mistermix
For those of you saying it’s too early: the Democrats are in it, releasing ads, now. So my point is that they might as well be doing a decent job of it, following Newt’s lead.
Dork
This is great news for the Whitey Tape.
Hoodie
Maybe Newt is the Jose Canseco of the Republican Party.
Yevgraf
@WereBear:
He’s tossing away 40 years of consistent economic messaging, and leaving a carcass of racial hatred, religious bigotry, disdain for government and anti-intellectualism, as it is all that the GOP would have left to bind it.
Schlemizel
It is fabulous that Noot is doing this – there is a certain group (less say 27% just to pick a number) that will allow this to slide into what we shall call for lack of a more accurate term, a brain, because it is coming from one of them. This same attack coming from a Dem would be instantly dismissed. Pasta be praised, Noot can lay the ground work & a lot of people will be accepting when we get around to it.
rea
Newt is a nasty fuck, but sometimes it’s just a matter of the right person in the right place.
EconWatcher
@Linda Featheringill:
Yes, I never expected in life to be rooting for the Newt, but I hope the money keeps flowing to him copiously.
aimai
I read somewhere that there are only two basic stories in the Universe:
I leave home and have an adventure
or
A man comes to town.
When I heard the end of the Newt-hate-gasm I thought of this observation. That’s what makes the entire thing so incredibly powerful. It goes right for the gut.
aimai
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@mistermix: Yes, but what we don’t want the Republican primaries to become is Romney vs the Democrats. At that point it would be like us invading Iran: people who are against each other joining forces against a common enemy. Better to let Newt take the lead.
Face
But who does Tim Tebow support?
scav
@mistermix: I still say, if they’re doing it to themselves, get out of the way. Overt Dem poking might only provoke instinctive solidarity and lessen the impact of what Newt’s doing (because any statement endorsed by a (D) is Discounted blah blah blah to their ears)
EconWatcher
On Newt’s part, I assume this is just payback for all those nasty ads the pro-Romney PACs ran against him in Iowa.
If Newt gets enough cash from that right-wing billionaire to do this in both SC and Florida, oh man. This could be the most fun I’ve had since, ever….
WereBear
@Yevgraf: Yes (I belatedly realized you meant what Newt was tossing away for his party.)
But Newt has always allowed his sensitive ego to overrule the cooler parts of his brain. That tantrum he threw over seating in Air Force One cost him his speakership.
I don’t know if this is the same kind of thing. If Romney treated Newt like the pool cleaning guy in some encounter (and I have a feeling Romney does that kind of thing quite a lot) it could have set Newt off like this.
What does he care for the speed with which the Republican Party circles the drain? The Republicans are far more about destruction than building, anyway.
Buckley is dead. And to to quote Gore Vidal, I hope it’s not too hot. He was the force keeping the Birchers and the nutters and the goldbugs and the racists under the radar and away from the levers of power.
If Newt speeds up the process, it’s good for everyone! Except the Republican party, and whereever it’s going…I hope it’s not too hot.
Brian R.
@EconWatcher:
Bingo.
Brian R.
@Soonergrunt:
Newt’s buns. Goodbye, breakfast.
p.a.
maybe they’re keeping their powder dry for the general, but my personal thoughts on the 3 questions you ask in the last para of your post are ‘yes’, ‘yes’, and ‘yes’.
the best analysis of the modern Dem. Party i’ve seen is the idea that the Repubs. sought (seek) to cripple Dem. fundraising by destroying unions. They have pretty much succeeded. But it didn’t kill the party’s cash flow. Since so much $$$ now flows to the top 1%, the Dems. Have been able to tap into this source themselves. Hence the Republican Party and the ‘Republican Lite’ Party. That is the paradox of Repub. success: to win they need to cultivate their whacko base. But their whacko base drives many of what should be their natural supporters to the Dems. The Dem’s base tends to get left out in the cold.
geg6
Heh. I never thought I’d see the day that the Reagan Rule finally died the ignominious death it has always deserved. And the delicious irony that it is Newt Gingrich who is doing it just makes me even more tingly with delight.
Though I know the Dems are running ads on this already (where have you been that you haven’t seen or heard about that?), it’s only because it’s coming from other GOPers is the only reason it has traction, especially since the MSM’s dreamboat Huntsman is all in on it.
Brian R.
@Hoodie:
You mean he’s on steroids? Let’s see … giant melon, shriveled testicles. Yep.
Mike
It’s the first one… They want to be a bit vague on the Wall Street issue, at least until the convention when most of their money is “in”.
Oh, yea, and the dems are inept at messaging. Newt is very good at neuro-linguistic programming, so having his template available is quite a gift for Dems. I hiope they get their heads out of their asses and use it!
MattF
As usual, there’s Good Noot and there’s Baaad Noot. I guess I approve of the current manifestation, but I expect that the next ectoplasmic fart, any minute now, will reveal Noot’s evil side.
RoonieRoo
I’m glad the Democrats haven’t jumped on that particular bandwagon yet. Let Newt do the set up line and after Newt has fallen the Democrats can complete the Romney knockdown.
Besides, if the Democrats jump on it this early, then I think it will backfire on them. It’s the same as a kid that says “You can’t call my sister ugly! Only I can call her ugly!”
EconWatcher
@MattF:
Oh, he’s all evil. There’s not a lick of good in him. But I can root for him temporarily, kind of like Stalin at Stalingrad…
Brian R.
@RoonieRoo:
Agreed. The Democrats should hold their fire for now, and then follow up with ads that use images of Newt etc. making these arguments.
Newt will, of course, claim that anyone who quotes him accurately is lying, but fuck that asshole.
WereBear
I forgot about the nasty ads; haven’t seen them, only heard about them.
But ya know, when a ship goes down, some people feel it’s every man for themselves…
Odie Hugh Manatee
Horowitz over at Redstate was shitting his pants when Noot attacked Mitt on his time at Bain. Horowitz was upset that the Free Markets! they worship were being attacked and that people would listen to what Noot says about big, bad business. He wanted Noot to go after Romney and “Romneycare”, tying him to Obama and “Obamacare” to drag him down.
What a sad, sad bag of salted dicks.
All of them.
WereBear
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Actually, which didn’t he pick that line of attack?
EconWatcher
I have consistently been a nervous ninny about this election, particularly because of the potential Euro meltdown. But if Newt goes far enough with this, it could give Obama some insulation even if the economy heads south again. “I know things are bad, but you can’t make them better by turning the keys over to this corporate predator, shunned by his own party for putting families on the street to line his pockets.”
dogwood
@mistermix:
Right now the Dems don’t have center stage, and that’s how it should be. Republicans have real elections going on right now. Don’t you remember John McCain whining about not being able to get his message out. in the spring of 08? Good grief, you’d have to have been brain-dead not to recognize how compelling that Obama/Clinton race had become. He should have just laid low, raised money, built a ground game and got some rest.
Newt’s framing looks pretty good to me, but the proof’s in the pudding. I’m all for letting the Republicans road test all kinds of anti-Romney material. I’m also in favor of seeing how they work out before I sign on.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
“Never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
BobS
@EconWatcher: Donate to his campaign.
EconWatcher
@BobS:
Well, I wouldn’t go that far. I’ll contribute my meager resources on the general.
Alex S.
Gingrich is the Gollum of this campaign: his best days were ages ago, but you know he still has a self-defeating role to play (turning the republican nominee into a damaged good).
Pavlov's Dog
Romney has spent his time highlighting Bain Capital’s work as a venture capitalist and downplaying their work as vulture capitalist. Newt is rightly pointing out that vulture capitalist specialize in slashing and burning, their interest is in the balance sheet not the income statement.
jibeaux
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Hee hee. That’s old, and tired, and everybody and their grandmother’s heard it, and it wouldn’t get Newt in the news to talk about it. A bulldog like Newt isn’t going to chew over that old toy again.
Yevgraf
@WereBear:
Even as I type, unhappy handlers are trying to reach out to Newt like Chris Cooper to Matt Damon in “The Bourne Identity”….
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Keith G:
His tool kit might not include it but one would presume every Obama-supporting SuperPAC will look at how N. Leroy attacked Mittens and do something similar.
I agree in that let’s give credit where credit is due: N Leroy is essentially articulating a DFH meme on Mittens. And of course the DNC won’t touch this. Fucking incompetents still bringing knives to gun fights.
Savage Henry
There’s another potential Dem attack here that pretty much writes itself. Romney was against bailing out the auto industry, which should be used to great effect against him in Michigan and Ohio. When explaining why he opposed it, the Dems should say that he was probably just so used to bankrupting companies that it seemed natural to him. He was probably expecting to make millions on the deal.
Schlemizel
@EconWatcher:
That last line would make a great campaign tag coming from a Biden or other surrogate – hope somebody over there monitors BJ & is paying some attention to the future.
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko:
And when he is drowning throw him an anchor!
RalfW
Why not hang back and let Newt land punches?
Why spend money and/or try and break through the extremely noisy Iowa/NH/Debate every 10 hours landscape?
I do think it helps Dems over the long haul to have Newt Tiffany Gingrich howling about predatory capitalism.
You ask if Dems are afraid of being labeled Soc1alists and that is probably part of it. So let Newt make it OK for everyone to go after the vulture class.
There is a risk in voters thinking Democrats don’t care about this issue, so I do hope to see Democrats pick this up, but let Newt spend his $3.4 million over the 10 days, and then, right after N.C., we gotta hit it – hard.
Yevgraf
On an amusing note, Erick Ericksdottir is tepidly in support of a discussion on the social usefulness of private equity buzzard capitalism. Creative destruction via acquisition and asset stripping gets him some wood, or something. Methinks he’s just looking for a Thomas Crowne-like sugar daddy….
Cacti
Mistermix, you’re thinking tactically but not strategically. You see a weakness and want to pounce immediately, rather than wait for the moment it do the most damage.
The vulture capitalist ads are only just beginning, and they’re coming from Willard’s political tribe. Why wade into the middle of a fratricidal knife fight between Goopers, just as it’s getting started?
Sure, throw a few stones from the wings while it’s happening, but let his comrades soften him up first before really dropping the hammer on him.
drew42
I see many here already made the point. Dems wouldn’t want to attack Romney on this, yet. Wait until after he’s nominated.
Although a Santorum or Gingrich nomination could potentially result in a huge Obama/Dem victory, I worry a bit about those two. Republicans may find a way to control the narrative during the campaign, make it something like “You may not agree with him, but he fights for what he believes.”
Can’t do that with Romney. Everything about him is general election poison — he embodies Wall Street greed, he’s weak and inconsistent, and the media hate him, to boot.
RalfW
@Triassic Sands:
Jon Stewart, not surprisingly, was on it last night.
.
@Savage Henry: Yessss. Great line of attack.
Cacti
Speaking of pious…
New Internet ad unleashes a flamethrower on Romney for supporting official Mormon racism up to 1978.
Ironically, it comes from fellow (Jack) Mormon, Jon Huntsman.
Kola Noscopy
BINGO
But more and better Dems!
Kola Noscopy
@Egg Berry:
they’ve kept their powder dry for the last three years?
WereBear
@Yevgraf: LOL! Great analogy.
Kirbster
It’s my understanding that Newt’s SuperPAC didn’t make the “minidocumentary”; they just bought the rights to it. Who actually commissioned the script and produced it?
amk
Pew – Goppers Still meh about their field.
Wilson Heath
What EconWatcher and others have said. Obama is keeping above the fray, responding only to direct distortions, and waiting for Romney’s opponents to sanctify the Holy Hand Grenades for later use.
If Newton Leeroy Jenkins Gingrich does it first, how can it be class warfare?
NCSteve
Sigh.
Liberals have this persistent belief that the purpose of a general election campaign is to tend to the emotional needs of people who are already fully engaged, fully committed and following every development in minute detail in real time.
In fact, however, at least in the United States in the early 21st century, the purpose of a general election campaign is to say and do things that make the ten percent who are insufficiently civic minded to pay attention to politics before Labor Day but are too civic minded to just stay home on Election Day want to vote for you. These are the people who decide every election in this country. And they’re not paying attention yet.
Timing is everything. I spent all of 2008 watching Internet liberals screaming and hollering and wailing because messaging by the Obama Campaign wasn’t happening on a schedule calculated to make them feel happy and energized and fighty every millisecond second of every day from January to November, 60/60/24/7.
It’s like they’re bound and determined to see every single meme peak and go into bored counter-narrative territory before the g.d. conventions have even happened solely to satisfy their own emotional needs.
chopper
first off, newt’s going to be far nastier than obama could get away with.
secondly, obama can’t come off as cozying up to OWS’s methodology much, despite the fact that most of the country hates banksters and wall street, because many in the US still think OWS are a bunch of DFHs.
newt, OTOH, can pull it off. only nixon could go to china, as they say.
Linda Featheringill
@Cacti: #63
Sort of keeping up with comments while working so I just now saw that ad by Huntsman. Wow!
Democrats couldn’t say all of that. It’s like we females can call each other “girl” but guys shouldn’t do that.
Monkey Business
As long as Newt Gingrich is willing to burn Mitt Romney’s campaign to the ground and take out the rest of the GOP with him, I am 100% okay with the DNC not spending one dime or saying one word. The absolute last thing you want to do is give even the impression that the Dems agree with Newt, because it’ll backfire and people will rally behind Romney.
Newt created this mess in 1994. It’s only fitting that he should be the destroyer.
amk
@NCSteve: This. The ‘voters’ don’t give a shite about GE now. The earliest is after summer. Of course, the left will get into onoz, omg till the election day and continue right up to Nov 2016. Fucking idjits.
chopper
@Monkey Business:
it’s almost prophetic. like nostradamus had something on it somewhere.
Yevgraf
@Monkey Business:
Its as if Dick Armey kept prodding his teabaggers into summoning Gozer the Destructor, who gave them the option to choose the mode of their destruction. Right now, Newt is the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, and he’s thrashing around lower Manhattan, wrecking Wall Street….
West of the Cascades
What everyone else said — why should the Democrats waste a single dollar or a single minute attacking a specific Republican presidential candidate until that person has sown up the GOP nomination? Let the GOP candidates hammer each other, then use the footage in the general election. Also, with the media’s and American people’s 90 second attention span, there’s a risk of “peaking too early” with the Bain attacks if the Democrats trot them out now — they will be ancient history by April. Better to wait until the GOP convention to run spots on this issue, and then really hammer it home after Labor Day.
MattF
@chopper:
The Pizza King will crush the Moron with Good Hair and The Fat will devour the Soulless.
chopper
@MattF:
the spider will fight with glov’d hands
the lizard king, who will prevail
o’er the dripping buggery
i dunno, that’s more shakespearean. shit, that dream really was fucked up.
daveNYC
@Pavlov’s Dog:
What Romney did wasn’t exactly venture cap work. Venture capitalist pony up money for start-up companies, they don’t take over mature companies and then skullfuck the cash out of them.
jayackroyd
The trouble is that, ideologically, the centrist democrats in the leadership see the financial MOTU as successful role models, not vampire squids. Gingrich has a populist streak wholly absent from Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer or, FTM, Barack Obama.
Bubblegum Tate
@scav:
Exactly; every good GOP primary voter knows that everything the Democrats say is a lie and anti-American and probably secretly Muslim, so if the Dems join up with Newt too loudly, that will cause GOP primary voters to side with Mitt, as Newt will officially be In League With The Soshulists.
So let Newt stick the shiv in Mitt now, when the audience is GOP primary voters, then pick up where he left off once Mitt has secured the nomination, when the audience is all voters.
kvenlander
That “Huntsman” ad is clearly nothing of the kind. It’s just some guy on teh intertoobs with a u-toob account. I really don’t think Huntsman wants to bring up LDS dirty laundry.
Larv
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
Um, is that the same DNC headed by Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who has been referring to Mittens as a “job cremator” because of his time at Bain? I don’t think they’re planning on letting this one go. They’re just letting Newt take the lead on it now, because it makes it hard for Romney to shrug it off as nasty attacks by “liberals” and “the Obama campaign”.
jayackroyd
@West of the Cascades:
It’s not just about attacking Mitt. It’s about creating a clear line between Republicans supporting preservation of powerful monopolist interests at the expense of ordinary citizens, vs Democrats who want to reduce their power over American lives–liberal Democrats.
Right now that line is awfully blurry–it’s more like the party of Big Oil squaring off against the party of Big Banks.
eemom
I do not support the candidacy of Newt Gingrich; however he is bringing up some important issues that really need to be part of the political dialogue, and at present he is the only one who is discussing those issues. Furthermore his position on those issues places him LEFT of Obama, who is too busy killing Muslim babies with drones and raping nuns to make documentaries about Bain Capital.
Rita R.
Hearing Newt Gingrich use attack lines that make it seem like he’s ready to take up a spot in an OWS drum circle has just made me all happy and tingly inside. Between that and Romney’s “I like being able to fire people” statement yesterday, David Axelrod must’ve been whooping it up and downing shooters in celebration in Chicago.
F*ck yeah let Newt do the dirty work right now. Huntsman and conservative himbo Rick Perry have been joining in on the Romney as corporate raider line of attack too. Mainstreaming OWS rhetoric with the crazy 27 percenters? It couldn’t be more perfect. I heard the CNBC “journalists” bleating about this yesterday, saying Gingrich “knows better” than to condemn “private equity.” They know this could be dangerous to the whole decades-long scam.
This is why the GOPers in charge were freaking out when it looked for a couple of weeks like Newt might be able to win the nomination. He’s a loose cannon driven by anger, ego and a nice soupcon of sociopathy, and for once it’s helping the Democrats. Only thing I can’t figure out is why the Koch brothers haven’t put a horse’s head in his bed yet. Maybe it’s coming.
Yevgraf
*sigh*
Our firebagging friends currently doing the agitprop thing at OWS strike again, dammit. This time, while in league with Ron Paul supporters and gay rights activists.
http://dailycaller.com/2012/01/09/protesters-force-gingrich-to-cancel-event/
I smell rodent sex, just about the time that Newt was doing good things.
catclub
@drew42: “and the media hate him”
The key difference between Mittens and McCain in terms of electoral chances. Economic conditions are MUCH better for Mittens than they they were for McCain.
catclub
@Rita R.: “Only thing I can’t figure out is why the Koch brothers haven’t put a horse’s head in his bed yet. Maybe it’s coming.”
All of this will be forgotten in a few months. Newt started WAY too late to do any real damage, and by the time Mitt locks it up by winning ( no matter how slim the margins)
about 4 early states in a row, he will be the nominee and further sniping will be seen as poor losers, who can be ignored.
I have some hope that that ‘fire people’ line will stick, but it is still early days.
xian
Sometimes the commenters here understand politics better than the front pagers do.
amk
@Yevgraf: ows is craving for attention, which it has lost completely, with these stupid tricks. ows will become a mocked term just like libruls.
Rita R.
@catclub:
Newt’s staying in at least until South Carolina, which is 11 days away, and probably Florida after that. He knows he can’t win, but it’s personal for him now and he wants to take Romney down, and he apparently doesn’t care if he has to blow up Republican Party orthodoxy to do it. So there’s still a lot of time for Republicans to hear these attacks from the left from Newt — if he keeps them up, that is.
And even if Newt stops, they’re not going to go away. The Democrats have already been pushing the Bain attacks, it just hasn’t gotten nearly as much attention as when Gingrich does it, for obvious reasons. And it will be at the top of the list of what Obama’s campaign will throw at Mitt — only now they’ll have video of Gingrich agreeing with them.
WaterGirl
@NCSteve:
I was trying to say that yesterday, but you just said it a thousand times more clearly and effectively. And I love that you say it without trashing that 10% of people.
Yevgraf
@amk:
Hippies will be consistently self-destructive, as predictable as the sunrise.
fasteddie9318
@eemom: Look, I’m not endorsing any candidate, but why can’t supposed progressive defenders of the president at least put forward an honest assessment of their decision making process? Something like this:
I’m not adopting that position, or not adopting it, but at least it’s honest.
kay
Well, I think it’s too soon.
Gingrich’s attacks immunize Romney, because Romney is going to win NH, and then Romney and media are going to announce no one gives a shit about Romney’s vulture capitalism, and we’ve “put this issue to rest”.
I like the idea of going state by state, to the site of each and every Romney bankruptcy. That way it’s on local news and in local newspapers, and it’s useful a long time, instead of another one of these insane national frenzies that dies down in 24 hours and is then buried and forgotten by the next Big Thing.
It’s already bubbling up in Ohio, with companies Bain “helped”. I think it’s an attack worth developing, and Gingrich’s desperate flailing is the wrong approach.
feebog
I line up with the majority here. Noot is behind the flamethrower here, let him take the blowback as well. Look, if this line of attack from Noot really works, there is going to be two or three more months of Republican bloodletting. Why not wait at least until Florida to see how badly Romney has been damaged?
kay
@Yevgraf:
They hate Romney, they really do. I was reading the transcript of the 2008 “Ronald Reagan” debate, and McCain sounds like Gingrich re: Romney: it’s contempt.
At one point, McCain joins with Huckabee to attack Romney on the negative ads Romney is running against both of them.
They loathe him, and they know him much better than we do.
gwangung
@amk: One can agree with the general aims of more progressive activists while still thinking they have the tactical sense of a village full of idiots.
And I think a lot of people have said that. That STILL generates a lot of butthurt.
FlipYrWhig
@eemom: @fasteddie9318: Genius.
El Cid
@fasteddie9318: Even without any specifics, there’s nothing wrong with people realizing that voting for a Presidential candidate with the intent of selecting the one likely to end up in office will involve that President doing horrible things one opposes.
But making some calculation that since one or the other candidate will be handed the immense power of the U.S. Presidency, they prefer the good and bad to be done by one over the limited or nonexistent good and worse to be done by the other.
I realize that most people don’t work this way, that if they were to think such a thing it would make them negative, or cynical, or not want to vote at all.
This sort of choice is one which people have to make in all sorts of situations, and it never really feels great. But in so many ways, it’s a set of choices primarily imposed upon us.
Of course, our ability to influence the forms and use of political and governing power in this country certainly involves but not in the least is limited to those two moments in time: deciding whether or not to vote (not voting being a vote), and deciding for whom to vote.
For me, that perspective helps: the entirety of my life and input on the nation isn’t reduced to one momentary vote on a choice created by a system in which a real power structure has largely determined the options.
For other people, their political selves, even their consciences, seem determined by those two moments: whether to vote, and for whom.
I don’t vote to express my conscience (at least, not in any maximal sense) nor to choose the candidate who ‘really’ (and maximally) represents my political views, otherwise I’d write myself in, because I’m far more in agreement with myself and far more supportive of the things which trouble my conscience than any conceivable figure on the ballot.
I vote to empirically influence the outcome of a particular and extremely powerful political process, even though there are severe and really awful limits on how much influence I have to exert from that act.
On a few occasions in my life I’ve really surprised people with this view that I’m not “troubled” by the act of voting for a political leader who has done and will do things I vehemently oppose, as long as I really think that the outcome is substantially better than the likely alternative.
If you fail to act upon all the other factors determining the shape of U.S. governing and policy powers before that voting booth moment, then you shouldn’t be surprised when that voting moment is less morally and spiritually satisfactory than you’d really prefer.
amk
@gwangung: It’s their stupid tactics that turn off people, who otherwise sympathize/support/agree with their causes.
The Moar You Know
@Yevgraf: You are right to suspect rat copulation here. “Vermin Supreme” is a bought and paid for tool of the conservative money club. See who carries “news” about the guy. Hard-core right-wing outlets, every one of them.
He’s been harassing Ron Paul nonstop, but looks like his handlers have found a new target.
john f
@Bubblegum Tate: My thoughts exactly, you’ve got the modern GOP voter pegged. I’m curious though, what’s been El Rushbo’s spin on all of this? That will tell ya what the GOP base is will be parroting this week.
DanielX
Being afraid of being cast as socialists…right. To paraphrase some movie I saw once, hey, guys, they’re going to do it you anyway. So you may as well go ahead and have a good time. I once said more or less the same thing in a letter to the junior Senator from my great state, Evan Bayh, also known as The Man Who Doesn’t Piss Without Checking A Poll. It didn’t do any good in the case of the vote I was writing about, and he got still got flogged by the mouthbreathers who infest these parts the way the woods are infested with ticks in the summertime. Obama is about as much of a socialist as Adam Smith, but they’re going going to paint him as one anyway so he might as well get whatever benefit he can from it.
Also, too. You’d think some of these fuckwits raving about soshulism might have noticed by now that this whole capitalism thing isn’t quite working as advertised. Oh, wait – for Romney and his ilk it’s been working just the way they like it. For the rest of us, not so much.
Lurking Canadian
Wasn’t it just last week that Newt was saying we should fire all the janitors and make the lazy kids clean their own damn schools?
Now he’s saying firing people is bad? Has he had some kind of religious experience, or is he just so filled with hate that he thinks a kamikaze attack on the SS Romney is worth whatever comes after?
DanielX
@Lurking Canadian: You’re thinking that Newt worries about intellectual consistency? For that matter, that Republicans in general worry about intellectual consistency?
News flash: they don’t. They haven’t for oh, the past thirty years. This is why they see no conflict in their views on business deregulation and re-regulation of women’s uteri, to name one example of many.
fasteddie9318
@El Cid: I don’t have any problem with any of that; there’s nothing wrong with voting for the lesser evil. My particular objection to the way Greenwald framed that rationale was that his “honest” thought process for an Obama supporter was basically, “I don’t mind if my president slaughters innocent children around the world and bathes nightly in a mixture of their blood and the tears of their loved ones, as long as I can still retire at 65 or so.” It’s just a little bit more nuanced than that.
Rome Again
@Lurking Canadian:
What comes after? If he doesn’t acknowledge it, how does it affect him? He’s already losing his presidential bid, he’s a loose cannon with no additional consequences to suffer.
Rome Again
I want to echo the sentiments of others here that keeping our powder dry is the first order of business. Let them get a nominee and then we can punch them in the face. In the meantime, we’re getting help from those who are pissed at the great divide of the Republican Party, and I for one couldn’t be happier. :P
DanielX
@kay: Kay, it’s not flailing – ‘it’s a feature, not a bug’. The operative word is contempt, that being the attitude that Newt holds towards Mittens and Santorum (aka Mr. Come From Behind). Add to that personal hate for Mittens after the superPAC demolition job he was subjected to in Iowa. You gotta remember that Newt delights in grinding his opponents’ faces into the concrete, no matter what party they are. (He and that pile of Satan’s droppings Karl Rove are of one mind in this if nothing else.) This is his last shot at the presidency, he thinks it’s his destiny and if he can’t have it he doesn’t care who gets it. If he really and truly thought the most important thing on his agenda should be to get a Republican elected he’d be working for Romney’s nomination, since Romney is, in this pack of moral rejects, the one with the best hope of beating Obama in a general election. If there was ever a candidate he wouldn’t, ah, get behind, it would be Santorum, given Little Ricky’s views on sex and contraception. Pissing on Romney and Santorum is a worthy goal in and of itself, whether it helps him win the nomination or not.
Linda
But it’s even better that corp-bashing came from the GOP unbidden. For once,EVERYBODY is on the left page, and building up the echo chamber. It useta be that “…even the (fill in the putative leftie)” agreed with the right. Now it’s the other way around. This is how consensus thinking gets created.
BrianM
@NCSteve:
That’s not actually true of the liberals I’ve known. I wonder if going out of your way to insult people who have broadly the same goals as you instead of going after the people who hate you might be… suboptimal.