(Mike Luckovich via GoComics.com)
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… Cartoonishly rich people and unindicted criminals. Per Caroline Bankoff at NYMag‘s Daily Intel:
This weekend was a big one for Mitt Romney’s top fund-raisers, 800 of whom descended on Park City, Utah’s Chateaux at Silver Lake for what at least one person called Republicanpalooza (the official, less fun-sounding name: Romney Victory Leadership Retreat.) The three-day gathering was billed as a way for major donors (those who had contributed at least $50,000 or bundled $250,000) to spend some quality time with the candidate and his team, along with GOP figures like Condoleezza Rice, Karl Rove, Jeb Bush, John McCain, Bobby Jindal, Paul Ryan, Michael Chertoff, and Mary Matalin. Plus, every attendee got a gift that would leave any Republican happy: a beige Vineyard Vines duffel bag embroidered with “Believe in America” on one side and a “circular flag-style emblem and ‘Romney'” on the reverse…
Activities included a barbecue, an Ann Romney–hosted “Women for Romney victory tea,” a round of golf at nearby fancy course Red Ledges, and the opportunity to watch “Olympic ski jumpers do flips into a giant swimming pool.” At one point, Romney’s niece presented him with a giant oil painting she made of his face “infused with an American flag bearing the slogan, ‘American Strong,'” which she said inspires her uncle’s “emotional energy.” [ed: Paging Mr. TBogg, to the photoshop phone… ] Attendees were also able to view the campaign’s daily strategy session and many, many panels and speeches, including talks with Rice, McCain, and Rove, who was, according to some, “the funniest speaker” of the weekend…
Romney himself was said to be “noticeably relaxed” as he attended policy seminars and mingled with donors. His Friday night remarks, while “nearly identical” to his typical stump speech, were described as “more confident, comfortable and enthusiastic than usual.” And it seems that the combination of laid-back hang time and hard-core access worked its intended magic on the candidate’s guests, who were frequently said to be “looking for a return on their investments.” As one lobbyist and fund-raiser in attendance put it, “A lot of people will go home and call a bunch of their friends and raise more money.”
As I’ve said before, Joe Williams failed to be “exactly correct” only in that when he said, “Romney is very, very comfortable it seems with people who are like him… white folks who are very much relaxed in their own company.” he left out the key modifier “rich”.
And yet, even in the NYTimes‘ fevered tongue-bath coverage, there is a hint of impending trouble in paradise:
… Yet for all the political and financial firepower assembled here, the Romney confab was not the only, or necessarily the most exclusive, gathering of ultrarich Republicans this weekend. In a simultaneous demonstration of the party’s fund-raising might, the industrialist billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch held a conference for conservative megadonors at a resort outside San Diego. Over the past few years, their high-dollar strategy sessions have been the marquee events of the Republican campaign finance set.
The Koch conference touched off an unexpected — and for the Romney campaign, somewhat unwelcome — competition for top-flight moneyed supporters. While Mr. Romney’s campaign officials have made it clear that they appreciate the efforts of wealthy backers like the Kochs, there was consternation among some on his finance team that the brothers decided to move forward with their conference after Mr. Romney scheduled his for the same weekend. As one fund-raiser noted, Mr. Romney is, after all, the candidate…
Yes, but Romney is a mere quarter-billionaire, which reduces his status among the Kochs’ Serious Money People to nothing more than an aspiring employee — one of The Help, albeit wearing a nicer uniform. Pack this many giant wallets into one very exclusive party, and suddenly there isn’t enough room to swing a big dick. One can but hope that the ensuing Clash of the Giant Egos breaks out very publicly and just in time for the post-Labor-Day media window.
SiubhanDuinne
Mike Luckovich is the only reason I even click on the AJC website any more. And I live here!
wonkie
How come when I gtry to share a post on Facebook, the wrong post shows up? Is there any cure for this?
Baud
A Republican Game of Thrones? Sweet.
jl
My only doubt about the second excerpt is that I think consternation is a natural state of Romney and his supporters. So, not sure that is evidence of much.
But, for whatever reason, if the consternation is focused on each other, fine with me. Sounds good. Hope they keep up any jealousy and discord. Only good news can come of that.
El Cid
Money is power, but it isn’t the only form. The super-rich have never mistaken the office of the Presidency as being weak and not potentially and threateningly independent.
If Romney were President, he’s instantly far more powerful and prestigious than any number of actual billionaires.
He might still feel himself as aspiring to their league, but it’s an incredibly effective way to increase his upper-class rank privileges.
Patricia Kayden
Are there any billionaires on Obama’s side? I know Soros is sitting this election out for some reason.
Raven
@wonkie: Because you are doing it wrong? Copy the url from the address bar and paste in in “What’s on your mind”. When the url shows up another window with the url and a thumbnail appears. You can select the text in the first box and type in something and it will show up above the content you linked to.
wiscomom
What I wish for is a picture of Scalia, Alito and/or Thomas at either of these confabs. Now that might be helpful and clarifying.
Violet
This is actually really cool to watch and it’s free. They may have organized a trip to go see it, but anyone can go if they want.
And this:
Fits perfectly with this:
Is there anyone left who doesn’t think rich people own our government officials?
El Cid
@Baud: A Republican Game of Thrones, but mostly populated by the titular characters of The Walking Dead, who behave with the decorum of Jersey Shore.
Jewish Steel
Republicanpalooza
or…
the official, less fun-sounding name: Romney Victory Leadership Retreat
I think it’s more of a toss up which is less fun-sounding.
Violet
What I want to know is why Democrats haven’t somehow infiltrated this sort of event by working as a busboy, caterer, cleaning staff, lost tourist…whatever. A few photos of who’s there would be very interesting. These days cameras are so small, someone ought to be able to smuggle a pen-camera in or something.
Baud
@Violet:
The photos could show Jerry Sandusky at the event, and the media would only talk about how the Democrats used Chicago-sytle tactics to obtain them.
jl
@Jewish Steel:
” The official, less fun-sounding name: Romney Victory Leadership Retreat”
I think the official name is more fun. Pronounce the acronym.
ReVeLeR.
Sure, Romney is sitting in some quiet back room watching Ozzie and Harriet, sipping herb tea and munching on melba toast and prunes.
But most of the moneybags want some fun.
Maybe that was the problem, the Kochs had more RVLR in their shindig and the party hardy money boys went there.
JPL
@Violet: duh… they are democrats.. They don’t do that because the Sunday talk show might ignore them.. You might say they ignore them anyway but they don’t want to upset them further.
Also, too McCain has good bbq’s.
Violet
@Baud: Not if they showed Jerry Sandusky and Mitt Romney, with one of Romney’s grandsons in between them. I think that would be too far. There are some things that the public wouldn’t stand for. Without photos, we don’t know who was there so we can’t find out what the public would think.
Narcissus
I could totally get behind a political activist group that raised money to send undercover agents into Oligarchy get-togethers. You could also use the money you raise to send the party like a hundred cartons of chinese food.
Brachiator
I am soooo looking forward to seeing Romney addres the NAACP. Sure to be a YouTube hit.
Shalimar
Well, that was fucking stupid. Romney knew when the Koch event was but scheduled his then anyway to make them change theirs.
WereBear
And Romney’s motivation to seek the Highest Office becomes crystal-clear; with a single leap, he vaults to a position where Zillionaires have to kiss his (discreetly covered in Orlon) butt-ocks and his failure to make “enough money” is a moot point.
It is all revealed to me now!
kd bart
L like to imagine it was like the wedding scene in Goodfellas with people lined up to give Karl Rove envelopes full of cash.
Jewish Steel
@jl: Did no one schedule a rEVOLolution this weekend?
jl
@Shalimar:
You’ll never make CEO of a gazillionaire mega corporation with that attitude.
@Jewish Steel:
sounds lib to me.
JGabriel
I’m thinking victory tea tastes a lot chickens counted from eggs unhatched …
.
Yutsano
@JGabriel:
Dude…
(Images on link not for the squeamish)
Davis X. Machina
@WereBear: It’s an AP US history cliché that great presidents want to become president to do something, and mediocre-or-worse presidents become president because they want to be something.
The recent past hasn’t undermined my faith in it, truism or no.
And in Romney’s case, I don’t see how the truism could be truer.
lamh35
So since Romney’s who strategy is to copy as much of Obama’s fundraising gimmicks (Dinner with Clooney vs Dinner with Trump…) how soon will be seeing the Romneys’ version of this:
The First Couple on their First Meal Together: Dinner with Barack and Michelle
majii
You too? GA media sucks. It’s plainly right leaning, even local news. It’s the reason too many people in GA believes nonsense and vote against their own interests.
El Cid
@Davis X. Machina: What Romney would want to do as President is more frightening to me than the notion that he would just want to be President.
Too often we grow used to thinking of Presidents “doing” something as meaning something they wish to accomplish which we might think of as “good”, rather than “evil”.
I think when he tells us to look at his business history to tell us what he might do as President, we should listen to him, and prepare to be liquidated by our next leveraged takeover leader.
Davis X. Machina
@El Cid: I don’t think he wants to do very much, but I also don’t see him doing anything to stop his friends doing what they want to do. His personal agenda overlaps his class agenda so tightly that there are twenty other Romneys that would be interchangeable in the office.
Except for the LDS thing, perhaps. He’s a cipher — he’s not a Cheney, or a Nixon.
Litlebritdifrnt
So a Politico reporter gets suspended for telling the fucking truth meanwhile Romney is lying his ass off, day in and day out, and no one is saying a fucking thing. Got it.
Alison
@lamh35: If I didn’t like my own parents so much, I’d want the Obamas to adopt me.
Maybe they can anyway. Is there a law against multiple parentage? They can be my backups…
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Narcissus: Unfortunately, when activist groups do such things, they infiltrate things like Obama events in San Francisco, to heckle him “from the left”.
Litlebritdifrnt
@lamh35:
Would imagine never, since Anne was basically “promised” to Romney while she was in High School. It was for all intents and purposes an arranged marriage. Anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot. Anne was a brood mare, pure and simple. Turns out she was really good at it.
jl
TPaw says he don’t want to run for VP on a Mitt ticket (should that be called a ‘Micket’?)
Pawlenty says to look elsewhere for potential VP
‘ Pawlenty says being asked to run as vice president with Romney would be an honor.
But Pawlenty tells CBS’ “Face the Nation” that he’s “encouraged people who asked this question in the campaign to look at other prospects.” ‘
http://news.yahoo.com/pawlenty-says-look-elsewhere-potential-vp-172527123.html
Doesn’t sound like a typical discrete nondenial denial of interest. But others here are better at reading these tea leaves. Edit: Or Mitt gave TPaw the option of this cover story after passing him over.
Edit: I decided I like the term “Mittcket”. It sounds cute.
Nellcote
A missed opportunity for not one but two drone strikes for democracy.
Jewish Steel
@Alison: I want Barack to take me to the Art Institute and Do The Right Thing. Damn.
hells littlest angel
@Brachiator: Think he’ll open with an
Al GreenBaha Men tune?David Koch
@jl: not that the fat, dumb corporate media notices, but they’re all running away from the impending Mittastrophe
only d-list hacks like governor vaginal probe and Senator barbie from new Hampshire, desperately trying to jump the pecking order for 2016, have said they like to be veep.
Nellcote
more gooper conflict!
And the Republican Jewish Coalition — whose board includes casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and other top GOP money men — is having its summer bash at a Beverly Hills hotel Sunday, featuring former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz.
General Stuck
Lard help me, I rarely venture into the steamy adolescent jungle of Ross Douchat’s rarified frontal lobe. But jeebus, this article is like a recitation of every firebagger fapping point about Obama the past 4 years. Don’t they have any shame or standards in the columnist pit over at the grey lady?
Hey Douchat, “teh left” you speak of is a tiny number of excitable cheesit wranglers on the internet. I wish I had a high dollar job writing bullshit for a premier rag, if not THE premier rag in the country. All I get is an occasional slapdown by the neurotic owner of a pet blog. It ain’t fair.
Now all we need is Campbell Brown’s deep thoughts on how Planned Parenthood is too partisan, and not being nice to the wingnuts trying to wipe them off the face of the earth.
dmsilev
You know, the complete and utter absence of a well-aimed meteor strike is proof of the nonexistence of a loving God.
gbear
@El Cid:
Not in his own mind, he won’t. He’ll still be as insecure and approval-seeking as he’s been on the campaign trail.
Nellcote
@General Stuck:
Is Greenwald writing Douchehat’s column now?
General Stuck
@Nellcote:
Ha! facts in evidence would suggest the possibility.
Maude
@General Stuck:
I can’t read him, Brook, Friedman or MoDo. I can’t understand why they are paid so much money for such tripe.
shortstop
Why do assholes like fireworks? The dog is going to be a complete wreck for the next three weeks.
Steve in DC
@gbear:
I don’t think most billionares want to be president. Why should they? They own the leadership of both parties, have bought most of the congress and every four years the presidential nominee’s come begging them for money. Why would you want the job? You already own the office so who cares?
How many big shots have run for president recently? One of the Koch’s who’s platform of destroying social security, medicare, the FBI, the EPA, the CIA, public education, and reducing military spending only attracted nut jobs… and Perot (who looks a bit less stupid given what happened) who only give a shit about the debt. Both failed in spectacular fashion.
When you own both the parties outside of vanity third party runs to push a policy neither party is going to accept why bother to run?
El Cid
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Yes, but two guys like the Yes Men are so ingenious they make up for legions.
Also, for many it would take a lot of work, cultural familiarity and planning to fit in with a rich and conservative crowd.
But even a bad effort would surely work better than the Breitbart freaks, and they’re always trying to show up at liberal events and are shocked that people notice their clown noses and oversized shoes.
El Cid
By the way, on the topic of people like this.
When I read something like this, it really makes my blood boil that a lot of people who make less than $12,000 a year for their family don’t pay federal income taxes.
kay
@General Stuck:
The Campbell Brown piece is wrong.
She left out the fact that the GOP House member she’s shilling for voted to defund Title X completely, when he voted for the Tea Party House appropriations bill.
After he voted to defund Title X completely, he then introduced legislation to “protect” Planned Parenthood, because he’s in a tight race in a Dem leaning district.
Brown had to know this, because the DCCC made a big fuss about it at the time, calling him a hypocrite. That was in 2011.
She left that part out.
Why the NYTimes are presenting this person as a “journalist” is beyond me. Is it because she’s wealthy, well-connected and married to Dan Senor?
I am so, so sick of this disgusting, deceitful little media personality club.
Mike G
Republicans moan and Republicans bitch
Our rich are too poor
And our poor are too rich
Nellcote
@General Stuck:
On the other hand, maybe it’s simple plagarizm.
catclub
@Patricia Kayden: Warren Buffett, Bill Gates. They, however, are not big political donors.
catclub
@jl:”Mittcket”:
it does remind one of the term micturate.
Valdivia
@lamh35:
they are so cute together. I love when they smile at each other, you can tell they totally dig each other’s company.
russell
what the hell is romney’s wife doing hosting a victory tea? i thought these people were mormons.
if money is the deciding factor, romney will be our next president.
Paula68154
Any chance the Romney, or one of his investments own the resort in Park City, Utah’s Chateaux at Silver Lake?
Just sayin…
fuckwit
This is not hard. We can beat these rich fuckers.
In the old days, 100 years ago, Americans realized that the rich are nothing without labor. So we organized labor, paralyzed the evildoing rich with strikes, and won.
These days, Americans don’t actually make stuff. We’re not producers, we’re consumers. Our purpose, from the standpoint of the corporate elite, as Americans, is to buy stuff, not to make it.
So, organizing labor isn’t the ticket– a strike doesn’t pack the same punch as it used to, especially since most of the labor is overseas these days anyway.
However, read the above. Our role in making them rich is to buy stuff. So our power is in… NOT BUYING STUFF. A BOYCOTT is how we flex our muscle nowadays.
Notice what we can do in order to make corporations do what we want: we have to stop buying shit. It works too, and has worked very well over the last few years. When consumers pressure corporations, they do stuff like back out of ALEC, or Glenn Beck, or Limbaugh. THIS IS OUR POWER.
As for Romney’s moneyed douchebags and Citizens United and Karl Rove and those clowns, I have only two things to say: Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer. We don’t have Carly Fiorina or Meg Whitman in power right now, despsite their overspending Boxer and Brown by orders of magnitude. So, pissing money down your leg does not necessarily lead to electoral victory.
Scott
The presidency doesn’t wield the power it once did, not over the elites. They feel that if they buy it for Romney, then they will control domestic policy regarding taxation and regulation, much as they did with GWB. And Romney’s OK with that. He just wants to BE president, again, much like GWB.
If elected, Romney will be one of the weakest presidents in history, because he stands for nothing. And I don’t see a Dick Cheney-like figure emerging for VP.