An internet blackout and protests online and in person helped grind anti-piracy legislation to a halt in congress. But the fight isn’t over yet. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) called off a vote on the controversial Protect IP Act (PIPA) after Wednesday’s internet blackout and statements from the president indicating that more discussion was […]
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Is Romney actually an alien with super powers? I'm only asking questions here…
This would explain so much: Romney doesn’t want to release his tax records because he’s hiding money in an off-planet bank account on the planet Zorkon (or something to that effect.)
He’s actually an alien that just looks a lot like a human – think Superman but LDS. Newt Gingrich is his Kryptonite (or Zorkonite or whatever) and instead of a cape, super strength, and flight, Romney has the super power of taking large, struggling companies and devouring them, sucking out their last remaining resources, and then spitting out their bones.
It makes sense to me – at least as much sense as the GOP nominating a guy who basically came up with Obamacare just two short years after the Tea Party craze brought a whole new batch of crazy to Washington, D.C.
Am I missing something here?
(P.S. No, I’m not accusing Romney of being an alien. I’m only asking a question…)
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Newt won his second South Carolina debate in a row.
Politico has Newt Gingrich seven points behind Romney among likely voters at 30%. After tonight’s debate, Gingrich may close that gap further. Romney floundered once again on the issue of his tax returns. He took a beating on both Romneycare and abortion. His confidence seems diminished.
Meanwhile Newt has this incredible way of segueing between attacks on Obama and attacks on Romney. Once again Newt is showing off his debating skills and his ability to sound reasonable while saying seriously crazy things all at the same time. His arrogance is galling but the crowd loves him.
I personally loved how Ron Paul took the issue of government healthcare and segued into military spending. He was the only one of the four who seemed to actually care that real people do actually depend on government benefits whether or not he believes in those programs.
Santorum did fine, but he didn’t rile up the crowd. He’s very good at sounding sincere. He has a certain maudlin folksiness to him that the GOP base enjoys. But they enjoy Newt more. Santorum rambles, Newt cuts right to the quick. Romney was on the defense almost all night, even in his pleas for Republican unity. Newt managed to call for unity while going on the offense.
This was a bad night for Romney and another win for Newt. Paul wasn’t at his best, but it doesn’t really matter. South Carolina is obviously not Paul territory. The real question is whether this and the last debate can propel Newt into fighting territory against Romney. The former Massachusetts governor has never looked so weak.
As Andrew Sullivan notes, “Every minute he speaks about this in this forum he loses votes.” Can Romney lose the electability race to Gingrich – a man who is on his third marriage, spent years lobbying for the housing industry just before the crash, and wracked up an absurd credit line at Tiffany’s?
It’s almost inconceivable.
But the Bain Capital record isn’t going anywhere. There’s something fishy about these tax returns and Romney’s inability to just release them to the public. Something is rotten.
The difference between Romney and Gingrich is that we’re all pretty sure we know the details of Gingrich’s dirty laundry by now. Even his ex-wife’s tell-all interview isn’t going to shine any new light on the former speaker.
Romney, on the other hand, remains something of a closed book. I bet that makes some voters nervous.
The devil you know can be a comfortable vote, and at this point I think a lot of conservatives are taking a second look at Gingrich whose warts they’ve basically come to terms with. His response to the accusations leveled at him by his ex-wife on ABC had the audience in a standing ovation, effectively turning a damning revelation into just another reason to go after the mainstream media.
One has to admire Gingrich’s tenacity at moments like these even if 90% of what he says is absolute garbage.
We know who Newt Gingrich is – but what lies beneath Romney’s slick exterior? Republicans can’t be certain. Will it give them pause this Saturday in South Carolina?
Update. Josh Marshall describes Gingrich’s performance and especially his broadside against debate moderator John King quite well:
It all started (and in a sense ended) with Newt’s ferocious broadside against John King for raising the “open marriage” story. The whole thing was a put-up job in reality. But for his intended audience, it was a masterstroke. And it was classic Newt. Take the mammoth offensive whether you have a leg to stand on or not and just go with it. It turned the whole thing into an outrage drama against the “mainstream media.” The cynicism of Newt’s tirade was on display post-debate when he complimented King for doing a great job moderating the debate. But again, doesn’t matter. He nailed it. That set the tone for the debate, virtually ensured that no one would touch the issue for the next two hours and instantly drew off all the Newt-tension hovering over the debate.
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Kodak has filed for bankruptcy to the sadness of many but to nobody’s surprise: The New York Stock Exchange today said that trading in Eastman Kodak shares “should be suspended immediately.” And in fact trading in the stock on the NYSE was halted earlier this morning. The statement follows Kodak’s announcement early this morning that it […]
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The Republican Party isn't going to be home for non-interventionists any time soon.
I have a deep and abiding fondness for Ron Paul if only because he’s willing to stand before a crowd of conservatives and tell them that no, what the hawk-dominated conservative movement has been doing these many years is not actually a very conservative or Christian thing; Big Defense is still government and spending trillions of dollars on foreign wars of intervention and nation-building is still spending trillions of taxpayer dollars. I’m not a conservative and I don’t think I could vote for Paul, but to hear him make his case for non-interventionist foreign policy and an end to the war on drugs and so forth is to breathe a deep breath of fresh air in an otherwise stifling room of conservative boilerplate.
So when Ron Paul was booed for his unorthodox foreign policy views it came as little surprise. The conservative movement and the Republican Party are united in their love of a strong and aggressive military, a fully neoconservative and interventionist foreign policy, and a continuation of the war on drugs, police militarization, and so forth. There are a few dissenters closer to the mainstream of the party than Paul – Tom Coburn is one and even Rand Paul is more mainstream than his father – but by and large the GOP is exactly the place one might suspect to find a peacenik like Paul booed.
It’s unfortunate, of course, but it is what it is.
Mike Dwyer engages in some wishful thinking over at The League:
If I were to describe what I think young Republicans will look like in 10 years I would suggest they will be moderate on social policy, mainline conservative on fiscal policy and libertarian on civil liberties and foreign policy. They will be pro-life but also believe people have a right to smoke weed in their own home. They’ll pretty much ignore gay marriage. They will believe in a strong world economy but be isolationist about wars and having our troops in foreign lands.
I’m willing to concede that on social issues the GOP will become more moderate but not go so far as to say that they will be fully moderate. On gay rights issues the Republicans have already shifted left. Evangelicals are not happy about this, however, and it’s quite likely that a tension will still exist between modernist and traditionalist camps in the GOP in ten years. On civil liberties the Republicans will be just as bad as they are now; on drug policy I expect no better; and on foreign policy I expect a new crop of young hawks to take up the reins. There is absolutely no chance that they become isolationist, though I wouldn’t be surprised if a more protectionist domestic policy becomes more popular on the right.
Either way, the party has very little room for men like Ron Paul. His popularity is fierce and his followers are passionate – but his politics are of a time long since past when the Republican Party was home to advocates of a more sober foreign policy than the one the neoconservatives devised.
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Newt is “within striking distance” of Mitt Romney in South Carolina, Politico is reporting. Perry’s exit stage left and subsequent endorsement of the former speaker should give him some fuel heading into tonight’s debate. I imagine if Santorum, the newly declared Iowa winner, were to drop out and endorse Newt that he’d have a fighting chance of toppling Mitt Romney in Saturday’s primary.
Of course, the ABC interview with his former wife – the one he had a six-year affair on – won’t help.
She said when Gingrich admitted to a six-year affair with a Congressional aide, he asked her if she would share him with the other woman, Callista, who is now married to Gingrich.
“And I just stared at him and he said, ‘Callista doesn’t care what I do,’” Marianne Gingrich told ABC News. “He wanted an open marriage and I refused.”
Marianne described her “shock” at Gingrich’s behavior, including how she says she learned he conducted his affair with Callista “in my bedroom in ourapartment in Washington.”
“He always called me at night,” she recalled, “and always ended with ‘I love you.’ Well, she was listening.”
Damning stuff, to be sure, but the words of a spurned lover are never given as much credence as they maybe ought to be. And this is old news. Gingrich may indeed be a moral failure, a man whose vanity obscured his many vows and promises. But we all already know this, and he is playing the reformed Christian now, insisting in his own personal regret and redemption. Perhaps it’s true.
All I know is that I hope he wounds Romney in this primary. I started this election off thinking Romney was a decent moderate – not in any way my own pick for president, but not particularly scary either. I no longer believe this. Romney, I’m quite certain now, has no soul. Gingrich may have made bad choices – his soul may be black in a few spots – but he has one. He’s a human being at the very least, warts and all. Romney is a machine at best, a blank slate willing to say and do anything to get elected.
I never thought I’d line up in Gingrich’s defense at all, but the man has more character than Mitt Romney which, I realize, isn’t saying much. At least I know there’s a mind and a person and a very, very big ego underneath Newt’s exterior. With Romney, I have a hard time seeing the man behind the mask.
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During its blackout Wednesday Wikipedia asked users to imagine a world without free knowledge and then call their representatives in congress. Millions of Americans took that to heart. Along with the 4.5 million people who signed the anti-censorship petition, millions more looked up information about their congressional representatives. No wonder politicians are starting to feel […]
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The internet went dark Wednesday, and D.C. was paying attention. For opponents of SOPA and PIPA, Wednesday’s internet blackout and ‘s was a huge success. Eighteen Senators changed their position on PIPA, reports; and 4.5 million people signed ‘s anti-censorship petition, according to the LA Times. “There’s no need to make American social networks, blogs […]
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According to the Google Politics & Elections page on Google Plus, Colbert is seeing a big spike in search traffic lately. “Over the weekend we posted that searches for Stephen Colbert of the +The Colbert Report saw a 189% jump in South Carolina traffic, while +Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, +Mitt Romney and +Newt Gingrich all saw declines during the […]
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The internet is a strange and mysterious place today. I keep forgetting Wikipedia is down and going over there to look up this or that subject. Then I’m reminded that no, Wikipedia and Reddit and Craigslist and many other sites have gone black to protest the anti-piracy bills SOPA and PIPA. Over at Wired David […]
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