Mitt Romney

Newt’s CNN Debate Win in South Carolina – Will It Be Enough?

Erik Kain



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.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

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The moral calamity that is Newt Gingrich

Erik Kain



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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8 Million People Look Up Reps In Congress After SOPA Blackout

Erik Kain

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 […]

Read more at Forbes.

Stephen Colbert Sees A Google Search Surge in South Carolina And Nationwide

Erik Kain

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 […]

Read more at Forbes.

If Romney is the nominee, don’t expect Christie or any other moderate on the ticket

Erik Kain



There’s been rumblings that maybe New Jersey governor Chris Christie would make the Romney presidential ticket but I don’t see that happening at all. Christie makes for good television, but he’s way too moderate for the VP slot. He’s a tough-talker which Republicans like, but he tends to be pretty reasoned in his approach to Democrats and the president. None of that chewy red meat Sarah Palin threw to the masses in 2008.

Ditto for Huntsman who is, to be quite honest, much too Mormon for an already too-Mormon ticket. I could rattle off a half dozen other moderates that people like to speculate on but it’s just not going to happen. Romney needs a social conservative on the ticket – preferably an evangelical, not a Catholic or mainline protestant. That means Santorum and Gingrich are both out unless Santorum has some leverage nobody knows about. Obviously Paul will never be considered, and I doubt he’d sign up anyways.

So who does that leave? Jim DeMint? Michelle Bachmann? I honestly don’t know. Most of the speculation I’ve seen sounds like either wishful thinking or revelations of secret crushes…

In the above video it’s suggested that Ohio’s Rob Portman might be the Romney pick and that actually makes sense. Portman is pretty universally awful on all the issues as far as I’m concerned – which makes him perfect for the GOP.

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Why I’m Rooting For Gingrich In South Carolina

Erik Kain



Aspiring child janitors everywhere will not forgive Gingrich if he drops out after South Carolina.

Newt, this is not the former speaker we know and love. You don’t give up on politics, just on marriages!

Newt Gingrich came clean Tuesday afternoon, admitting that if he can’t win this state’s primary on Saturday, he probably can’t win the Republican nomination at all.

“If I don’t win the primary Saturday, we will probably nominate a moderate,” the former House speaker said, referring to Mitt Romney. “And the odds are fairly high he will lose to Obama.”

The question is whether Gingrich endorses Santorum if the frothy ex-Senator stays in the race after a South Carolina loss.

I suppose that depends on whether or not all this bad press actually puts a dent in Romney’s titanium exoskeleton. The fact that Perry, Santorum, and Gingrich all failed to get on Virginia’s GOP primary ballot may be a moot point if they all run out of money by March.

Obama must be sleeping like a damn baby these days. All these Super PACs are doing his job for him as the Republican field shreds itself to pieces. They’ll all line up like good soldiers behind Romney in the end (Ron Paul is a wild card on this point) but the damage will have been done.

Perhaps I just have a morbid fascination with Republican primaries, but I really do hope Gingrich or Santorum beats Romney so that this whole lovely mess gets dragged out even further.

(P.S. Totally unrelated random thought: why should we settle for just one president? We pay the president way too much. We could hire like 2,000 kids to do that job instead and teach them about hard work and responsibility all at the same time. Extend this logic to congress and you’ve not only saved money, you’ve dragged thousands of kids out of unemployment.)

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Colbert’s Brilliant Super PAC Ad ‘Mitt The Ripper’ (Starring John Lithgow)

Erik Kain



How can you not love an ad voiced by John Lithgow which accuses Romney of being a serial killer since he “killed” corporations who are “people, my friend”?

The thing is, this ad is essentially just an extension of Colbert’s show. The ad itself is hilarious, but it’s as much a spoof of negative ads as it is an attack on Romney. More importantly, it shows just how little these ads actually represent an existential threat our democracy. As I argue in my Atlantic piece, the real threat is two-fold: the stranglehold the mainstream media has over the political process – and the gads of money that the big corporations who own the mainstream money can spend on that process – and the money that greases the wheels of power. Citizens United allows people to spend more money on “electioneering” which is just not nearly as big a deal as many apoplectic souls make it out to be.

I enjoyed this ad in the same way that I enjoy Colbert’s television show. And I’m even watching it on an embed from Comedy Central, owned by Viacom, a media company historically exempted from campaign finance laws.

(Actually, some negative ad campaigns can backfire for candidates. Maybe more people should think about using cutting humor instead of boring, predictable vitriol, to make their point. Just a thought.)

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Two’s Almost As Bad As One: The Virginia Primary Will Be A Romney-Paul Showdown

Erik Kain



Rick Perry won't be on the Virginia ballot thanks to activist appeals court judges.

Politico is reporting that a federal appeals court has requested Rick Perry’s request to be added to the Virginia primary ballot. Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum also failed to file in Virginia, which required them to collect 10,000 signatures by December of 2011.

This leaves only Mitt Romney and Ron Paul on the Mach 6th ballot which is, to be perfectly blunt, both hilarious and wonderful at the same time.

It’s hilarious because three of the remaining five candidates are so disorganized and apparently under-staffed that they couldn’t get their act’s together enough to get on the Virginia ballot in time. What were they thinking? They were apparently spending too much time on Fox or prepping for various debates to do one of the simplest, most straight-forward possible things you can do in a campaign. If these guys can’t organize themselves enough to make it onto the Virginia ballot, can we really trust them to take that 3 AM phonecall from Vladmir Putin?

It’s wonderful because this will (probably) be our first glimpse at a one-on-one showdown between Ron Paul and Mitt Romney. I have no doubt that Ron Paul is sticking this thing out, even if it does just boil down to him vs. Romney. Virginia may be a test of his success throughout the remainder of the campaign. It will be interesting to see how the vote shakes out. I think Romney takes Virginia, but I do hope that Paul gives him a good walloping while he’s at it.

Oh, and get ready for the activist judge rhetoric. Those dang activist judges are just trying to keep Rick Perry down! And, uh, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum down, too.

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Obviously Obama’s Attempt To Punish The Rich, Successful, Job-Creators Is Failing Miserably

Erik Kain



Mitt Romney has money to burn thanks to his super low taxes.

News that presumptive GOP front-runner and possible automaton, Mitt Romney, only pays an effective 15% tax rate proves one thing and one thing only: Obama’s job-killing taxes and burdensome regulations are stifling our Galtian overlords and sending them straight to the poor house.

Kevin Drum chuckles:

Did Romney really make up his mind on this literally overnight? Because in last night’s debate he sure didn’t sound very certain that he was going to do this. This is, perhaps, the only time that Romney has panicked during the campaign. If he’d made up his mind a little earlier and a little more deliberately, he could have had a much smoother answer last night. “I do plan to release my tax return for the previous year, as other presidential candidates have done, and my accountants tell me it will be ready to file in late March or April. As soon as it’s complete, I’ll make copies available to the press.”

Instead we got last night’s Palinesque gobbledygook. Very weird. Greg Sargent takes a crack here at figuring out what this all means for Romney’s chances in November.

Transparency is a good thing. Getting Romney to buckle like this is even better. Still, I doubt revelations of his wealth or his low tax rate or his utter lack of a personality will hurt him. It’s too late for that. Even a beating in South Carolina won’t necessarily set him back in Florida and beyond.

As  Nate Silver points out virtually every national poll sets Romney head and shoulders above the rest of the field. Republicans are going with the “electable” candidate, not the one they love, not the one that they think will do the best job in office (though to survey the line-up of candidates, especially after Huntsman’s departure, is to cast your eyes on a field of incompetence.)

I’m giving Obama strong odds in 2012. Unless the economy tanks, Romney is going to be extremely vulnerable in the general election. If he had the same record but a warmer personality I’d be less certain. As it stands…he’s just deeply unlikable. Andrew Sullivan has been calling him “creepy” lately, an apt description of the man. His handle on the truth is also rather disturbing. Forgivable things for the American electorate, true, but not for someone who we don’t want to go have a beer with.

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Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney’s Hypocritical Defense of Big Government

Erik Kain



Food stamps are one of the most effective voucher programs in US history.

Newt Gingrich has doubled down on his food-stamp-king line about Obama. In last night’s debate and elsewhere the former speaker has maligned both the president and the poor people, and especially blacks, who rely on government assistance during hard economic times. David Frum writes:

It’s worth remembering that at least one quarter of the South Carolina Republican primary electorate will likely exceed age 65. These voters also depend on government: for Social Security, for Medicare, and for other benefits. Newt Gingrich understands the merits of such protections for these voters. Shouldn’t a man who wants to be president of the whole country show equal understanding of the troubles and dangers facing all those who depend on government assistance: the poor as well as the old, the black as well as the white?

Frum is a backer of presumptive front-runner Mitt Romney, but Romney has also defended the benefits of elderly Americans and framed the issue as us vs. them. Speaking to crowds of Republican voters suspicious of Romney’s own Massachusetts healthcare plan, Romney has said repeatedly that ”Obamacare takes $500 billion out of Medicare and funds Obamacare.”

Republicans talk about shrinking government but they have no intention of shrinking it for their electoral base: older, whiter, and more financially secure, the GOP base relies on programs like Medicare. Romney’s demagoguery on the massive government entitlement belies his, and the GOP’s, unseriousness about entitlement reform. Tax cuts for the rich, government programs for the elderly. But if we try to extend access to healthcare outside the bounds of the Republican electorate that’s socialism.

Gingrich’s race-baiting is reprehensible, but Romney is playing the same tune on the same piano.

Meanwhile Santorum panders to social conservatives on gay rights issues and abortion. But even the sort-of-populist Santorum thinks food stamps and unemployment are a bridge too far:

“What we should do, is have it just like welfare. Give it to the states, put a time limit. In the case of welfare, it was 40 weeks. Give flexibility to the states to operate those programs and even in unemployment, I mean, you can have as we did on welfare, have some sort of either work requirement or job training required as a condition. We’re not doing people any favors by keeping them on unemployment insurance for a long period of time.” [emphasis added]

Steve Benen is baffled:

So, in Santorum’s mind, it makes sense to require the unemployed to be employed before receiving unemployment benefits?

If you don’t have a job, you’ll be forced to get one before you’d be eligible to receive benefits that go to those without jobs?

It’s all the same act. It’s politics, sure, but it reveals a key truth: Republicans really do want big government, just a different kind of big government for a different segment of the population. Gingrich talks about ‘creating dependency’ out of one side of his mouth and defends government dependency out of the other.

The Tea Party is an illusion.

P.S. Actually, I do think we should help the unemployed find jobs instead of just giving them food stamps and unemployment benefits.

A looser monetary policy coupled with a serious fiscal policy and increased government spending (and decreased government firing) could help all these unemployed people get back to work. Maybe these Republicans are just advocating a sort of bizarre Keynesian jobs plan after all….

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