With two primary contests in the books, we've arrived at the point where everyone has so much to say about so little and only a few more minutes before all of the major media organizations blow through the budget they've allocated for the entire pre-Super Tuesday calendar. But let's take a minute to size up your remaining GOP 2012ers and how their individual "paths to the nomination" stand.
MITT ROMNEY: It's kind of amazing that a thin win in Iowa, coupled with the blowout victory in New Hampshire that everyone had been predicting, could do so much to restore former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's inevitability, but that's the power of perception for you! It surely helped that right up to the eve of the New Hampshire primary, the fierce attacks that everyone was assured were sure to come from Mitt's rivals only materialized after the votes were counted and the scene switched southward. (And then, Mitt's chief tormentor, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, went a little bit crazy, but more on that later.)
Dave Weigel made a game attempt at "putting things in perspective" by pointing out that the number of delegates Romney had actually won could all fit in his car-top dog-defecation chamber, but let's face it, it's one thing for a political observer to urge restraint. The minute you hear that argument coming out of the mouth of an also-ran, you immediately recognize it as sucker's talk. The bottom line is that Mitt has the inside track to the nomination, a slight lead in South Carolina, a large lead in Florida, tons of money, the Not-Romney vote still getting split in multiple directions, and if no one manages to break his stride, soon he'll start gulping down heaping mouthfuls of delegates.
RON PAUL: If the first goal of Texas Rep. Ron Paul's campaign was to expand upon the support he'd gathered in 2008, then he can hang the "Mission Accomplished" banner. But it nevertheless feels like gaining the GOP nomination is going to remain just past his fingertips. Had he scored an outright win in Iowa, it would feel different. As it stands, Paul needs to either start grabbing some surprise wins, or at the very least, manage his caucus strategy to perfection. Even if he does this, it still may leave him short of the mark.
We don't doubt that Paul is trying to win. This week, he gamely demanded that all of the other also-rans quit the race and leave him to fight Mitt on his own. (A demand that was enthusiastically ignored.) But if Paul can't win this thing, his strategy seems designed to leave him in a position to extract concessions in return for his delegates -- in the form of platform or procedural changes. Naturally, his popularity has left alive the notion that Paul might do something unconventional. Will he, for instance, mount a third-party or independent run for the White House? Read on: we think we've found the answer to that question.
RICK SANTORUM: We accept former Pennsylvania's Sen. Santorum's premise that there are three mini-primaries going on in the large race: an establishment primary, a libertarian primary and a "classic" conservative primary. Santorum might be able to claim the third position and battle Romney and Paul in a long three-way contest, but he needs some help -- either in the form of everyone else getting out of the race, or that secret social-conservative confab deciding to swing behind Santorum and quickly outfit him with money, endorsements, air cover and footsoldiers.
Santorum is on an upward swing in South Carolina, and just might have enough time to notch second place. It will, in all likelihood, not be the close second-finish he had in Iowa, but it could be sufficient to chase some of his rivals from the race, leaving their votes for him to claim. Santorum is also in desperate need of real campaign funding and infrastructure. As it stands, the further he goes into the calendar, the less the "Rick Santorum campaign" looks like the work of professional strategists who've staked out the game in each state, and the more it looks like "dudes with Facebook fan pages."
NEWT GINGRICH: We understand that many observers consider Gingrich to have the better shot at second place in South Carolina, and thus could be the person who ends up achieving the best case scenario we describe for Santorum. And at the moment, he's a lot closer to Mitt in the polls than the former Pennsylvania senator is. We just feel that Santorum is doing a lot with very little and expanding his possibilities, while Gingrich's campaign grows more threadbare, frantic and desperate.
Besides, Gingrich's decision to nuke Mitt Romney by disseminating an anti-Bain Capital mini-documentary was a big mistake. The 30-minute movie, bought and unleashed via Newt's super PAC, plays like the album Occupy Wall Street would produce for Adele if she ever broke up with capitalism. Gingrich's conservative colleagues freaked out at the sight of the damn thing, and condemned Gingrich for making the Democratic Party's argument against Romney for them. The whole episode caused Gingrich to suffer a physiological experience -- a moment of self-doubt -- that's so rarely felt by the former speaker that there's no telling whether he'll be able to recover.
JON HUNTSMAN: Going into the New Hampshire primary, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman was the candidate who was supposed to be able to maximize his (strangely earned) center-left appeal, turn out different voter coalitions, and hold down Romney's win to single digits. But when all the votes were counted, Huntsman was proven to be the worst blowout-preventer since BP destroyed the Gulf of Mexico. Nevertheless, Huntsman put on an almost-convincing display of not-at-all-forced jubilation, declaring third place to be a "ticket to ride"...to South Carolina, where voters do not like him.
Huntsman's path to the nomination basically involves riding his motorbike to some town named "Nomination."
RICK PERRY: Why is this guy even still running? His path to the nomination involves a time machine and a cache of firearms.
BUDDY ROEMER: Buddy is struggling right now because none of the elite media want to invite him to debates to decry the influence of corporate money on politics, and his insistence on taking donations no greater than $100 is keeping him from dropping the super PAC bombs that everyone else is launching. It's a pity that the campaign with the most dignity is faring the worst, but we can at least re-extract an important lesson about American politics: If you don't sell out, get the hell out.
We warned you that watching this stuff up close was going to make you deeply cynical. Didn't we? Okay, well, we're warning you now.
So it's on to South Carolina, Florida and beyond. Mitt Romney is hoping that his "win quickly" strategy is back on track. Rick Santorum is hoping that he can prove by contrast that he's the more appealing candidate. Ron Paul just wants CNN to stay out of his way. President Obama's fending off a new book, Rick Perry's in a tiff with Sean Hannity, Jon Huntsman may lose to a teevee comedian in the days ahead, and one candidate's endorsement from a psychic monkey did not pan out like he'd hoped. To find out who, please feel free to enter the Speculatron for Jan. 13, 2012.
For all the hype of the coming blood-fury that was heaped on Mitt Romney in the run-up to the New Hampshire primary, the truth was that he got into and out of the weekend's debates pretty much unscathed. The attacks that came were fairly tepid, and with Ron Paul as a target for similar attacks, Romney got to spend long periods of the debate relaxing and observing the melee going on around him.
Which didn't mean he got through to the New Hampshire primary without taking some heat. It was just that the best attacks on Romney came after an unforced error allowed the rest of the field to take advantage. The most notable example this week came when Romney told Matt Lauer, "I like being able to fire people who provide services to me." The first into the fray -- which included both Democratic opponents and rivals like Jon Huntsman, took that one statement and removed it from its context in order to take their shots. (Though, to be fair, the Romney campaign has specifically said that removing remarks from context is fair game in this election -- Romney did the same to President Obama in one of his ads, and his camp said that the tactic was entirely above board.)
That said, when you restore Romney's remark to its original context...
"I want people to be able to own insurance if they wish to, and to buy it for themselves and perhaps keep it for the rest of their life and to choose among different policies offered from companies across the nation...That means the insurance company will have an incentive to keep people healthy. It also means if you don't like what they do, you can fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. If someone doesn't give me the good service I need, I'm going to go get somebody else to provide that service to me."
...it's still daft as all hell. As Igor Volsky notes, Romney's desired repeal of the Affordable Care Act restores the conditions in the insurance market where insurers can shed their customers, not the other way around. And Ruth Marcus points out that the way the Affordable Care Act actually empowers customers is one of the things that was directly taken from Romney's own health care reform innovation. His line actually highlights the insufficiencies of his current health care vision, especially the fact that costs would go up for consumers under his direction.
But Brad Phillips warns that no matter how you litigate the context, Romney's stray remark about the enjoyment he takes from firing people, could be damaging in the longterm:
"Wait a minute," you might think, "that's taken totally out of context!"
That may be true, but it doesn't matter. Gaffes that reinforce an existing narrative about a candidate are almost always the most harmful ones, and Gov. Romney is already enduring increasing attacks from opponents and Democrats alike for being more of a job "cremator" than job creator during his tenure at Bain Capital.
And while Romney shed the perception that he was "slipping" in New Hampshire with a big win, that's precisely where the conversation turned. As Romney rolled into South Carolina, his past at Bain swung into the spotlight, paced by a blistering 30-minute mega-ad (chopped and screwed into bite size portions for South Carolina televisions) that was purchased by Newt Gingrich's super PAC. It depicted Romney as profit-sucking lamprey who took over companies, gulped up everything of value, and left unemployed workers and shuttered facilities trailing behind him.
But once again, Romney actually benefited in the short-term from the attack, because conservatives of all stripes were so aggrieved at the way Gingrich had adopted an argument out of an Occupy Wall Street working group and trained it at Mitt that they rose to his defense, in order to defend capitalism. This group even included Mike Huckabee -- the guy who originally said that Romney looked like "the guy who laid you off." (Oddly enough, the strongest dissenting voice -- dissenting in that she insisted that Romney back up his Bain record and his jobs claims, which also receivedsome scrutiny -- was Sarah Palin.)
If these attacks have damaged Romney's standing among conservatives in South Carolina and beyond, it has yet to register. Nevertheless, Gingrich really did the Democrats a solid by opening the Bain attack with his own money and putting his own stamp on it. And that won't be the only thing that Democrats will store away for the general -- there was also this exchange, again with Lauer:
LAUER: When you said that we already have a leader who divides us with the bitter politics of envy, I'm curious about the word 'envy.' Did you suggest that anyone who questions the policies and practices of Wall Street and financial institutions, anyone who has questions about the distribution of wealth and power in this country, is envious? Is it about jealousy, or fairness?
ROMNEY: You know, I think it's about envy. I think it's about class warfare. When you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on the 99 percent versus one percent -- and those people who have been most successful will be in the one percent -- you have opened up a whole new wave of approach in this country which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God. The American people, I believe in the final analysis, will reject it.
LAUER: Yeah but envy? Are there no fair questions about the distribution of wealth without it being seen as 'envy,' though?
ROMNEY: I think it's fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms and discussions about tax policy and the like. But the president has made it part of his campaign rally. Everywhere he goes we hear him talking about millionaires and billionaires and executives and Wall Street. It's a very envy-oriented, attack-oriented approach and I think it will fail.
That's not going to play well next to all the Bain victims depicted in Gingrich's ad, who do not envy Romney's wealth as much as they wish they could have simply been left to their comfortable, middle-class lives instead of the desperate straits into which they were plunged thanks to Bain's shenanigans.
Matt Yglesias takes it further:
This is the real issue here. There's a sense that a lot of us have that our public policy ought to be aiming to produce large gains for everyone. You often hear that for one reason or another the United States "can't afford" this or that. We "can't afford" to pay people Social Security benefits. We "can't afford" to build high-speed trains. We "can't afford" to give everyone early childhood education. But why can't we afford this stuff? Are we a poor country? No, we're not. We're one of the richest countries that's ever existed. Are we a poorer country than we used to be? No, we're not. But a very large share of the gains we've made over the past three decades have gone to a relatively small number of people. If the gains had been broadly shared, then the burden of paying for that basic infrastructure and public services would have to be very broadly shared. But the gains have been very concentrated, and so if we're going to afford that stuff, a large share of the revenue has to come from the people who've gotten the money.
That's not envy, that's math.
I just watched the Bain documentary featured below and being broadcast throughout South Carolina by Newt Gingrich's SuperPac in full. It's loaded with out-of-context quotes and heavily biased; it focuses on the specific human suffering of the necessary "creative destruction" of capitalism not its general benefits to the economy. It does so through the voices and stories of ordinary Americans. And, as an emotional bludgeon, it's devastating.
But what makes it so dangerous to Romney, it seems to me, is that the Bain Brahmin didn't just fire thousands of working class people in restructuring and in closing companies. He made a fucking unimaginable fortune doing it. That's the issue. Other Republicans can speak about the need for free markets in a sluggish economy. But with Romney, we have a singular example of someone who made a quarter of a billion dollars by firing the white middle and working class in droves in ways that do not seem designed to promote growth or efficiency, but merely to enrich Bain.
No matter what happens, however, Romney will be able to take satisfaction that this was the campaign that got everyone really excited about his penis.
For all the hype of the coming blood-fury that was heaped on Mitt
Romney in the run-up to the New Hampshire primary, the truth was
that he got into and out of the weekend's debates pretty much
unscathed.
The attacks that came were fairly tepid, and with Ron Paul as a
target for similar attacks, Romney got to spend long periods of the
debate relaxing and observing the melee going on around him.
Which didn't mean he got through to the New Hampshire primary
without taking some heat. It was just that the best attacks on
Romney came after an unforced error allowed the rest of the field
to take advantage. The most notable example this week came
when Romney told Matt Lauer, "I like being able to fire people
who provide services to me." The first into the fray -- which
included both
Democratic opponents and rivals
like Jon Huntsman, took that one statement and removed it from
its context in order to take their shots. (Though, to be fair, the
Romney campaign has specifically said that removing remarks from
context is fair game in this election -- Romney did the
same to President Obama in one of his ads, and his camp said
that the tactic was entirely above board.)
That said, when you restore Romney's remark to its original
context...
"I want people to be able to own insurance if they wish
to, and to buy it for themselves and perhaps keep it for the rest
of their life and to choose among different policies offered from
companies across the nation...That means the insurance company will
have an incentive to keep people healthy. It also means if you
don't like what they do, you can fire them. I like being able to
fire people who provide services to me. If someone doesn't give me
the good service I need, I'm going to go get somebody else to
provide that service to me."
With two primary contests in the books, we've arrived at the point where everyone has so much to say about so little and only a few more minutes before all of the major media organizations blow throug...
With two primary contests in the books, we've arrived at the point where everyone has so much to say about so little and only a few more minutes before all of the major media organizations blow throug...
HuffPostMedia
'Forget Rachel, Bill, Anderson, and Sean. The broadcaster who will most determine the 2012 elections is Jorge Ramos.' http://t.co/fzYggdDZ
I hope democrats are taking notes from gingrinch's attacks....that is how one is suppose to attack one's opponents' so-called strengths
In addition, Ironically it is not the vulture capitalism that is the most problematic ..... it is Newt's publicizing of the dog incident is potentially the most damaging.......
The dog story needs to be highlighted....people whether they are Dems, GOPers,
Read More... indies, black, white, yellow, green, blue, red, rich, poor, young or old love animals.
It is a simple story that everyone will understand and the cruelty is apparent
Everyone that I have spoken to is horrified over his treatment of the family pet
this story actually reveals a lot about Romney's character.....and it is quite disturbing
confuseddemocrat: I hope democrats are taking notes from gingrinch's attacks....that is
The worst part of Social Securty shows up when a women becomes a Widow. She gets a check for $255.00 and her income gets cut in half. There is a plan in Galvelston Texas and in about 30 Countries around the world.The plan is over 30yrs old aand working very well and is safer then SS.
rssllgtrby: The worst part of Social Securty shows up when a
Here's the deal with Paul: I don't think he will get the nomination, and I don't think he does either. Even if he did, I don't think he would win simply because Americans are becoming more and more afraid of the GOP due to their unyielding stance on social issues. Now, I honestly believe Paul is running more to garner support within his party, and with that support, gain influence. Only if the Libertarian ideas gain popularity over the Dogma that is the current form of American Republicanism will the GOP become something worth supporting once again, and I think Paul can help that.
TFProleteriat: Here's the deal with Paul: I don't think he will
Why would Americans vote for any of these crooks or clowns? Would you vote for them as your mayor and let them run your town? I think not! This whole display is nothing but a dog and pony circus without a ringmaster. Not one candidate would remain if they were scrutinized like a Supreme Court judge. Next time vote for a senator, governor or congress member that is sane and rational. One who can turn down a bribe or has the cujones to stare down
a reprisal or blackmail and do what is right. That is the candidate you want for president.
Circusclownhater: Why would Americans vote for any of these crooks or
I would love to see Fred Karger and Buddy Roemer be allowed to be in the debates. They would bring different points of view instead of the same old, "I'm the biggest war hawk, I'm the most anti-gay and anti-immigration". Fred Karger is also pro-marijuana legalization and pro-gay rights and anti-war. If there were any republican I would vote for, it would be him. He and Buddy Roemer have no shot at winning, but if their profiles were raised more, then more discussion could be had about issues such as foreign policy, drug policy and gay rights. Ron Paul's shouldn't be the only voice on those issues.
annekeb68: I would love to see Fred Karger and Buddy Roemer
I just hope conservatives can find it in their hearts and pocketbooks to fund all these jokers all the way through July. It's not like I'm just being greedy wanting more opportunities for Democrats to get great footage for anti-Republican campaign commercials. And I'm certainly not praying for this merely for the crass entertainment value!
It's just that the more money convervatives pump into the economy, the more jobs will FINALLY be created in spite of their concerted efforts to otherwise create more unemployment, and who cares if they're just temporary, part-time, anti-service positions with no benefits? Jobs R jobs--and there's a certain little 2010 GOP campaign platform still hanging out there like forgotten laundry!
So come on, you righties. Let's see that cash. We've all been waiting for years to figure WTF compassionate conservatism actually means, and this is your golden opportunity!
REMEMBER2050: I just hope conservatives can find it in their hearts
I challenge every democrat, republican, and independent that is an animal lover to donate a bag of pet food to a shelter or directly to someone in need in memory of "a certain dog that cannot be named".
CR46: I challenge every democrat, republican, and independent that is an
My wife and I just adopted a 6 year old Jack Russel from a kill shelter. Cookie is her name. That makes us 2 Jacks and 1 Fox Terrier. We have a farm. You need one with Jacks.
GEevendale: My wife and I just adopted a 6 year old
I challenge every petlover to donate a bag of pet food to a shelter or family in need in memory of Seamusromney. Let's make something good happen out of this.
dogsagainstromney
CR46: I challenge every petlover to donate a bag of pet
G-OOPS fighting tooth and nail to see who gets to lose to Barack Obama. Best Comedy Show of the season. Telestubbies, My Little Phonies, The Big Bong Theory, Fiends, How I Met Your Mugger, Furfly, Monday Night Foolsbrawl, Breaking Bad Wind, Farce Factor, Stupefied. . .
larmarch5: G-OOPS fighting tooth and nail to see who gets to
I challenge every pet lover on this thread to donate( if able) a bag of pet food to a local shelter, food bank that also distributes pet food, or directly to someone in need. Let's do this in memory of Seamus Romney.
CR46: I challenge every pet lover on this thread to donate(
I challenge everyone that is disgusted by Mitt Romney's treatment of his dog to donate a bag of dog or cat food to a local shelter, food shelf that distributes pet food, or directly to a pet owner you know in need of some help. Let's do this in memory of Seamus and every other animal that has been abused by a poor owner.
CR46: I challenge everyone that is disgusted by Mitt Romney's treatment
Now if even one of them knew the difference between a call for justice and envy or If even one of them cared about the difference between legal and ethical we'd have something to talk about.
freecitizen1946: Now if even one of them knew the difference between
Our gold plated, jewel encrusted fleets never sail to secure the interests of working class America.The only freedom our military ever defends is the freedom of folks like Exxon to exploit the world's resources with impunity.
freecitizen1946: Our gold plated, jewel encrusted fleets never sail to secure
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First Posted: 01/13/12 06:10 PM ET Updated: 01/13/12 06:21 PM ET