There is a certain shrill, nervous, and stammering chatter coming from the republican mainstream the last few days. It has to do with the attacks on Mitt Romney's time as head honcho over at Bain Capital. Things get bad enough for these guys when democrats play the "profits at the expense of the working man" card, but when your own people start to do it the situation becomes down right unacceptable. You can't very well accuse the other party of waging "class warfare" when candidates from within the GOP are doing exactly the same thing.
Newt Gingrich has taken off the gloves and opened a Pandora's box of problems for not just the front runner, but the party itself. To call Romney a flip flopper, and conservative of convenience is one thing, but to call him what amounts to a profiteering monster feeding off the bones of the average Joe work force is someting else altogether. It is rather like calling everone else in the bank robbery gang, well, bank robbers. It rats out of the entire crew.
"And so Mr. Romney, do you still beat your wife?"
Indeed. Ronald Reagan is spinning wildly in his grave as I type. The faithful are coming to Romney's defense in droves. Rush Limbaugh has crawled out of the attic, so has Rudy Giuliani. Even Jon Huntsman, who probably knows the most he can gain in this election cycle is some sort of cabinet job if Romney wins, is on his side for this one. He is quoted as saying, "If you have creative destruction in capitalism, which has always been a part of capitalism, it becomes disengenuous to take on Bain Capital." In other words you can't make a profitable omlet without breaking some eggs. Lay offs, ruined careers and disrupted lives are simply part of the cost of our great and glorious business system. You know, the one we represent.
Don't bite the hand that feeds you. Or the one that holds your leash.
Of course Romney brought this all out in the open in the first place. He chose to tout his experience as a venture capitalist rather his health care program in Massachusetts, or some of those other liberalesque policies he endorsed before he had his eye on the big white house in Washington D.C. Once he began the great shift to the right his governership in the Bay State became a liability. He was, no doubt, prepared for Barak Obama to make charges such as these. He could shrug them off as simply more liberal whining. It never, in his worst nightmare, occured to him that the godfather of the conservative revolution, the author of the contract with America would smack him in the face with them.
Now we know why this crowd fired Gingrich as the speaker of the house years ago. The term loose cannon is an understatement of epic proportions.
At this point the entire republican establishment is having to try to explain capitalism in bottom line economic terms, while these are heart and soul emotional issues to the vast majority of the American voting public. Lets see, you layed me off, cost me my house and my life savings so that you could buy a new yacht? No, that isn't the sort of question you can answer to the satisfaction of anyone who has had the plug pulled on his or her career.
South Carolina republican senator Jim DeMint summed up the Newt problem succinctly. "We need to understand the principles of our party," he said.
Well of course some of us all ready do, senator, that is why there are democrats.
This is going to be a long and dirty campaign. One thing you can count on is that coming soon to a TV in your house will be Barak Obama's political attack ads, starring, none other Newt Gingrich.
If anyone thinks any differently they are fooling themselves.
1-12-12
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