The Commentariat -- January 10, 2012
My column in today New York Times eXaminer is on David Brooks' feigned surprise that liberals are MIA. I explain why that is and how Brooks himself fits into the picture. I think the "history lesson" is pretty interesting. The NYTX front page is here. You can donate to the online journal here.
Comments are open on today's Commentariat. Thanks to those of you who commented yesterday in this new format. It was such a pleasure reading comments in which people fundamentally disagreed, but did so in a way that was both substantive and respectful. Special thanks to Fred Drumlevitch for setting the tone. It is in this framework that we're all able to learn something and perhaps adjust our views. I know I did.
Susie Madrak of Crooks & Liars: why candidates who appeal to the center lose elections.
Nicholas Confessore & Eric Lipton of the New York Times: A $5 million check from billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson to a super-PAC that supports Newt Gingrich "underscores how last year’s landmark Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance has made it possible for a wealthy individual to influence an election. Mr. Adelson’s contribution to the super PAC is 1,000 times the $5,000 he could legally give directly to Mr. Gingrich’s campaign this year." ...
... Washington Post Editorial Board: "The rationale for limits on campaign contributions is that huge contributions such as this run the risk of corruption or the appearance of corruption. The Supreme Court’s shaky rationale in Citizens United was that independent expenditures do not pose such a risk. Mr. Adelson’s check underscores the foolishness of that assessment." The editors also point out that Romney's casual dismissal of a debate question about a super-PAC comprised of his friends and former staffers "offered about as succinct an illustration as we’ve seen of the flimsiness of the fiction that separates these candidate-specific super PACs from the candidates and of the danger that this development poses to a campaign finance system premised on limited contributions and full disclosure."
Won't You Go Home, Bill Daley? Oh, good. You Will. Greg Sargent: "Bill Daley’s departure is not exactly heartbreaking news for Hill Democrats and liberals, because Daley is directly associated with many of the failings liberal Dems saw in the White House before Obama’s turn towards a more aggressive populism. Daley was brought in to repair relations with the business community.... Daley’s olive branch went unrewarded, confirming liberal suspicions about the folly of hoping for improved relations. Liberals also saw Daley as representative of a kind of hidebound Beltway conventional wisdom that Obama’s election was supposed to be a reaction against." ...
... Ben Geman of The Hill: "Don’t look for many environmentalists to mourn the resignation of White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley, who was scorned by some activists for presiding over the controversial decision last year to scuttle tougher Environmental Protection Agency smog rules. Critics on the left say Daley, who will be replaced by Office of Management and Budget chief Jack Lew, was too close to business interests." ...
... Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post on the Bill Daley Lesson: “'What he learned was that business refused to make nice regardless of what he did,' said one former White House aide of Daley. 'Wall Street was just never going to be there.'” ...
... Glenn Greenwald on Jack Lew's profitable days working at a CitiGroup hedge fund. Oh, and Lew likes working with Republicans, and they like him. And he told Sen. Bernie Sanders during (his confirmation?) hearing that he didn't believe deregulation led to the financial crisis. (And it don't rain in Indianapolis in the summertime.) ...
... On the other hand, Norm Scheiber of The New Republic, who wrote a book on the subject, writes that liberals shouldn't get too worked up over Lew's tenure at Citi: "Lew was basically the chief administrator at Citi Alternative Investments, which runs the company’s portfolio of hedge funds and private-equity funds. That is, he was the guy who kept watch over the books and the paperwork, not a guy going out and placing multimillion-dollar bets or making hundred-million dollar deals."
Right Wing World
This Just In. M. J. Lee of Politico: "This is not a joke, but it’s kind of funny: Stephen Colbert would edge out Jon Huntsman in the South Carolina Republican primary. That’s according to a Public Policy Polling poll out Tuesday that found the late-night comic picking up 5 percent of the vote, compared with Huntsman’s 4 percent." CW: I hope some of you read the article on Colbert, which is still linked under Infotainment. The PPP results are exactly on point.
I like being able to fire people. -- Mitt Romney ...
... Garrett Haake & Carrie Dann of NBC News: "Mitt Romney held a rare press avail this afternoon to say the remark had been taken out of context." CW: It had been. But let's remember that Romney's team boasted about taking a remark by then-Senator Obama, editing out the first half of the sentence to completely change its meaning, then using the edited half-sentence in an ad. After having been excoriated in the press for the distortion, the candidate himself went right ahead and again distorted another remark President Obama made during a "60 Minute" interview. Romney has zero credibility. So far, I haven't heard Democrats jumping on Romney for his boneheaded "I like firing people" remark, much less using it in an ad to show that, you know, Romney thinks firing people is fun! ...
... "Up in the Air" with Mitt. Jim Fallows of The Atlantic: "... people with any experience on either side of a firing know that, necessary as it might be, it is hard. Or it should be. It's wrenching, it's humiliating, it disrupts families, it creates shame and anger alike -- notwithstanding the fact that often it absolutely has to happen. Anyone not troubled by the process -- well, there is something wrong with that person.... We might value him or her as a takeover specialist or at a private equity firm. But as someone we trust, as a leader? No -- not any more than you can trust a military leader who is not deeply troubled when his troops are killed." Thanks to commenter Trish R. for the link.
... Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "An assault on Mitt Romney’s business career intensified Monday after the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination made an off-the-cuff comment that his opponents say shows he was a corporate predator who sought profits at the expense of workers." See also the New York Times story on New Hampshire primary voting in today's Ledes for more on Romney's self-inflicted wounds.
... Dana Milbank: "Mitt Romney is fast becoming the Scrooge McDuck of the 2012 presidential race. ...
... Matt Bai of the New York Times on "Why the Bain Attacks Could Stick to Romney: First, it takes Mr. Romney’s central rationale as a candidate and turns it into a bludgeoning tool.... Second, it casts doubt on Mr. Romney’s aura of electability.... And third, the Bain line of attack, more than anything else brandished against Mr. Romney to this point, might bring to the surface an instinctive concern that he’s emotively challenged." ...
... Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic: the real scandal of Romney's remark is what he really meant -- he was arguring for repeal of the Affordable Care Act, suggesting that healthcare coverage is best left to a a "free market economy" where employers would "fire" health insurance carriers they didn't like. (They can do that under the ACA, BTW.) But what Romney poses is a healthcare insurance system that works well for employees only if they never get sick. ...
... Derek Thompson of The Atlantic agrees with Cohn. ...
... Igor Volsky of Think Progress: And empirical evidence shows that Romney's "free-market" healthcare proposal isn't even economically-sound. It just doesn't work at any level. He's also arguing that people should pay more for their health care. What a plan! ...
... CW: AND I see Joan Walsh of Salon elaborates on the parenthetical point I made above: "Romney’s not being at all fair in the way he’s defended himself. He told reporters he was only talking about defending consumers from the supposed tyranny of the Affordable Care Act – and he lied about what it does. 'I don’t want to live in a world where we have Obamacare telling us which insurance we have to have, which doctor we can have, which hospital we go to,' Romney said at a press conference Monday. 'I believe in the setting as I described this morning where people are able to choose their own doctor, choose their own insurance company. If they don’t like their insurance company or their provider, they can get rid of it.'” Walsh of course also bolsters my point that Romney has no credibility. ...
... Here's Another Big Fat Romney Lie. Greg Sargent: "Mitt Romney declared over the weekend that there were times when he, too, worried about getting a 'pink slip.' Romney’s GOP rivals immediately pounced, with Rick Perry claiming: 'I have no doubt that Mitt Romney was worried about pink slips, whether he was going to have enough of them to hand out.'" The truth is that young Willard's pink slip -- should he ever get one -- would be dipped in gold. His initial employment contract at Bain specified that if things didn't work out, he would get back his previous job & his old salary -- plus raises -- accompanied by a cover story that would insulate him from any implication he had been fired. CW: if you've ever lost a job, I'm just guessing these were not the terms etched into your pink slip.
... ** Occupy Wall Street Killed Gordon Gekko. Andrew Leonard of Salon: "What the Wall Street Journal euphemistically calls 'the rougher side of American capitalism,' in its Monday article examining the legacy of Bain Capital, is suddenly no longer in fashion. And there is no better proof of this than the spectacle of one of the great culture warriors of our time, Newt Gingrich, defecting to the other side.... In the 32 years since Ronald Reagan was elected president, there has never been more widely expressed antagonism and anger toward the practitioners of corporate-raider, leveraged-buyout, excessively compensated CEO, shareholder-value capitalism than there is now. And that’s Mitt Romney. That is who he is. He can flip-flop about everything else, but there’s no way to wriggle out of his essential nature. He’s the 1 percent." ...
... Ken Vogel of Politico: "Before Newt Gingrich’s super PAC paid $40,000 for the stinging anti-Mitt Romney documentary that’s roiling the GOP presidential campaign, Jon Huntsman’s allies expressed interest in it.... The board [of a pro-Huntsman PAC] 'decided not to move forward with it' because 'we simply saw it too late to seriously consider,' [Fred] Davis [who advises the PAC] told Politico. Still, he predicted the film’s portrayal of Romney as a cold-hearted 'corporate raider' could be used to devastating effect.... 'Think "Swift Boats,’” he said of the movie, calling the introduction 'very well made and powerful stuff' that seemed 'to be accurate portrayals of various individuals and situations.'” Gingrich has not released the full video, but he does have a trailer up on his Website (The trailer is in yesterday's Commentariat.) ...
... New York Times Editors: Mitt "Romney claims his background as a businessman provides him with an understanding of the economy and the ability to fix it. His opponents — particularly Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul and Rick Perry — say their political experience provides the same advantage. In truth, none have offered anything but tired or extremist economic prescriptions.... Mr. Romney ... was ... a buyer of flailing companies who squeezed out the inefficiencies (often known as employees) and then sold or merged them for a hefty profit. More than a fifth of them later went bankrupt.... This kind of leveraged capitalism ... is one of the reasons for the growth in the income gap.... For voters worried about the economy, neither a past record of buyouts nor lobbying should inspire any confidence."
... Republican strategist Matthew Dowd in an ABC News blogpost: Mitt Romney's Bain Capital years may yet prove to be a liability in Republican primaries. "While many still say the Republican party’s base is that of Wall Street and corporate America and big business, the real base of the Republican Party has become much more about working class (especially white males) in rural and small town areas of the country."
... AND here is Glenn Kessler's rating of Romney's job-creation claims. Kessler writes, "... if he is to continue to make claims about job creation, the Romney campaign needs to provide a real accounting of how many jobs were gained or lost through Bain Capital investments while the firm managed these companies — and while Romney was chief executive. Any jobs counted after either of those data points simply do not pass the laugh test."
Dan Primack of CNN Money: "Newt Gingrich has spent the past several days assailing Mitt Romney's business background, suggesting that the former private equity executive 'looted' companies and 'left people unemployed.' But here's an interesting note Gingrich doesn't mention: Upon leaving Congress in 1999, the former Speaker joined private equity firm Forstmann Little & Co. as a member of its advisory board."
News Ledes
President Obama spoke to staff at the EPA:
New York Times: " swept to victory in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, turning back a ferocious assault from his Republican rivals who are working to slow his march to the Republican presidential nomination." The Washington Post story is here. The Post has county-by-county results here. ...
... New York Times: "As New Hampshire voters began casting ballots in the nation’s first primary, [Mitt] Romney found himself on the unfamiliar terrain of defending his business pedigree against fellow Republicans as his challengers tried to tap into a populist sentiment. He played into the criticism with a handful of missteps, with rivals jumping on him for having suggested that he, too, has feared getting 'a pink slip.'” ...
... AP: "Voters in the tiny New Hampshire village [of Dixville Notch] famed for casting the first ballots in the nation's first presidential primary found themselves in a tie Tuesday between Republicans Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman. Nine ballots were cast in New Hampshire's Dixville Notch just after midnight. Romney and Huntsman received two votes each. Coming in second with one vote apiece were Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul. For the Democrats, President Barack Obama received three votes."
New York Times: "In his first public address in months, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria on Tuesday lashed out at the Arab League for isolating Syria, taunted rebels as traitors and vowed to subdue what he cast as a foreign-backed plot against his country."
AP: New Jersey "Assembly Republican leader Alex DeCroce ... collapsed and died around 11 p.m. Monday in a men's room at the Statehouse.... The death threw into turmoil the Legislature's reorganization plans for Tuesday and caused Gov. Chris Christie to delay his annual state-of-the-state address. The Assembly and Senate greatly scaled back swearing-in ceremonies for new members. Christie planned to deliver remarks about DeCroce on the floor of the Assembly in lieu of his scheduled address." The New Jersey Star-Ledger story is here.
New York Times: a U.S. Coast Guard ice-breaker and a Russian tanker try to get emergency fuel to Nome, Alaska. It is not going well. And the question arises: how could Nome run out of fuel?
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