Month: January 2012

That's how Marin Cogan sees Gingrich's campaign:

[T]he sense that this book tour (the aircraft carrier event [the night before his victory on Saturday] was also a book signing) had spun out of control, that he would go home if he didn't truly believe he was the only candidate that could defeat Barack Obama, and was therefore obligated to do this, was pervasive. 

Friedersdorf likewise looks at Gingrich's place in the media ecosystem:

Of course a base that gets much of its information from Fox News has a higher-than-justified opinion of Gingrich, a contributor to the cable-news network until he launched his presidential bid. Of course folks who get much of their information from talk radio are inclined to assess the conservatism of public figures based on fiery rhetoric more than the substance of their record: haven't they been trained to do so by charismatic hosts who daily exalt in zinging liberals and demonizing leftists as if it is the most important metric of a trustworthy ally? 

(Photo: Republican presidential hopeful and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and his wife Callista sign books after speaking at a Hilton Hotel on November 25, 2011 in Naples, Florida. Gingrich, who has rose in recent polls following strong debate performances, had been written off earlier this year. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images.)

Ramesh Ponnuru's understated jab at them:

Gingrich has more original ideas than most of us. But for a president, what’s much more important is the ability to tell the good ones from the bad — an ability called judgment.

Ezra Klein makes the same point:

When Gingrich was speaker of the House, Bob Dole was the Senate majority leader. And so Dole spent a lot of time listening to the speaker’s proposals. “Gingrich’s staff has these five file cabinets, four big ones and this little tiny one,” he told The New York Times. “Number one is ‘Newt’s ideas.’ Number two, ‘Newt’s ideas.’ Number three, number four, ‘Newt’s ideas.’ The little one is ‘Newt’s Good Ideas.’”

Follow all the mildly amazing ideas here.

Yes, Disney has now surrendered to facial hair. But only less than a quarter of an inch. That's not a beard. It's a gesture. (But since a whim on New Years Eve when I buzzed most of mine off, I'm no longer one to talk.)

In a piece worth reading in full, Jonathan Last raises some good questions. First, Romney's work on the speaker's circuit is actually quite remarkable. In 2010, Romney accepted $35,771 from a non-profit tutoring and mentoring organization in Florida. He was also paid $29,750 to give a speech via satellite to a "Get Motivated Seminar" in Utah. Last: 

He does seem to have shown up to speak for Clark Consulting. Clark is a boutique operation: They consult for large financial institutions who are evaluating their business-owned life insurance programs. For this engagement, Romney was paid $66,000. The oddness of this booking was mirrored in two other speeches he gave. One was to Goldentree Asset Management, a New York hedge fund (they paid $68,000); the other was Barclay’s Wealth, an American division of Barclay’s Bank which does financial planning for high net-worth individuals and institutions (they paid $42,500). It’s not immediately obvious what a man actively campaigning for the presidency would have to say to any of these groups. Though it is easy to see why they would want to get in a room with him. None of it is improper, of course. Just unusual for a man worth $250 million who is presumably not in need of a spare $60,000.

He also scrutinizes Romney's advertised record as a job creator. For instance, do Staples' 89,000 employees really have Romney to thank? According to Last, who tells the impressive story of Staples founders Tom Stemberg and Leo Kahn, Bain was "neither the first investor in Staples, nor the largest":

[U]ltimately, it seems a little strange to credit Romney with being much more than a smart early investor. That’s not nothing. Investment and capital are a very large part of entrepreneurial success—which is why investors reap large rewards when a business pans out. But still. A group of investors ponied up the $2.7 million needed to buy a group of restaurants from Richard and Maurice McDonald. Banker Ken Langone led a group of 40 investors to raise $2 million to start the Home Depot. And Mike Markkula gave Apple Computers the $250,000 it needed when it incorporated in 1977. We don’t credit the jobs created by McDonald’s, Home Depot, and Apple to the money men. We credit them to Ray Kroc, Bernard Marcus, Arthur Blank, Steve Jobs, and Steve Wozniak. Because those men had the ideas, ran the operations, and assumed most of the risk. It’s unclear why we should regard Romney’s role with Staples any differently.

Ari Kohen reflects:

When I read about Joe Paterno’s passing this weekend — on two separate occasions, strangely — I found it impossible to separate the coaching legend of so many decades from the sexual abuse scandal of recent memory. For good or ill, one event or choice can fundamentally alter public perception of a person’s life and legacy.

Indeed, this is a central element of the book project on classical heroism that I just finished. The image of ourselves that we want to present to the world isn’t necessarily the one that will actually be presented or accepted, especially if there is some sort of anomalous behavior that doesn’t fit with that image. At bottom, there are only so many decisions we can make in a short lifetime, which is why each decision we make matters a great deal.

(Photo: Students and those in the community embrace one another as they hold a candlelight vigil in remembrance of Joe Paterno, the former Penn State football coach who died earlier in the morning, on Old Main Lawn on the campus of Penn State on January 22, 2012 in State College, Pennsylvania. Paterno, who was 85, died due to complications from lung cancer. By Patrick Smith/Getty Images.)

It now seems clear that the legislature in Washington state has enough votes in both houses to pass a bill for marriage equality. That would make it the seventh state in the union with such a law, and one that did it the New York way – by a long, bruising, helpful democratic process in the legislature.

Whether you examine the national polls or simply look at the changing landscape, it is clear that marriage for gays and lesbians is here to stay. The momentum and the arguments are on our side. Which is why the GOP's ferocious opposition to any rights for gay couples – and its bid to write such a horrifyingly targeted provision into the federal constitution – is so grotesquely misguided. The British Tories realized in their wilderness that two issues would wake people up to their evolution. The first was inclusion of gays – and a free vote is set in Parliament soon, supported by the prime minister, to bring full marriage rights to British citizens. The second was climate change. At some point, the American right will have to do the same (Newt, of course, already has on the climate, and Romney once pledged to be more pro-gay than Ted Kennedy).

The future is understood by Chris Christie who just nominated an openly gay African-American, married for thirty years, to the state supreme court. Christie still opposes marriage rights for gays, but has left the door open if the legislature moves forward, as it wants to do. But when you are treating a potential member of the state supreme court as a second-class citizen, in the end, the position becomes untenable.

A couple days ago, Obama previewed his State of The Union speech, which is scheduled for tonight:

Michael Cohen fits Obama's rhetoric on inequality to a long-term strategy:

[A very] important question is whether the sudden willingness of Democrats to tackle the issue of income inequality has the potential to live on far past the next election. For decades, Republicans have successfully portrayed the bogeyman of big government as the enemy of America's middle class. The emerging focus on America's glaring economic disparity – and its direct and deleterious impact on the middle class – suggests that Democrats are willing to use their own bogeyman of Wall Street greed in response.

Indeed, it's quite likely that the election will be a struggle between these two conflicting views. If Democrats are successful in such an endeavour, it has the potential to make 2012 more than just another election, but one that could shift the very narrative of American politics.

Bill Galston wants the president to talk more about opportunity than inequality:

The plight of hard-working, hard-pressed Americans—those struggling to remain in the middle class and those struggling get there—must be front and center. And the president must address it in the right way. A December 16 Gallup survey found that while 82 percent of Americans believe that it’s extremely or very important to expand the economy and 70 percent believe that it’s extremely or very important to increase equality of opportunity for people to get ahead, only 46 percent believe that about reducing the gap between the rich and the poor. While 72 percent of Democrats want government to emphasize measures to reduce inequality, only 43 percent of independents agree. And 52 percent of Americans say that “the fact that some people in the United States are rich and others are poor” is acceptable, actually up from 45 percent in 1998. 

Scott Galupo wonders:

A sizable chunk of the electorate—maybe the decisive chuck—simply will not believe that the tide that lifted Bain, lifted them—or will ever lift them again. This bloc of voters is going to hear Obama’s critique and nod in agreement. And there’s very little that Romney will be able to say in his own defense that will change their mind.

In a way, Romney’s dilemma is the unhappy result of about 50 years’ worth of capitalism-as-populism rhetoric catching up with the conservative movement.

Dreher asks why capital gains taxes are so low:

What, exactly, is conservative about a tax system stacked so that the ultrarich make massive profits from it, while working men and women pay a much higher rate on their income? Is the essence of conservatism protecting the privileges of the few at the expense of the many? If so, we lose. We are not egalitarians, and justice doesn’t require economic leveling. But soaking the rich isn’t what we’re talking about here; we’re talking about making them pay the same rate of tax as most ordinary people. You’re not supposed to talk about this on the Right, but why not? Why is this a question only liberals and Democrats are allowed to ask?

How Paul Krugman frames the debate:

the point here is not that Romney did something wrong by paying the low rates current tax law lavishes on people like him. It is, instead, that in an election campaign that will be in part about issues of inequality, the likely GOP candidate is a living, breathing, coupon-clipping example of how favorable our system is to the very rich; and he also happens to be advocating policies that would greatly benefit people like him, while hurting the poor and the middle class.

Ed Morrissey counters:

[Obama] has talked at times of raising the cap-gains rate from 15% to 20%, but that will still put cap-gains at “a lower rate than average Americans who are struggling to get by.” Obama’s so-called “millionaire’s tax” surcharge wouldn’t have applied to Romney either, because that was a surcharge on income, not capital gains.  If Obama wanted to have that debate with Romney, he’d shortly be exposed as either a hypocrite or an idiot.

Zack Ford points out that Romney "gives back more to the Mormons than he pays to the federal government":

Since 2010, the Romneys have given $7 million to charity, but over $4 million of that went directly to the Mormon Church, while they paid only $3 million to the IRS last year.

Ann Althouse defends Romney's donations to his church:

So he gave more money to his church than to the federal government. Is "gave" the right verb for both of those payments? Perhaps it's not the right verb for either. Tithing is compulsory in the church, is it not? In both cases, he's relinquishing was is due under a requirement.

Glenn Reynolds tries to change the subject:

Compare Romney to Bill Clinton. Clinton made his money by cashing in on his office. Romney made his money before running. Who’s more likely to be honest?

Reid Wilson suspects that Romney's overseas accounts will draw fire:

Romney's tax forms show he had a bank account in Switzerland, which he closed in 2010, and accounts in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. All three have reputations as offshore havens where the extremely wealthy keep their cash, sometimes to avoid paying taxes (Romney actually did pay taxes on those accounts, but that minor detail may be left out of any attack ads).

Richard W. Rahn claims that the Caymen Islands attracts funds because of its regulatory environment, not for tax reasons:

Cayman has a sophisticated and cheaper-to-comply-with regulatory structure than the U.S for hedge funds. Cayman laws are better suited to hedge-fund oversight than U.S. retail-oriented regulation.” As a result, Cayman registers a very large percentage of the world’s hedge funds. Under the Cayman regulatory system, Ponzi scams like Bernard L. Madoff’s and the commingling of clients’ money with the firm’s money, as in Jon Corzine’s company, would be very difficult, if not impossible. Arguably, the Cayman regulatory system gives far better investor protection than the Securities and Exchange Commission or Commodity Futures Trading Commission at a fraction of the cost and bureaucracy.

Alex Seitz-Wald rounds ups facts about Romney's tax returns. Among them:

Romney makes more in a day than the average American makes in a year, and becomes a 1 percenter every week: As Bloomberg News notes, “In 2008, according to the IRS, the median adjusted gross income was $33,048, whichRomney made in less than a day. Reaching the top 1 percent of taxpayers required $380,354 in adjusted gross income, about Romney’s earnings in a week.”

John Hood provides spin for the Romney campaign:

A competent campaign, and candidate, would explain that Romney’s real federal tax rate on his investment income was more than 40 percent (being conservative, after deductions and such), since the revenue stream was subject to both a personal tax rate and the corporate tax rate. A competent campaign would then point out that state taxes would bring the effective income tax rate on Romney’s investment income to 50 percent or higher. Every time a reporter or opposing candidate tried to say Romney’s tax rate was 15 percent, a competent campaign would call them out for misleading the American people.

Josh Marshall says Romney's initial refusal to release his returns has made them a much bigger story:

For a man running for president in 2012 it’s damaging stuff. But now everything in these documents comes with a preface that reads “We really wanted to keep this secret. But that didn’t work out.”

And Buzzfeed Politics thinks the tax returns are helping Gingrich run out the clock:

The real problem for Romney is simply time. He needs to turn the momentum in Florida by retaking control of the conversation, and by focusing — this, at least, is the plan — on Newt Gingrich's flaws. And with just a week before the primary, he's running out of time.