Newt can’t say it but everyone else should be saying it. Romney is not a Reagan Republican, he is a Bush Republican. Romney is a progressive, he like all progressives believe that Govt (if run by the right people aka himself) will bring a better society. His tell is when he talks about Regulations. He talks about “smart regulations” like all progressives do. Romney says that the free market needs regulations, which show how good a Keynesian he really is just like Bush.

Govt doesn’t create jobs. It can only give the right environment so that markets can create jobs. I’ve heard Newt talk about that, I’ve never heard Romney say anything like that. Romneynomics = Bushonomics = Obamanomics = Keynesian clap trap that caused this whole mess…the idea that our betters are the ones that should make the decisions. Newt at least is taking the good parts of Paul (Fed, economics (Reagan was an Austrian)) and leaving the bad parts of Paul. Romney would never touch the Fed.

I’m posting this on my Xoom so Ill add some links and videos to add some evidence for me claims later.

“By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon. And it will be American”

The latest attack on Newt by the conservative media (to be fair to Rubin, she is and has been firmly on the Romney train for a while now) is on Newt’s recent talk about building a space colony on the Moon.

Newt Gingrich is plagued not simply by the blistering rhetoric, the Washington insider-ness, the messy personal life and the ethics problems. He sounds, well, sort of daft these days. His latest brainstorm is for a moon colony by the end of his second term. The bonus here is that if we get 13,000 people (if you ask where that number comes from, it’s akin to asking how the Star Trek transporters work) it can be a new state! (New Gingrich? New Callista?)

They use this to push the meme that Newt is too “grandiose” for the party and for the country. (A Google search for “newt” and “grandiose” produces About 2,220,000 results (0.24 seconds)) I think that is a lame attack. Every person running for President thinks in grandiose terms. Does “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal” ring a bell? Didn’t Reagan think “grandiose” thoughts when talking about bringing down the Soviet Union? What about JFK talking about the initial space program? Wasn’t Lincoln just a little “grandiose” when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation?

I’m not saying that Newt is any of those men. It’s common for the conservative media (Commentary is still marginally conservative) to attack Newt saying that he is comparing himself with those other great men of history. I think what Newt is saying, is that if you can’t achieve anything if you don’t have the vision to do something great. This can be for good or ill. Going to the Moon was a historical achievement, which required a lot of vision. Defeating the Soviet Union was a historic achievement, which required grandiose vision. Of course not all things turned out so well. Obama had vision and he shoved Obamacare down our throats. FDR had vision and we are still left to fix the messes they both made.

When it comes to the Moon and Space exploration, I don’t think we are going to have buyers remorse like we did with Obamacare. Setting up a Moon colony will require vision, but it will also require Science. It will require sceince and technology that we don’t have right now. How and what kind of structures will be build? How will be get food, water, air? These questions are essential to any manned mission to Mars. The question is not if we will go to the Moon but when. Gingrich has merely given a promise that he will push for it.

The other common attack is how will Newt pay for it. They erroneously assume (like all good Liberal Big Government types) that the only way to go to the Moon is by more Government spending. Let’s look at what Newt said in the last Florida debate.

Gingrich was then asked whether he, as president, would put more federal money toward the goal of sending astronauts to Mars as soon as possible. The former Speaker of the House said he would use federal money to greater effect — instituting, for example, a series of prizes to encourage space exploration.

“Most of the great breakthroughs in aviation in the ’20s and ’30s were the result of prizes. Lindbergh flew to Paris for a $25,000 prize,” Gingrich said. “I would like to see vastly more of the money spent encouraging the private sector into very aggressive experimentation.”

Some of those prizes, he added, might reward getting humans back to the moon, sending them to Mars, building space stations and developing the commercial spaceflight industry.

“There are a whole series of things you can do that could be dynamic that are more than just better government bureaucracy,” Gingrich said. “They’re fundamentally leapfrogging into a world where you’re incentivizing people who are visionaries, and people in the private sector to invest very large amounts of money in finding very romantic and exciting futures.”

Gingrich also implied he would trim NASA’s budget, which currently represents roughly 0.5 percent of the federal budget.

“I’d like to see a leaner NASA,” he said. “I don’t think building a bigger bureaucracy and having a greater number of people sit in rooms and talk gets you there.”

The last part is key. No where does Newt say you have to dramatically increase spending. How do you give out prizes, while trimming the budget? By getting rid of a bloated bureaucracy that’s how. That’s a point Newt has made over and over again. Any person saying Newt will increase Government is lying, either a Liberal who only thinks in Big Government or a Romney supporter that only thinks in Romney talking points (which are known to be false, misleading or outright lies).

Going to the Moon could be the incentive to get kids interested in science and engineering again. I know growing up, I loved (still do) movies about space. It’s what got me into science initially. I think it’s what drove a generation into the sciences. We need more scientists and engineers, not just in this country but the world. We need them more than we need sociologists or psychologists.

Shooting for the Moon is part of the American culture. It’s part of our national character. Why not make sure it’s a part of our children’s generational character. I can’t say it any better than this guy:

First, this exchange from CNBC’s Kudlow Report last night:

Romney: Again, let’s look at the numbers. Let’s see what kind of tax there is. If you’re talking about refinancing trillions of dollars of debt and the government is now going to be taking over responsibility for those mortgages, that would be a real problem. But let’s look at the details. Clearly, if there is a way of providing a break to homeowners to get lower interest rates, that is something which has always been part of the refinance story. If it can be done in a way that doesn’t add additional government obligation, that’s one thing. If instead it adds trillions of dollars in new debt to the federal balance sheet, that’s a very different thing. What about the investors who own the mortgage-backed securities who have to be repriced lower? They’re going to take a bath, pension funds are going the take a bath. In the speech, he put in one or two sentences about it. Let’s see what it shows. You have apparently more information about it than I do. I want to see what the plan shows, but clearly, you can’t go in and say we’re going to wipe out all the people who invested in mortgages and mortgage-backed securities. A lot of those are banks. Banks in some cases are in trouble already. You don’t want them to have to find themselves in even more distress.

Now, Romney could have said something like, “The way to boost housing is to boost the economy and speed up the foreclosure process so the market can clear.” But he didn’t say that. He said this: “Clearly, if there is a way of providing a break to homeowners to get lower interest rates, that is something which has always been part of the refinance story. If it can be done in a way that doesn’t add additional government obligation, that’s one thing.”

As James notes, Romney doesn’t criticisze the idea of a housing refinance plan at all, just the way Obama does it. Here’s Romney’s plan.

a) Every homeowner with a GSE mortgage can refinance his or her mortgage with a new mortgage at a current fixed rate of 4% or less, with the rate subject to change up or down with the price of Agency pass-through Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS). For borrowers with an FHA or VA mortgage, rates would be higher, but these borrowers should be included in any large-scale refinancing program.

b) The homeowner must be current on his or her mortgage or become so for at least three months.

c) NO other qualification or application is required, other than intention to accept the new rate (that is, no appraisal, no income verification, no tax returns, etc.).

As Pethokoukis notes: “Hey, that sounds a lot like the Obama plan, except with the GSE limitation.” Obama will give “every responsible homeowner” a refi. Romney only wants to give it to people backed by Fannie and Freddie. Makes all those attack ads about Newt and Freddie seem hypocritical doesn’t it?

Another way of saying it would be so say Romney’s plan is Obama lite. They both think that Government should refinance people’s houses that they bought because of bad government policy. It’s government intervention because the last government intervention didn’t work out so well.

The main problem is that refinancing a house only helps marginally and if anything postpones the inevitable to a later date. It’s basic premise is to prop up house prices. The banks are not going to write down current asset prices for the house as long as it is being refinanced. The principle remains, it’s just the interest rate that changes. This keeps banks balance sheet artificially high, which keeps stock prices high. Politicians seem to think that if stocks are high, the economy is doing good. As if the last 3 years haven’t been proof of that error.

As noted in a NYT article from 2010, refinance plans only kick the can down the road.

Some experts argue the program has impeded economic recovery by delaying a wrenching yet cleansing process through which borrowers give up unaffordable homes and banks fully reckon with their disastrous bets on real estate, enabling money to flow more freely through the financial system.

“The choice we appear to be making is trying to modify our way out of this, which has the effect of lengthening the crisis,” said Kevin Katari, managing member of Watershed Asset Management, a San Francisco-based hedge fund. “We have simply slowed the foreclosure pipeline, with people staying in houses they are ultimately not going to be able to afford anyway.”

Mr. Katari contends that banks have been using temporary loan modifications under the Obama plan as justification to avoid an honest accounting of the mortgage losses still on their books. Only after banks are forced to acknowledge losses and the real estate market absorbs a now pent-up surge of foreclosed properties will housing prices drop to levels at which enough Americans can afford to buy, he argues.

We’ve seen Obama’s refi plan fail. Now Romney is saying “Hey I can do it too! Look at me I’m electable.” Give me a break. Don’t expect to see any mention of Obamany Refi in the conservative media. That would hurt Romney too much. Of course, never expect to see anything that hurts Obama in the MSM.

Now we have confirmation that Romneycare was instrumental in the formulation for Obamacare.

Taken together, Massachusetts’s experience under the 2006 reform initiative, which became the template for the structure of the Affordable Care Act, highlights the potential gains and the challenges the nation now faces under federal health reform.

The rest of the study is interesting though. They basically confirm that people are using more health care, which is expected. When it comes to affordability they say this:

 Consistent with that expectation, there have been gains in the affordability of care for adults since 2006, as evident in a lower burden from out-of-pocket health care spending (excluding premiums) and less unmet need for care because of cost (Exhibit 4; additional measures in Appendix Exhibit 4; simple [unadjusted] estimates in Appendix Exhibit 8).⁹

Why are they excluding premiums? Maybe because premiums have risen more rapidly in Masachusetts than anywhere else in the country?

 As highlighted in Figure 1, in the absence of policy change, health care spending in Massachusetts is projected to nearly double to $123 billion in 2020, increasing 8 percent faster than the state’s gross domestic product (GDP).

Take out most expensive portion and of course it’s “affordable.” Hell if you don’t count all the beer I drink, I never drink alcohol either! Only Academics and Politicians think that is good policy (see how they measure CPI).

January 19, 2012 
On a seasonally adjusted basis, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers was unchanged in December, as it was in November. The index for all items less food and energy rose 0.1 percent in December after increasing 0.2 percent in November.

All in all, Romneycare is a disaster. The economics are wrong. I’m not even going to get into the Mandate, which was also used for Obamacare. Obamanycare is a great word to use to describe MassCare. It needs to be hung around Romney’s neck. Thankfully Newt is doing just that.

h/t: James Pethokoukis <—Read his story. It’s much better written than mine.

1. Why GOP leaders don’t trust Gingrich
2. Gingrich and Reagan: In the 1980s, the candidate repeatedly insulted the president.
3. Newt’s Troublesome Lack of Prudence
4. Hour of Newt
5. Gingrich: I’ll “serve notice” that future debates must allow audience cheering

Twitter has been even more disturbing as GOP pundits and bloggers: C.E Cupp, Michelle Malkin, Guy Benson and Jim Geraghty sneer and deride Newt and the people that support him.

Newt is not the perfect candidate, he does have lots of skeletons in his closet. I don’t agree with some of his positions at all. But the mere fact that he scared the shit out of the GOP elite and those who want to be part of the elite (explains the bloggers), gives me even more reason to support him.

I have zero faith in the political parties. They are only out to serve their own self interest and the interest of their backers. The Democrats serve the Unions and their “favorite” companies. The GOP serves their “favorites” as well. They both have shown zero regard for what is good for the nation as a whole, rather than their own narrow self interest. The GOP elite want the status quo. They want to keep the things the way they are. They didn’t like Reagan when he ran against Bush I. They wanted a party man like Bush. Afterwards, Reagan became so popular that it was political suicide to talk bad about him. (Well unless your Mitt Romney.) Bush I was a company man through and through.Romney is of the same vein as Bush I, a good company man. Romney’s only chance of winning is to be a company man. He has no appeal to anyone outside of company men and NE Liberal Republicans. Without company backing, he is dead in the water. The GOP media knows this. That’s why the decline to do any real reporting on Romney. That is why any attack against Bain is derided as “Anti-Capitalist.” What is why, as Romney’s numbers continue to fall, their attacks against the front runner continue to rise.

It doesn’t matter who is the frontrunner, as long as it is Romney. When it’s not Romney, we start to see a lot of stories of how bad the frontrunner is. No word about Cain until he became the frontrunner, then multiple stories crept up against him. Newt surged, then came the onslaught. Santorum surged, then came the onslaught. Now Newt is surging again…more attacks. Notice a pattern?

If the GOP has any chance of winning, it has to be a party for the people, not the elites. A vast amount of people are turned off from the Democratic Party, because they perceive it to be a party for the Elites. Obama was the chosen one and pushed down everyone’s throats. The media were behind their money men completely and pushed Obama; never reporting negatives, giving him softball questions, while viciously attacking anyone with the gumption of telling the truth about Obama (Palinization).

Now has the GOP establishment in full panic mode. From C.E. Cupp;

At the risk of sounding maudlin or apocalyptic, the conservative movement is poised to become irrelevant or simply extinct. If the next few weeks go the way the last one did, conservatism may as well hang up a sign that says “Closed for Business (apologies to Ronald Reagan).”

The irony is that she is absolutely right. The conservative movement that the party Elites enjoy will be dead. That’s a very good thing!

“I talked to a top Romney adviser tonight who said, ‘Look, if Mitt Romney cannot win in Florida then we’re going to have to try to reinvent the smoke-filled room which has been democratized by all these primaries. And we’re going to have try to come with someone as an alternative to Newt Gingrich who could be Jeb Bush, Mitch Daniels, someone.’ Because there is such a desperation by the so-called party elites, but that’s exactly what Gingrich is playing against,” Andrea Mitchell said on NBC tonight after the debate.

At first I was like whoa. It plays right into the whole party elites don’t want Newt meme. That was my fast brain thinking. Afterwards, my slow brain started clicking into action and I started thinking, “Why should I believe Andrea Mitchell?” Why would a Romney adviser say something like that to Andrea Mitchell of all people? Andrea Mitchell is a mouthpiece for the DNC. There is a great blog called FireAndreaMitchell.com check it out. A list of Mitchell’s propaganda can be found on that site here. Of my favorites:

1. Iowa is too white, too evangelical, too rural to re-elect Obama
2. You and I Are Both White
3. Andrea Mitchell covers Obama and idiot Biden eating burgers! (a love story)
4. Andrea Mitchell in Awe of Cabinet’s “Brain Power”

Knowing that she is just a mouthpiece for the DNC, why should we believe anything she says or the Network that employs her as an impartial journalist? The debate question were mere fishing expeditions for a safe or good soundbite for Obama re-election ads.

Earlier yesterday, I was in a facespace debate with some Romneybots over this story; Obama for Gingrich’ memo hits Romney.

President Barack Obama’s campaign manager tried to help former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s primary campaign on Monday morning by sending out a 1,540-word anti-Romney campaign flyer just days prior to the Jan. 31 Florida primary votes.

The Mittbots were trying to say that this is proof that Obama is scared of Romney. I tried (unsuccessfully) to tell them that they are being played. That Obama wants to face Mittens in the general election and that Messina is using a head-fake strategy on them. Their bias got in the way of the critical thinking skills. But the same question can be asked, why would the Democrats be so blatant? That coupled with Mitchell’s “party elites” statement just make me think that they are trying to stir up controversy within the GOP ranks. They know the GOP is divided over the Romney’s vs Non-Romney’s (I have my own hypothesis on this which I hope to write about this weekend.) They know that the GOP voters think that the party elites really are tyring to push Romney on everyone and are really pissed off about it. MSNBC is only trying to add fuel to the fire.

I urge everyone not to believe trust anything that comes out of the mouth of Andrea Mitchell or MSNBC (ABC, CBS too) about the GOP. Their only goal is to see Obama win, period.

You probably shouldn’t trust Fox either, since they are all in the tank for Romney (with exception of Palin).

UPDATE: Not 3 seconds after I hit publish, I got to thinking not believing is too strong a word. That would insinuate that they never tell the truth and in my mind would be an ad hominem attack on MSNBC. I don’t want to do that. It’s better to say don’t trust them. If you see something, verify it yourself. If it is something that can’t be verified (Mitchell’s statement) then be skeptical, think it through and see if it makes sense. I still firmly believe that our enemies and critics are the best sources of critical information. Yes they have a bias and over hype the short comings, but they are usually the most diligent to find factual errors as well. Our own bias does blind us to our shortcomings. We are the easiest person to fool, we fool ourselves all the time. That’s the criticism I have for Obamabots and Romneybots. I’d be intellectually dishonest to say I am immune. I am not, which is why I do read the criticisms and weight them in my head.

Ron Paulians won’t like this because she makes no mention of Paul as a serious candidate but Professor Lynn Vavreck says some really interesting things here.

First, that even after the thousands of dollars and years of campaigning, people still don’t know Romney. He can’t break through.

Second, that Newt is the Democrats biggest threat. Newt is a strategist. Democrats haven’t run against a good strategist since Reagan. As we have seen from the debates so far, Newt has the ability to take what, the Democrats think, is a negative and turn it into not only a positive but a haymaker against the Democratic propaganda machine (MSM). Romney can’t do that, he hasn’t shown the ability to do that so far and there is no indication that he ever will.

While Obama will get softballs, Romney will get fastballs. He will crumble under the attack. He won’t get the same treatment he is getting now, preferential treatment. Democrats will go after his Taxes, go after Bain, go after his subpar record as Governor, will he be able to articulate an answer? Probably not, if his recent flub about his Tax returns is any indication. The Democrats want to face Romney. Only Rom-bot think he has a snowballs chance to beat Obama.

Gingrich is a smart man. All the candidates are smart but I don’t think there is much of a comparison between Romney and Gingrich on who is, at least, more experienced. Newt said today that he is trying to release the Contract between his former company, the Center for Health Transformation, and Freddie Mac. It’s widely known that Romney has tried to hit Newt on his connections with Freddie Mac for a while, only to stumble and then call anyone who questions his former company as Anti-Capitalist. Romney, after taking a beating in South Carolina, has finally made up his mind on releasing his taxes. How long did Romney know that his tax returns would be an issue? If he didn’t think they would, he is a blathering idiot. He was supposed to be running against Obama, the class warrior….duh his tax returns would be an issue. I’m sure Obama would have gotten Warren Buffet to attack Romney over it.

Point being, Romney if he is as smart as they say he is (you know to “fix” the economy and all) should have known and should have been prepared for the attacks. If he wasn’t going to release them, he should have had a better excuse than, “I may think about maybe releasing my taxes in April, if I think at that time that I might think that would be a good idea, but I won’t know until then if I’ll release them or not, but you never know” answer. If he knew he was going to have to release them, then just do it.

Gingrich on the other hand, knew Romney would be going after Freddie Mac and decided to head off Romney by releasing, or at least trying to (there are legal obstacles in the way such as disclosure agreements) release the contracts between his company and Freddie. Newt has said that they will show he wasn’t a lobbyist.

Newt Gingrich said on Monday that he has requested the release of his consulting contract with Freddie Mac, adding that it would be “very helpful” if the release came before next week’s Florida primary contest.

Asked if he will release the consulting contract between his former company, the Center for Health Transformation, and Freddie Mac, Gingrich told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos: “We asked them to work out releasing it. They have a number of confidentiality agreements. I’m very comfortable with it being released.”

Gingrich denied Romney’s accusations, saying that Romney has been “deliberately saying things he knows are false.”

“I did no lobbying, period,” Gingrich said of his time advising Freddie Mac.

Newt hopes to cut off Romney’s line of attack early and most likely try to use it to his own advantage. Instead Newt can turn the table and ask Romney about his Gubernatorial records, which just so happen to have been wiped clean after his term.

When Romney left the governorship of Massachusetts, 11 of his aides bought the hard drives of their state-issued computers to keep for themselves. Also before he left office, the governor’s staff had emails and other electronic communications by Romney’s administration wiped from state servers, state officials say.

Those actions erased much of the internal documentation of Romney’s four-year tenure as governor, which ended in January 2007. Precisely what information was erased is unclear.

Republican and Democratic opponents of Romney say the scrubbing of emails – and a claim by Romney that paper records of his governorship are not subject to public disclosure – hinder efforts to assess his performance as a politician and elected official.

h/t Legal Insurrection

As Professor Jacobson noted in his post:

People who destroy hard drives shouldn’t demand records from others.

Let’s just see if Newt will use this against Romney in the next Debates. If so, KO and the Romney beast might finally have been slain.

                 Total    18-29   30-44   45-64        65+        White     Black        Hispanic    Other        Male       Female

Gingrich 34.4     31.6      27.7        38.6         37.7        34.3         42.8             25.3          75.3          39.3     30.0

Romney  25.6     .0          15.0       29.0          36.4       29.6         7.6                 9.2            8.2            21.0      28.1

Yes, that shows Newt beating Mitt “electable” Romney in every single category. Look at the “youth” vote! Team Mittens is about to get clobbered.

It’s important to remember that Florida is a winner take all state. If Newt can beat Romney, he gets all 50 delegates! So much for inevitability.

Employing fixed effects models and a natural experimental approach, they found that children’s
weight gain between fifth and eighth grades was not associated with the introduction or the duration
of exposure to competitive food sales in middle school. Also, the relationship between competitive foods
and weight gain did not vary significantly by gender, race/ethnicity, or family socioeconomic status, and it
remained weak and insignificant across several alternative model specifications (bolded for emphasis)

The real travesty is that Prof. Van Hook sat on the data for almost two years.

Van Hook said that the findings surprised the researchers so much that they held off publishing for nearly two years “because we kept looking for a connection that just wasn’t there.”

This is a problem with a lot of junk science now. A lot of researchers fall victim to Belief Bias. They attribute the validity of the research based on what they believe the valid conclusion should be. In this case, Dr. Van Hook had already made up her mind that junk food in middles schools should lead to more overweight kids. When the data fails to show a correlation, they person simply thinks that there is an error in the data, not an error in themselves. They then try to tease (more like torture) the data to try and fit the preconceived paradigm. In this case, they couldn’t torture the data enough to find anything that fits what they think ought to be true. The opposite is also very true in Academia, when they have one piece of data that confirms their bias, they tout that data as proof positive that their hypothesis is right.

There is nothing wrong with this. This is how science is done. You make a hypothesis, form an experiment, look at the data to see if it fits with your hypothesis. Three things can happen; the data can fit your hypothesis, in which you try different experiment to test your hypothesis. If repeated experiment all confirm your hypothesis, you can make a reasonable assumption that your hypothesis is correct. The second thing to happen is that the data totally refutes your hypothesis, in which case you reject the hypothesis and try again. The third thing to happen (which is common) is that some sort of systemic error occurred in your experiments that makes the data inconclusive. The only thing to do is try to reformulate your experimental procedure to get rid of the error. That is what should happen.

The problem now is what to do with all that legislation that was passed aiming to help the children? Policies were put into place based off of bad science. They made the assumption that junk food in schools WERE the cause of obesity, before any data could be looked at. This is the central fallacy of most Statist (Paternal) solutions to societal problems. They are never really based on any actual science. They same can be said for cell phone bans around the country, when there is no evidence that banning cell phones while driving actual does anything?

The other thing about this junk food study, is that it shows once again that the conventional wisdom is usually wrong. It shows that Academics are the easiest people to fool. It shows the depths to which people will hold on to their beliefs when the data is staring them in the face telling them they are wrong. I do have to give credit where credit is due. The research, Dr. Van Hook, actually published the study. A lot of researchers get so married to their pet hypothesis, they will not publish anything that might refute it.

I highly recommend listening to this Econtalk podcast with Gary Taubes.

Gary Taubes, author of Good Calories, Bad Calories, talks to EconTalk host Russ Roberts about what we know about the relationship between diet and disease. Taubes argues that for decades, doctors, the medical establishment, and government agencies encouraged Americans to reduce fat in their diet and increase carbohydrates in order to reduce heart disease. Taubes argues that the evidence for the connection between fat in the diet and heart disease was weak yet the consensus in favor of low-fat diets remained strong. Casual evidence (such as low heart disease rates among populations with little fat in their diet) ignores the possibilities that other factors such as low sugar consumption may explain the relationship. Underlying the conversation is a theme that causation can be difficult to establish in complex systems such as the human body and the economy.