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Romney is a Keynesian
I posted this on a Legal Insurrection thread but thought I’d post it here as well.
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.
Newt in Outer Space
“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:
GOP leaders don’t like Gingrich and that’s a good thing!
As Newt gains momentum in the GOP primary, the attacks against him by the GOP elite keep growing.
- Why GOP leaders don’t trust Gingrich
- Gingrich and Reagan: In the 1980s, the candidate repeatedly insulted the president.
- Newt’s Troublesome Lack of Prudence
- Hour of Newt
- 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!
Rule of Thumb: Never believe anything MSNBC says about Republicans
I was watching the snore-fest of a debate last night. Aside from the littany of questions that are really meaningless (Everglades? WTF?) the best stuff happened during the debate wrap up. In particular Andrea Mitchell, long known as a Democratic Propagandists there out this little bomb.The video can be found here. (I don’t know how to embed that in my blog, it’s not a youtube clip)
“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:
- Iowa is too white, too evangelical, too rural to re-elect Obama
- You and I Are Both White
- Andrea Mitchell covers Obama and idiot Biden eating burgers! (a love story)
- 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.
Newt is the Democrats biggest threat
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.
Newt’s one smart cookie
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.
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.
Not all the Kings men will be able to put Mitt Romney back together again
Devi stating numbers from the new Insider Advantage poll in Florida. ( My formatting skills on WordPress suck by the way.)
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.
Why Does the Media Keep Underestimating Newt?
So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.
If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose.
If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself. – Sun Tzu
Excellent article by Walter Shapiro here.
The South Carolina primary has become a referendum on Newt Gingrich. Just 10 days after he was left in a dustbin labeled “Yesterday’s Man” after dismal finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire, Gingrich has confounded the experts yet again. The oft-derided and consistently under-estimated House speaker has now bested Jesus in his sheer number of resurrections—an association that can only help as the South Carolina primary vote looms.
Read the rest but I find the explanation quite simple….they think they are smarter than you, me…and of course they think they are smarter than Newt himself.
This is typical of anyone that buys into the idea of Statism, which modern Liberals overwhelmingly do. The media is comprised of about 90 – 97 percent liberals according to Tim Groseclose of UCLA (I highly recommend watching his Uncommon Knowledge interview here.) They believe in the central premise of Statism, that the State knows more than you and should therefore be able to dictate what you can and can’t do, for your own good. Call it Paternalism if you want, it’s all the same thing, just depends on the degree of control. How often do you hear a Liberal talk about how dumb those people that vote Republican, Libertarian….take your pick of things not Liberal Democrat and how if they were in charge…
They think they are smarter. So when someone that is really smart comes along (enter Newt) they constantly project their idea of a Republicans on to him. The fact that Newt has consistently defied the “conventional wisdom” (another word for what the Media wants you to believe) should be a fairly good indicator of how dumb those in the media really are. Since they are overwhelmingly Liberal…kinda tells you how Liberalism fairs doesn’t it?
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