Posted on 01/11/2012 1:45:23 PM PST by Lakeshark
Politico has a story about Newt agreeing not to go after Romney any more about Bain, and Newt was just on Hannity’s radio show on the issue. (I’ll post the audio if I can get it.)
Newt said there are three or four instances where the record is really bad and Romney needs to defend it. Newt said the challenge is not to the model but how Romney acted in specific instances, and how odd it is that Romney runs on his business record but doesn’t want to discuss the record.
Newt made the point that it is impossible to discuss the issue without being accused of class warfare by people trying to protect Romney, but the issue will come up if Romney is the nominee without knowing how much it would hurt Romney.
Newt did not back away from the issue, but said he is moving on.
You know my position. Newt is making a purely political decision to move on. Once he lost Rush and Hannity on the issue — wrongly I believe — it no longer was politically tenable.
So we will go through the primary process and possibly nominate someone with a potentially devastating electability problem. The electablility problem will not go away, we just will not find out how bad it is until September and October 2012.
So add Bain to the list of things we cannot discuss, for fear of being labeled anti-capitalist. Along with Jeremiah Wright, for fear of being called racist.
I fear we may live to regret that.
*Sigh*
"Lately, Bain founder and GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has found himself in a spirited defense of the private equity industry, doing all he can to spin decades of data which confirm, without failure, that PE Leveraged Buy Outs are nothing but "efficiency maximizing" transactions whose only goal is the "maximization" of EBITDA in the pursuit of dividend recap deals, IPOs or outright sales, while loading up the company with untenable amounts of leverage. All this with a 3-5 year investment horizon, which ignores the long-term viability of a company and seeks to streamline (read fire as many as possible) operations as quickly as possible in the goal of maximizing short-term returns. We wish him luck in his endeavor."If commenting on the business practices of firms like Bain Capital is somehow an "attack on capitalism", then it's no small wonder that Capitalism losing the war of ideas. Thanks, guys!
Newt was wrong.
I really like the guy, but this brought back memories of Newt on the couch with Nancy, and Newt praising FDR.
Newt has a very bad habit of using the language and premise of the LEFT!
There is no gain for the conservative movement to be had in surrendering our values to the anti-capitalists and Socialists.
“Free Enterprise” is American and Newt Gingrich is all for Free Enterprise and also for capitalism in the way the majority of us define it.
The GOP-E, Faux News, the GOP punditry are all in the tank for Romney.
Only MSNBC'snasty hosts and commentators understand that Newt was right and that the democrats are dying to run against Romney. Simultaneously sad, sick and funny.
I think Gingrich has accomplished what needed to be accomplished with the Bain ads and it’s fine to move on now. Romney has still not come forward and explained his actions and some of these deals (or the bailout) and Gingrich needs to keep challenging him to do so. But the ads have at least caused people to ask questions about Romney, who was skating through scot free before.
As for Rush, I was very disappointed in him. There is no way the attack on Romney’s work at Bain could be interpreted as an attack on capitalism, even by the most cursory reading, and sometimes I think that in the last couple of years (ever since he married the new babe, perhaps?) Rush has been slipping and doesn’t really prepare his shows very carefully anymore. He shoots from the lip, as they say.
The problem is that he established himself as being very authoritative in earlier years, when he actually did do a lot of research, so many people are confused now by his unfounded rants and it is very easy for him to unleash a meme, accidentally or on purpose.
Seems to me that the definition of capitalist now includes promoting taxpayer bailouts and depending on taxpayer bailouts. We can thank Rush for that too since he declared Romney the capitalist and Gingrich the anti-capitalist.
Show me one thing that Gingrich said that is anti-capitalist. That’s Rush’s bizarre interpretation of it, not Gingrich’s words.
I like Newt, Perry and Santorum before I would support Mitt in the Primary.
However, I REFUSE to allow stupid attacks on capitalism to go unpunished or uncorrected.
Newt was wrong.
If Conservatives don’t vet Romney on Bain, then the moderates and independents will.
You can’t win in a fight with someone with 400-600 affiliates, control of the clock, your ability to speak and the ability to have the final word no matter what.
“$300 million profit, was 200 million enough, or 100 million?”
Newt said that.
Newt sounded like Karl Marx.
It was a STUPID thing to say and Newt owes all of us a retraction and an apology.
The government has no business telling any business how much money they are allowed to make!
When businesses stop lobbying the government for advantageous legislation, designed to eliminate their competition, then we'll talk.
Rush may have “shot from the hip” as you claim, but:
RUSH HIT IS TARGET!
Rush is about ideas, not candidates.
Rush is about conservatism.
Rush has called out Perry, Newt and ROMNEY for their errors in conservative principle.
He's usually much better, and he simply torpedoed this attempt to vet Romney in a knee jerk kind of way. He's usually much better. He does not like Romney, and should have let it lie, much like he let the attacks on Newt in Iowa lie.
I'm kind of disappointed in what he's done with this issue.
This argument never was tenable, it was stupid from the outset, and the problem with Newt is that he went ahead and put it out there without realizing that.
Horse$hit! Very few successful, from Bain’s point of view IE PROFITABLE, ventures where turn arounds. Many where straight up Pump & Dumps and break ups.
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