Posted on 01/27/2012 7:16:38 AM PST by SeekAndFind
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Early Thursday morning -- about 12 hours before the final debate of the Florida primary -- Newt Gingrich was filled with indignation about Mitt Romney's investments. In the most recent debate, in Tampa, Romney had hit Gingrich hard over Gingrich's consulting deal with Freddie Mac. But in the intervening days, Gingrich had learned that not only did Romney have campaign surrogates who actually lobbied for Freddie and Fannie -- he also had personal investments in the two mortgage giants.
So Gingrich got ready to attack. "Here's a guy a who owns Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae stock," he told a Tea Party crowd in the picturesque lakeside town of Mount Dora. "He owns a Goldman Sachs subsidiary that forecloses on Floridians. He is surrounded by lobbyists who are paid by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to stop reform. And on that front, he decides to lie about my career? There's something about the hypocrisy that should make every American angry."
Gingrich stayed on the attack Thursday night in the debate at the University of North Florida here in Jacksonville. "We began digging after [the last debate] because, frankly, I'd had about enough of this," Gingrich said. "We discovered, to our shock, Gov. Romney owns shares of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac."
For a moment, it appeared to be a big Gingrich score. Romney weakly explained that his investments were made through a blind trust, and that it was all very complicated. But then Romney looked at Gingrich and said: "Have you checked your own investments? You also have investments through mutual funds that also invest in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac."
It was a major gotcha moment, one for which Gingrich appeared completely unprepared. He feebly responded that to "compare my investments with [Romney's] is like comparing a tiny mouse with a giant elephant," but the bottom line was clear: Gingrich had hit Romney, and Romney turned around and hit Gingrich much, much harder.
How could Gingrich have made such a mistake? How could he loudly accuse Romney of something and not know he had done the same thing? And even then, how did Gingrich not know that he could have framed the situation to his own advantage? After all, he is the one who defended working for Freddie Mac, who defended GSEs in general, who said his relationship with the mortgage firm was all entirely proper. Of course he would not have had a problem defending ownership of stock (through mutual funds) in Freddie and Fannie. Gingrich still could have attacked Romney for hypocrisy, given Romney's past statements. Instead, Gingrich set himself up for a fall, and Romney was happy to accommodate.
After the debate, Gingrich's spokesman did not want to answer a simple question: How could Gingrich have attacked Romney for a Fannie/Freddie investment when the former speaker had such investments of his own? "How could Mitt Romney not reveal that his advisers, including [Susan] Molinari, including Charlie Black, including Vin Weber -- all who were lobbyists on behalf of Freddie?" spokesman R.C. Hammond asked in response. Hammond explained that Gingrich's Fannie/Freddie holdings, in mutual funds that have hundreds, if not thousands, of diverse investments, were "in a retirement IRA, which was held in this country, not in Switzerland, and how could the Romney campaign not admit that their guys were actually lobbyists for Fannie and Freddie?"
Further pursuit yielded no more answers -- at one point, Hammond tried to change the subject by abruptly declaring, "Let's talk about voting in Massachusetts in 1992." Team Gingrich simply did not want to talk about such a glaring error.
Across the room from Hammond, top Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom explained how the smackdown came to be. The Romney campaign sent out an e-mail with a detailed list of Gingrich's investments almost as soon as Romney delivered the punch, and Fehrnstrom explained that Romney's staff became curious about Gingrich's investments after Gingrich started talking about Romney's. "We began looking into it as soon as [Gingrich] started with his criticism of that particular investment," Fehrnstrom said. "And they weren't hard to find." The information was easily available in Gingrich's financial disclosure forms.
Romney's Fannie/Freddie performance, combined with his nimble outmaneuvering of Gingrich on immigration, seemingly set the former Massachusetts governor on the path to winning the debate. Importantly, Romney was also smart enough to drop his own unfounded attacks on Gingrich. For example, Romney said nothing about Gingrich's ethics case from the 1990s, a subject about which Romney had hit Gingrich hard in earlier ads and debates. It's not clear whether Romney was aware of new reporting showing that the Internal Revenue Service completely exonerated Gingrich in that case, but in any event Romney did not mention it.
Romney also backed off his ill-considered earlier attempts to suggest Gingrich had not played a significant role in some of the Reagan administration's achievements in the 1980s. Romney's attacks lost all steam after Gingrich produced a video clip from 1995 in which former First Lady Nancy Reagan said her husband had passed the torch of conservative leadership to Gingrich. Romney's criticism had simply opened himself up to Gingrich's reminding viewers that Romney disavowed Reagan during Romney's run for Senate in Massachusetts in 1994. It was a loser issue for Romney, and he let it go.
All in all, Thursday was simply a bad night for Gingrich. Yes, he had some good moments, but after a lackluster performance in last Monday's debate, and with his poll numbers slipping a bit in Florida, Gingrich needed a strong performance, and he didn't get it. Failing to deliver made Gingrich's job between now and next Tuesday's primary all the harder.
After beating Gingrich, Romney seemed ready to coast to debate victory until a few minutes later, when Rick Santorum took him on over the issue of the individual mandate in Romneycare. Briefly put, Santorum ran all over Romney, leaving a frustrated Romney sputtering, "First of all, it's not worth getting angry about." The problem is, a lot of Americans are quite angry about Obamacare, and it seems likely they were not satisfied by Romney's assuring them that it's nothing to get upset about.
The moment gave Santorum, whose campaign appears to be flagging in Florida, a much-needed boost. Still, Santorum plans to leave the state to return home for a day on Saturday, spurring speculation that he is either changing direction in his campaign or getting out of the race altogether. As for rumors of Santorum's withdrawal, one supporter who spent a good deal of time with him Thursday said flatly, "That ain't gonna happen. Ain't gonna happen."
Even after the Santorum score, it's probably safe to say that Romney won the Jacksonville debate. With the race tight, Gingrich badly needed a good showing. And with so much on the line, he failed to deliver.
Well it appears that the RINOCRATS are on their way towards electing another liberal.
Let me know if that works out any better than it usually does.
The meme last night was Newt lost b/c he didn’t get a standing ovation. Before CNN had their analysts do post-debate discussion, including, Ari Fleischer, I saw Ari walk up to Mitt with a look I haven’t seen since chicks saw the Beatles on US television. He was smiling ear to ear, shaking his hand, and telling him what an amazing job he did. He then went back to his seat to give analysis. Go figure.
Romney did not win that debate, although I’m not surprised that Byron York would say he did.
Mitt “Newt stole my lunch money” was a prissy girly girl last night.
Newt can win Florida by ending the NASA Muslim Outreach Program.
This pompous ass York...of “will you submit to your husband?” fame.
The E can KMA
and Romney can KMA during the General.
...and yes I know that Gingrich and Palin will fall in line talking about ABO.
I won’t vote for the E pimp Romney...under any circumstances. It’s irrelevant. He can’t win anyway.
Gingrich needs to reach deep inside and STOP taking on Romney as if it’s personal.
It’s just business, Sonny.
Go right over top of Mittens and focus on OBAMA. Leave Mittens standing there in the dust.
Ari Fleischer is probably looking for a slot in a Romney administration. He’s a Bushie, and the Bushies have lined up behind Willard.
The question on the wives as first ladies was about a cheap a shot as I have ever seen. It was to make Newt squirm. But actually, Newt gave the best answer. He said all of the ladies were wonderful and any one would be a great first lady. Classy.
I liked his answer because it wasn’t gushy. Santorum made my skin crawl. Mitt actually gave a pretty good reason why he should NOT be running. Apparently, his wife is sickly and frail, he should probably stay home with her. It was TMI.
And, do you know why the Bushies have lined up behind Mitt?
JEB 2016.
That’s why. They want to throw this election.
Watch the applause come back in full force the next time ‘Rats debate.
I am a Newt supporter, but it doesn’t come across well when he goes after Romney on petty stuff like his personal finances. I thought Newt did well in the 2nd half of the debate, but Romney got the better of him in the first half, mainly because of the petty arguments. Santorum won overall. Just my opinion, though it didn’t change the fact I support Newt.
I outed a Jeb-head here a couple weeks ago.
Felt good.
I thought Ron Paul was very likable and had the best moments in the debate last night.
If Newt fades, I’m supporting R.Paul.
I think R. Paul won.
Newt 2nd (for the most substance)
Mitt - Santorum last
I don’t think Romney “won” anything; he blustered and engaged in non-stop personal attacks, and even when he was shown to have lied by saying he knew nothing about the ad that said Gingrich had called Spanish a ghetto language (Gingrich said nothing of the sort, just that everyone who is here must learn English and he would pass laws supporting English and making it mandatory in official correspondence, etc.) he just blustered and attacked Gingrich on some other off the wall thing. And even when given the chance to move the debate back to the issues, he refused and continued his attacks. I don’t think he looked good at all, even though, as usual, he was given about 3 times the amount of time as Gingrich. Even Santorum got more time for his answers than Gingrich.
But that said, I read that there were only 800 seats available to the public, while almost all the rest except for the press had gone to the RNC, which distributed them to its local party groups. And you know whose side the RNC is on...it was a very stacked audience.
I don’t know, the fact that Mitt did not know the contents of one of his ads smack of Holder not knowing about Fast and Furious.
I hope not. I like voting for President and I won’t vote for Romney......but I’ll never vote for another Bush as long as I live.
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