Newt: Why People Are Choosing An Unlikeable Guy

“I don’t want a nice man,” said Kenny The Nail Guy, “I want someone to beat Obama. I choose Newt.”

This was a very interesting statement from a Vietnamese immigrant who despises communism and knows a socialist when he sees one. He sees one in Obama.

Kenny is onto something.

Pretty much everyone, except Callista and his daughters, believes Newt Gingrich isn’t a very nice guy. I felt like his multiple marriages and “angry little attack muffin” persona as Peggy Noonan called him would be a deal breaker.

I am coming to believe his impatience with the bullshit and general grumpiness is the reason people like Gingrich.

First, people are sick of the stupid. And the government is big, stupid, annoying, interfering, and run by incompetent boobs. Gingrich is willing to concede it. In fact, he has a difficult time bearing the stupidity. In psychological terms, this is called mirroring. Gingrich mirrors the national mood perfectly. We’re a nation of angry little attack muffins except no one is really listening to the average out of work, miserable citizen. Who will speak for them?

Second, Newt is battling the media–his real enemy. He has declared war on them. If he’s going scorched earth on Mitt, he’s going nuclear on the Press. People are loving it. Why? Because the press aggressively, arrogantly pushes their agenda which is a hard left agenda. America is NOT a left-leaning country. They are center-right. They self-identify as conservative.

The press pets this cycle have been Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney. Lavish spreads in Vanity Fair. Extraordinary deference in debates (especially Mitt).

Today, Romney cluck-clucks to Newt that going after the press is easy. No it’s not, otherwise Romney would do it. But Romney doesn’t want to antagonize the ones who have been giving him such generous ink.

Any Republican running for office is not only running against his Democratic opponent, he’s running against the press. A conservative’s CHIEF enemy is the press. Let me say this another way, a Republican CANNOT win unless he speaks around, above and in all ways that avoid going through the press liberal filter.

Romney, like McCain in ’08, wants to be buddies with the press. And yet, the press is on Obama’s side. When Romney goes into the general, he’ll be constantly flustered and offended and dismayed by the abuse he’s taking. It will be a shock after the sloppy kisses of the primary where the press would rather the choice be between a Republican liberal and a liberal-liberal.

Newt, in contrast, knows who he’s running against and right now, it ain’t Romney and in the general, it won’t be primarily Obama. It’s the press. He gets this now.

Finally, around 75% of the GOP base has been against Romney since the beginning. In 2008, the base knuckled under, again, for a guy who was a terrible candidate. They’re unwilling to do it again.

And don’t be deceived, Mitt Romney is a horrible candidate. Romneycare, global warming, increasing taxes, bland, not a great communicator, flip-flopper, abortion, distant, removed, owned a chop-shop.

My brother said of Mitt,”Everyone knows that guys like Mitt exists,” speaking of Mitt’s company Bain which went into distressed companies and sometimes chopped them up and sold off assets,”and people know that that work is a necessity and someone has to do it. They just don’t want their president to be that guy.”

Mitt isn’t particularly likable either, he just seems like a nice guy. Well, Obama seems like a nice family guy, too. Big deal. People have decided nice is overrated.

Mitt has another negative though. Mitt Romney is the caricature of “evil Republicans” that the Democrats are salivating over. The press, meanwhile, like Mitt because he’s Harvard educated, urbane, cool, and a touch less liberal than Obama. They could live with him if their coverage doesn’t destroy his campaign.

People are wondering why Newt is doing so well. But the more I think about it, it makes sense.

Voters want someone who will fight and fight for them and against their common and frustrating and powerful nemeses.

You know that friend you have who is kinda a jerk? Why do you keep him around? Because in a fight, he’s gonna beat your enemy to heck.

The job with Newt will be pointing him in the right direction. So far, he’s been responsive to the ideas of his fellow candidates and seems willing to take on the federal leviathan.

As a friend said of Newt: He fights.

More at Newt Judges You.

Posted in Conservatives, Democrats, Liberals, Republicans, Tea Party | 11 Comments »

The Bain Of Capitalism — UPDATED Remember Reagan Democrats?

Is Bain a villain or victim? Is Mitt Romney a hero or a heel? That’s the question before Republican primary voters and a few things need to be understood about Capitalism generally first before answering these questions specifically.

Capitalism is well regarded by most Americans. The bailout of investment firms that backed bad mortgage-backed securities i.e. bank bailouts is not well-regarded by Americans.

Bank bailouts, business bailouts, bailouts, period, are not capitalism.

A truly free market means the freedom to succeed or fail. A truly free market means I don’t have to pay for your screw up.

America no longer has the freest of free markets. [For more about this and Bain, please read Jonathan Last in the Weekly Standard. He makes excellent points.]

Americans who work for GM and GM subsidiaries, for example, are more than happy to take taxpayer money, rip off GM investors, give the money to the unions, and currently keep their jobs even though the company has a bunch of money-losing products and the company has yet to make money back that it took from the taxpayers (and probably never will).

Americans who see nearly $750 billion taxpayer dollars go to a failed company like Solyndra (Obama cronies who want to make money off of the failed green-jobs hoax at taxpayer expense) are not so happy.

American Iowans who get ethanol subsidies to grow corn for energy production even though it’s more expensive, and shockingly, dirtier, like a more nuanced capitalism.

Americans are romantic about capitalism. They like a free market a little freer and a little more socialist-y (new word) depending on their mood.

Politicians are worse.

Politicians can use taxpayer dollars, regulations, lawsuits, threats, audits, and all sorts of means to manipulate the market.

So, corporations, in response to the government unevenness, seeks favor. They buy advertising (hello Wall Street investors donors to Obama) and hope to influence the laws, regulation, bailouts, etc. in a way favorable to their business, their stockholders and their board. And who wouldn’t?

When the government gets so powerful, corporations and individuals are forced to be obsequious and cower before the throne of power lest their businesses and lives be ruined.

Obama and Democrats enjoy this power. Many big government Republicans don’t mind it so much either.

Corporations enjoy the arrangement as long as it benefits them. Greasing the government skids becomes part of doing business. The more corrupt the government, the more it costs but the cost of NOT paying off the politicians is far worse and a destroyed business or even industry.

Individual Americans look at all this and are disgusted. They forget their own involvement or excuse it figuring that the “big guys” will win anyway, so “might as well get my share”.

The political-corporate nexus has become a mutually-beneficial and exclusive system. The American taxpayer, the guy on the hook for all the flights of fancy (Solyndra) and foibles (Fannie, Freddie, and Wall Street investment bankers) stands on the outside.

$15 trillion in debt later and little to nothing to show for it, the little guy is fed up.

The stories, that the press will finally tell about how the little guy has been screwed (not by Obama mind, never by Obama) but by Mitt Romney and other villains like him, will be front and center.

The American economy is not free-market capitalist in the sense that businesses or government are having to pay the consequences of bad behavior. Two words: “Moral Hazard”. We are seeing the consequences of the moral hazard of these bailouts and they’re unintended.

The most dire consequence: People are questioning capitalism itself, rather than the bad government behavior that drove bad business behavior.

Romney supporters conflating defending Mitt Romney with defending capitalism are stretching this sentiment. It’s been long since companies like Bain were strictly operating in a free market system and while it’s subtle, this fundamental unfairness is what has people hopping mad.

When Romney piously decried the in-state tuition for illegal immigration, he was playing on the sense that people feel that it is unfair for people to get benefits they haven’t paid for. It was a populist argument. Further, Mitt didn’t just let that argument stand. He outright lied about Governor Perry’s illegal immigration stance making it seem as though Rick Perry was soft on illegal immigration while he, Romney, was a defender of all things America. It’s laughable, but it worked and he knew it would.

And I suspect Romney and his acolytes are afraid right now because they know that the attacks about Bain also work. But if they work now, they’ll work in the general.

The American people are angry and feel totally alienated from their government and the “big”, powerful businesses that use their influence to influence a favorable business client.

On Twitter, Brooks Bayne rightly notes the conflation by Romney supporters of mercantilism and capitalism.

The histrionics displayed by Romney’s supporters ignores the collusion between government and business to the harm of the individual citizen.

How do these folks think the Teaparty started? It’s this very unfairness that caused outrage. TARP started boiling at the end of the Bush administration, was supported by both Obama and McCain and the unholy alliance has, instead of abating, gotten worse. At least a sliver of this emotion is encapsulated by Occupy Wall Street.

Occupy Wall Street just took the opposite tack of the Tea Party. Rather than being left alone–which is what the Teapatiers want–the OWS folks want the bailouts to go to them. Forget corporate bailouts, they want personal bailouts.

Somehow, personal bailouts is socialism but big bank bailouts is “supporting the free market”? No it’s not.

Obamacare was collusion with Insurance companies at the expense of tax payers. TARP benefited banks and businesses over leveraged by making bad bets.

Over and over, the taxpayer is being asked to look the other way while their taxes are being raided for the benefit of irresponsible players — the government, banks and businesses all angling to take great risk. They receive all the benefits if they succeed and the taxpayer is on the hook for the losses should they fail.

The problem with Romney is that he neutralizes every single Obama negative — Romneycare, big regulations (buying global warming, etc.), bailouts, TARP, and the collusion of Wall Street with the government.

Capitalism as a concept is just fine. The problem is that America is a far cry from a truly free market. A market isn’t free when the risk takers can make someone else pay for their mistakes.

Americans are tired of paying for others mistakes. They’re tired of being on the losing end. They thought Obama was going to bring “fairness”. Obama just made things worse–socialism is always worse.

Republicans should be for something better, but as far as I can see, the front runners all like using the Government for their own fanciful schemes. For some reason voters are supposed to trust them to do different. No wonder the Republican field is divided and depressed. [Update: William Jacobson says the Republican party has become "the party of Bain". Heaven help us.]

Trusting a politician is always a bad bargain. Voters don’t seem ready, though, to trust themselves and that’s the only solution.

More about Romney’s own class warfare here.

Updated: Dan Riehl says that the left will “hang Romney with the rust belt and win“.

Posted in Barack Obama, Capitalism, Conservatives, Democrats, Economy, Isms, Republicans, Show Me The Money, Socialism | 13 Comments »

Rick Perry, Government Reform, & Moving The Conversation

Governor Perry freaked out the political class this week by suggesting bold government reforms like these [it's only 19 seconds long]:

Oh wait! That’s not Governor Perry! That’s Ronald Reagan and he was suggesting the same thing. He even talked specifically about getting rid of 75,000 government employees.

Doug Mataconis, resident cynic and Outside The Beltway (misnamed–should be Conventional Wisdom) blogger, says this:

In reality, though, much like Perry’s own chances to win the Republican nomination, there’s very little chance any of these ideas would ever see the light of day. To the extent Perry intended to propose a real plan, he failed here. Instead, all we’ve got are gimmicks.

Gimmicks, eh?

Rhetoric is not a gimmick. And a Ron Paulian purist like Doug Mataconis should feel slightly ashamed for attacking a candidate that has little chance of success. I would wager that Rick Perry’s chances are far greater than Ron Paul’s.

But back to the point.

America has been pushed leftward both rhetorically and policy-wise for years. Bush senior, Clinton, and then George W. Bush all believed in a sort of government care-taker state. Most damaging to the body rhetoric was “Compassionate Conservatism”–a phrase that ceded rhetorical ground to the mean ways of big government and socialism.

It’s frankly rather astonishing that a libertarian would complain about a plan to get rid of government departments, but then, that’s what libertarians do. They complain.

For too long, self-reliance, ingenuity, creativity, personal responsibility, American exceptionalism, optimism, and all those other plucky American values have given way to Obama’s maudlin mealy-mouthed malaise.

Words matter. Rhetoric matters.

No one wants empty words. Words and ideas push in the opposite direction, lead the mind and heart different ways and open the policy world to ideas that have been long maligned are NOT empty. They’re purposeful.

Just like Ronald Reagan knew what he was doing when facing Debbie Downer Jimmy Carter, Rick Perry knows what he’s doing facing Bob the Blamer Obama.

Politics is about deeds AND words. Rick Perry has the deeds covered. One only has to look at his Texas record of reform and conservative (and yes, libertarian) change to see that.

A leader, though, must also use words and push ideas. For those having trouble with Perry’s government reform plan, pretend you’re a teenager again. Perry’s plan is like a kid asking for a 2 am curfew when he really wants 1 am or even midnight. He’s still getting to stay out later than he wanted.

Rick Perry is pushing the envelope and he knows it. So did Reagan, though, and Reagan’s words and ideas pushed America into a couple decades of growth and prosperity.

Words and ideas matter. They are the precursor of policy. The libs know this, which is why they’re howling. What’s confusing is why a libertarian would be bothered by small government rhetoric and a plan to match it.

Posted in America, Conservatives, Democrats, Liberals, Moderates, Political Animals, Republicans, Tea Party | 3 Comments »

Israel: America’s Friendship And Obama’s Antipathy

President Obama began his relationship with Israel by having President Benjamin Netanyahu walk out the back door of the White House past the trash. It got worse from there. At the AIPAC speech, President Obama told the Jewish audience that he saw an Israel with redrawn, and suicidally indefensible, lines. He liked the Israel pre-1967.

Finally, some Jews have had it.

In NY-9, a mostly conservative Jewish enclave in Brooklyn that voted reliably Democrat all the way back to the 1920s, just fell to the Republicans in a special election. Jews were eager to vote against the Democrats. And Obama.

Does this spell the demise of the left’s historical relationship with American Jews? Maybe. Please listen to Evan Pokroy go through the history of the American – Israel relationship and the changing landscape of Judaism and the conservative movement in America. I found his perspective fascinating.

This topic takes on added significance as Republican presidential hopefuls like Rick Perry sponsor events to woo Jewish voters. American conservatives are staunchly pro-Israel.

Please listen to Evan share his thoughts with me!

Link to the podcast here. Please subscribe to my weekly podcast at iTunes here.

Posted in Antisemitism, Barack Obama, Conservatives, Democrats, Liberals, Not America | 1 Comment »

NY 9 Redrawing The Lines: Obama Rebuked

Friend to me: We won NY 9!

Me to friend: More importantly, Democrats lost.

P.S. We also won in Nevada’s special tonight.

Does this have far-reaching implications? Well. It’s not good news for Democrats but nothing to get too excited about. Lots of work ahead.

Still, winning is so much better than losing, isn’t it?

Rundown here.

Posted in Democrats, Liberals, Political Animals | No Comments »

Journolist: Remembering The Compromised Gatekeepers

I’m seeing so much biased bullcrap coming out of Politico these days, I thought it might be useful to revisit Journolist — the listserve of liberal journalists and leftist thinkers who work together to form a narrative and push it into the mainstream media. The ultimate goals: 1) Make conservatives look stupid and 2) help President Obama or the liberal du jour look fabulous. Read background here.

If you think their coordinated efforts are a thing of the past, think again. On Twitter, it’s very easy to follow the Genesis of a liberal meme and to see that coordination is necessary to elevate it. For example, when Markos Moulitas and Matthew Yglesias, and then, dull-witted useful idiot David Frum, pushed forth the outrageous and malignant idea that Sarah Palin was responsible for the Arizona shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, it caught like wildfire throughout the same old group of lefties. They were none too subtle.

Other talking points are coordinated. You’ll see the same phrases, probably focused grouped by the White House, in every piece about a topic. The current issue the White House is pushing: Green jobs. Expect all sorts of lavish praise for them.

The current negative issue: Get rid of Rick Perry. So, while Obama has made repeated promises about transparency and failed, you’ll be reading lots of pieces from different folks on Rick Perry’s transparency. The “transparency meme” takes the place of the old leftist meme about how Texas jobs aren’t real jobs, etc. And that story took the place of crazy religion wingerdoodles and creationism and, you get the idea.

The leftist press just doesn’t stop. You may be left scratching your head wondering why you even like these accomplished conservatives. That would be the point.

Meanwhile, what you won’t be hearing about: 9.1% unemployment, Obama’s horrible poll numbers, how Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, the double-dip recession, how consumer confidence has bottomed out, how President Obama would rather play golf or fundraise than lead, how manufacturing is leaving America, how the Obama administration is targeting political enemies, how it’s helping political friends. You won’t hear much of anything about these topics.

The goal is to Protect Obama At All Costs.

Some Republicans know how this mean leftist machine rolls, so they’ll feed their opposition research to the hack houses and let the liberals do their gleeful dirty work. And then, the same politicians will be shocked and appalled when those biased beasts turn on them. Exhibit “A”: John McCain.

Please know that when you read most of what passes for Journalism these days, it’s agenda-driven. These Gatekeepers at the Washington Post, New York Times, Politico, and elsewhere work together with the goal of making conservatives look stupid. They hate conservatives ideologically. They hate liberals only to the extent that liberals are ineffective.

The liberal press is not upset with Obama in substance — everything from Union malfeasance to project gunrunners serves a Machiavellian purpose — they’re just frustrated at the perception that Obama is weak and ineffectual. They want more liberalness from him. They want more autocracy! Thus, any displeasure at Obama they convey is for those reasons.

Some key Journolisters were (are, if it doesn’t exist in another form I’ll eat my shoe) [Full list here, some add-ons here]:

Paul Krugman — Moron Economist for the New York Times
Ezra Klein (Founder and keeper of Journolist) — Moron Economist blogger for the Washington Post
Mike Allen — POLITICO
Jonathan Chait — The New Republic
Eric Boehlert — Media Matters (SEIU hush money, Soros funded)
David Corn — Mother Jones
Brad De Long — Moron Economist at Berkley
Kevin Drum — Mother Jones, Washington Monthly
Dan Froomkin — HuffPo, Washington Post
James Fallows — The Atlantic
Chris Hayes — The Nation
Joe Klein — TIME
Robert Mackey — New York Times
Peter Orzag — Office of Management and Budget Director for President Obama
Michael Scherer — TIME
Nate Silver — 538, now, New York Times
Ben Smith — POLITICO
Jeffery Toobin — CNN, The New Yorker
Matthew Yglesias — Center for American Progress, The Atlantic Monthly

I just pulled some more well known names. There are at least 160 + known Journolisters.

Liberal scholars who get quoted in the aforementioned articles as impartial experts are on the list, too. Learn their names.

Nearly everything read at every one of these publications must be interpretted through the lens of bias and agenda. These folks are not truth-seekers. They are ideology pushers. Some are more subtle than others. Some, like Krugman, get more Out-Of-The-Closet flagrant as they get more comfy/old/senile.

Know that they are working with the White House. Remember, Rahm Emanuel (former White House aid, current Mayor of Chicago), James Carville (political strategist, Bill Clinton assistant, foreign elections consultant, commentator), Paul Begala (Clinton assistant, political strategist, CNN, Law professor) and George Stephanopoulos (former Bill Clinton comms director, ABC News This Week)have their daily phone-call confabs and they then pass orders to the Journolisters.

It’s an efficient system that benefits the whole. Like the Borg.

Journolist and the Leftist narrative machine is as strong as ever. As the election year rolls around, they’ll be out in force propping up President Obama and denigrating every single Republican hopeful. If they can undermine every Republican by using the opposition research fed to them by all the different campaigns, they’ll do it. It ultimately serves their goal, anyway — weaken all the Republicans so that none of them can beat Obama.

Don’t be duped.

Posted in Democrats, Liberals, Political Animals, Sarah Palin | No Comments »

More Jobless Claims: Obama Administration & Press [But That's Redundant] Flummoxed By “Unexpected” Economic News

Okay, I might have made up that last part. It’s true, though, the jobless claims have gone up again. My prediction? They’ll continue to go up for a while, unfortunately. If gas prices inflate (and they will), costs to employers inflate across the board. Makes it tough to hire more people.

Here’s the deal:

In the week ending April 10, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 484,000, an increase of 24,000 from the previous week’s unrevised figure of 460,000. The 4-week moving average was 457,750, an increase of 7,500 from the previous week’s unrevised average of 450,250.

Also, as Ed Morrissey points out, the government is still hiring thousands of temporary workers so that means that the private sector is losing significantly more jobs–thousands of them.

If the Democrats succeed in enacting more of their policies, permanent joblessness will be the American way.

Thanks, President Obama!

Posted in America, Barack Obama, Democrats, Economy, Show Me The Money | 2 Comments »

Another Way To Punish Doctors…And Patients

More unintended consequences. For doctors who offer payment plans for patients who can’t afford to pay up front, a new regulation by the government. It’s designed to “fix” problems, don’t you know:

Our new ad below. Learn more at StopTheCFPA.com.

“Of course I allow my patients to pay in installments. They couldn’t afford orthodontics otherwise. Does that make me a financial company?”

Legislation that has passed the House and is pending in the Senate would create a new regulatory agency with the power to regulate a small business that allows its customers to pay in more than four installments or applies late fees –Senate Bill § 1027(a)(2)(B)(iii)– This is the wrong way to fix financial regulation and the wrong way to protect consumers. Let’s get it right by working together on a commonsense solution without creating a new $410 million big government bureaucracy with powers to regulate businesses that had nothing to do with the financial crisis.

Posted in Capitalism, Democrats, Economy | No Comments »

A Shortage Of Doctors: Ya Don’t Say… And The Other Unintended Consequences Of Obamacare

The Wall Street Journal shares this inevitable news:

The new federal health-care law has raised the stakes for hospitals and schools already scrambling to train more doctors.

Experts warn there won’t be enough doctors to treat the millions of people newly insured under the law. At current graduation and training rates, the nation could face a shortage of as many as 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

That shortfall is predicted despite a push by teaching hospitals and medical schools to boost the number of U.S. doctors, which now totals about 954,000.

The greatest demand will be for primary-care physicians. These general practitioners, internists, family physicians and pediatricians will have a larger role under the new law, coordinating care for each patient.

The U.S. has 352,908 primary-care doctors now, and the college association estimates that 45,000 more will be needed by 2020. But the number of medical-school students entering family medicine fell more than a quarter between 2002 and 2007.

A shortage of primary-care and other physicians could mean more-limited access to health care and longer wait times for patients.

The whole point of health care reform was too feel better–not you, or your health–but liberal politicians.

It wasn’t to improve health care treatment.

It wasn’t to reduce costs.

It wasn’t even to get more people under care.

Wait, what? That’s right. More people will be insured, but patients will receive less care at more cost. It’s just logical. The new health care system creates a gatekeeper system that will eliminate individual choice and drive up costs. So, a person thinks something is wrong with his prostate–he goes directly to a proctologist. That saves 1. wait time 2. cost (no double doctor fees) and 3. diagnosis time.

But not now.

Oh no! Now, a patient must wait to get into an overburdened primary care physician, get a referral and then get into another physician. A patient will be dead by the time he gets diagnosed.

The inevitable response?

Cash-only doctors. Some doctors won’t accept this new insurance and work outside the system. So, people will pay into the health service, hate the waits and then, go pay cash for good care.

The rich will have good care while subsidizing everyone else. The middle class will be caught in a jam because the taxes will be so egregious they can’t afford anything, never mind a quick diagnosis. So they will be caught in government-mandated substandard care.

And the poor, who don’t pay into the system, will still misuse the system because they still won’t take care of themselves. And Medicare and Medicaid could have been expanded to help them as is.

But noooo. An overhaul had to happen. The government had to control health care.

If this diseased legislation doesn’t get revoked, America is going to go down the road of all disastrous socialized countries: chronic unemployment, disheartened and downwardly mobile middle class and an elite aristocracy for whom policy doesn’t matter.

In the liberal world that’s called utopia.

And by the way, a small board will decide what does and does not get covered under Obamacare. So, yes, death sentences will be handed down by the government. That too, is inevitable.

Posted in Barack Obama, Democrats, Socialism | 5 Comments »

Congress’ Health Care Oversight May Hurt Their Own Coverage?

Has a group ever more richly deserved this irony? From NRO:

In a new report, the Congressional Research Service says the law may have significant unintended consequences for the “personal health insurance coverage” of senators, representatives and their staff members. For example, it says, the law may “remove members of Congress and Congressional staff” from their current coverage, in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, before any alternatives are available. The confusion raises the inevitable question: If they did not know exactly what they were doing to themselves, did lawmakers who wrote and passed the bill fully grasp the details of how it would influence the lives of other Americans?

Does indeed beg the question.

This health care bill is going to be a noose around the necks of Democrats.

Posted in Barack Obama, Democrats, Political Animals | 3 Comments »