Scott Spiegel

Much has been written about 2012 GOP presidential primary frontrunners Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich’s weaknesses as candidates.

Less has been written about how they stand up next to each other, and whom the comparison favors.  A close look at their records makes it clear that Romney can only benefit from Gingrich staying in the race as long as possible.

Gingrich will likely help Romney in two ways: first, by making Romney seem more conservative to hesitant members of the Tea Party wing of the GOP.  This will happen via Gingrich’s patchwork quilt of liberal positions on such issues as Romney’s role at Bain Capital (“Exploitive!”), Paul Ryan’s Path to Prosperity (“Right-wing social engineering!”), and Nancy Pelosi’s cap-and-trade bill (“Bipartisan!”).

Second, Gingrich may push Romney to the right on some issues, nudging his competitor to come out more forcefully for the conservative aspects of his platform and commit to them more unwaveringly as campaign promises.

(This is in contrast to the advantage Romney gains by Ron Paul staying in the race, which is for Paul to make Romney seem like a spring chicken with a manly laugh instead of an old goat with a girlish giggle.)

Newt’s attacks on Romney from the left will help Romney develop defenses against the charges the Obama campaign will inevitably fling at him in the general election.

And positions on which Gingrich is good—for example, his promise to repeal Obamacare on his first day in office—may spur Romney to take ever bolder stances.  If you have any doubts about Romney fulfilling his oath to issue a 50-state executive waiver, Newt’s upping the ante on Obamacare will make it harder for Romney to back down.  Newt’s grandiosity, however annoying and impracticable, will prod Romney to promise and act bigger.

(Give Newt credit, I guess, for proposing too many ideas rather than too few.  It’s just that voters get suspicious when the ideas include things like giving the moon statehood.)

Newt’s arrogance and intemperance will make Romney seem even-handed and statesmanlike.  Take Newt’s petulant refusal to debate Obama in the general election if the events are moderated by “the media.”  And they say Newt won’t help build party unity!

What of Newt’s endless, reckless assaults on Romney?  Won’t they hurt Romney in voters’ eyes?  I doubt it.  Being called fickle by Newt is like being called a blowhard by Al Sharpton.

But it’s not only Newt’s venomous attacks on Romney that will drive voters to side with the former Massachusetts governor.  Newt’s pathetic justifications for his dips in the polls and poor recent debate performances belie his claim that Romney is the forked-tongue prevaricator in the race.  My favorite Newt excuse, on his Tampa debate with Romney last week, is: “I stood there thinking, ‘How can you say these things you know are falsehoods?’  That’s why I was quiet, because there was no civil way to call him out on what was in fact a series of falsehoods that were astonishing.”  Because if there’s one thing we know about Newt, it’s that he’d rather be quiet than uncivil!

Or consider this half-baked zinger, which Gingrich offered as a rationalization for why Romney would win the Florida primary: “He can bury me for a very short amount of time with four or five or six times as much money, most of it raised in Wall Street from the guys who got bailouts from the government.”

Let’s unpack this obfuscating, run-on defense, which sounds like something a Democrat would say.  Under normal circumstances, we tend to accept that candidates who raise lots of cash have many passionate supporters.  Gingrich himself has been bragging about how much cash he raised after his unexpected South Carolina victory.  Now suddenly campaign cash is bad?

“A very short amount of time” implies that Romney will best Gingrich in the polls for just a few days, maybe a few weeks—a mere blip in the unstoppable wave of his opponent’s gathering momentum.  Um, wait—doesn’t that precisely describe Gingrich’s standing?

As for Wall Street: Which former GOP Speaker of the House supported the September 2008 bank bailout?  Why, that’s right—Newt Gingrich!

Gingrich has threatened to stay in the race until the 2012 Republican National Convention in August.  I say bring it on.

Romney doesn’t give the GOP exactly what it wants as a candidate, but what he gives us is better than what any of the remaining candidates gives us—and Newt’s presence in the race makes Romney an especially appealing contrast.  Rick Santorum obsesses over social issues and is an unreliable fiscal conservative.  Ron Paul is terrible on foreign policy.  But Newt is in a category of his own: erratic and reckless, bombastic and bloviating, he alienates independents, many conservatives, and probably his own dog.



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In a NewsRealBlog post last week, I wrote about the top 10 excuses Democrats will make for why they were destroyed in Tuesday’s historic midterm elections.  Apparently I gave Democrats too much credit.  I was assuming they would accept the fact that they had been defeated.

Any self-respecting coach who boasted a season average loss of 65 points would consider letting someone else take charge.  As Michael Tomasky observes of midterm elections, “[Y]ou lose 65 seats, you resign.  Period.  There should not be a question.”  But Congressional Democrats have expressed so little interest in replacing House Majority (soon to be Minority) Leader Nancy Pelosi that you might be forgiven for thinking she were a Republican plant.

(Perhaps liberal columnist Susan Estrich is also a Republican plant; see her hilarious but non-satirical column, “Nancy Pelosi, Superhero.”)

Pelosi plans to celebrate the wild success of the 111^th Congress with a swanky soiree in the Cannon House Office Building.

Let’s catalogue the damage from Tuesday’s elections.  Approximately 40% of incoming House GOP freshmen are affiliated with the Tea Party, and five (six if Joe Miller wins) of the seven Senate pickups are for Tea Party candidates.  This is to say nothing of reelected incumbents who are already Tea Party luminaries, such as Representative Michele Bachmann and Senator Jim DeMint.

Not only did Republicans net more than 60 House seats, 7 Senate seats, 7 governorships, and dozens of state legislatures—which should be a strong enough signal to Democrats that America is sick of their policies—but these candidates are on average more conservative and less likely to vote for Democratic legislation than Republicans in the current Congress.  Reelected incumbent Tea Party Congressmen are also more likely to pick up key chairmanships and leadership posts and exert greater influence over Congress.

But of the incoming GOP freshman class, the website ThinkProgress.com cries, “91% have sworn to never allow an income tax increase on any individual or business… 79% have pledged to permanently repeal the estate tax… 48% are pushing for a balanced budget amendment”—as though the American people weren’t wildly in favor of all of these proposals.

Paul Krugman hasn’t stopped his wailing for more federal stimulus spending and currency manipulation.  His latest diatribe, one week after the election, is indistinguishable from his diatribes from one week or even three months ago.  On Monday he proposed “weakening the dollar” and “leading people to believe that we will have somewhat above-normal inflation over the next few years,” citing as supporters of his crazy policies “many economists, some regional Fed presidents and the International Monetary Fund”—by which he means “discredited Keynesians, the people responsible for the mess we’re in, and the organization that has destroyed economies worldwide from Indonesia to Ireland.”

Apparently liberal commentators don’t just want surviving Congressional Democrats to commit suicide again.  Evidently they’d also like it if our Commander in Chief did so as well.  Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich advises President Obama to dig in like FDR in 1936, rather than move to the center like Clinton in 1994.  Frank Rich recommends that Obama dare Republicans to enact the tax and spending cuts they propose, and suggests that if the GOP does this, the Democratic Party will come roaring back in 2012 like Harry Truman in 1948.

Dan Froomkin of the Huffington Post muses, “[T]he big question will be what lesson Obama takes from Tuesday’s election results.  If he and his advisors are finally ready to acknowledge that the source of voter unhappiness was government ineffectiveness—rather than government overreach… then there’s plenty of room for him to maneuver on his own.”  Wrong lesson!  Try again.

Froomkin continues: “Indeed, progressives are urging him to seize the opportunity to take a more muscular approach with his executive powers…  They also hope Obama will use his regulatory authority, his enforcement powers, and his prerogatives as commander in chief to make decisive moves that can’t be sabotaged by Congressional Republicans.”  Wow—it’s as though Froomkin is directly channeling the collective will of American voters!

DeWayne Wickham of USA Today declares, “Don’t wave a white flag; hoist the battle flag.  That’s what Barack Obama should do…  The lesson to be learned… is not that Democrats should surrender to the right wing.  It is that they should put up a better fight to move their agenda.”  These cute sentiments are almost excusable in the waning weeks and days before an election—who doesn’t like an optimist, a persistent fighter, an underdog—but a week after the Democrats were destroyed?  Reality hasn’t sunk in for these people yet?

Sensible Toby Harnden of the UK Telegraph predicts, “Obama is not about to move to the centre…  Nothing in his career indicates he is ready to cut deals with political opponents.  He is sure what he believes is right; if you don’t agree with him, he pities you for being so slow to understand…  Last Tuesday was a setback like nothing else he had experienced in life and it appears to have left his enormous sense of self-assurance undiminished.”

And Wesley Pruden notes, “President Obama thinks nobody is really mad about what he’s done—they just want a little soothing syrup on it.  He promises better speeches to describe the same old soggy dish the dogs won’t touch.”

Please note that all of this Democratic blindness is occurring despite a marked absence of gloating on the part of the GOP, who recognize that the Tea Party threw them a lifeline and that they had better hold onto it tight if they want to survive the next election cycle.  Democrats are arguably no less triumphant about their performance last Tuesday than Republicans.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said last week, “[T]he White House has a choice: they can change course, or they can double down on a vision of government that the American people have roundly rejected.”  Alas, it appears that Democrats are choosing the latter.

To paraphrase an oft-cited definition of insanity: being a Democrat means doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different electoral results.



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In 2006 Congressional Democrats campaigned on the conceit that Republicans were corrupt up to their coke-filled noses and incapable of governing so much as a taco stand, and that the country was yearning for a breath of fresh air from the party that brought us Gary Condit, William Jefferson, Cynthia McKinney, Jim McGreevey, John Murtha, Eliot Spitzer, and Eric Massa.

After her historic transition to the position of House Speaker-elect, Nancy Pelosi promised, “This leadership team will create the most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history.”

Pelosi pledged to “drain the swamp” of slimy Republicans who tapped their feet in bathroom stalls, sent flirty texts to post-pubescent pages, and… what else was it Congressional Republicans were supposedly up to in 2006?

Ignoring all the scandals associated with Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards in their race for the presidency and focusing only on Congressional misdeeds, and starting only with Obama’s November 2008 election, the past 21 months have brought a flurry of Democratic indiscretions:

•    Illinois Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr. is under investigation by the Justice Department regarding a taped conversation in which impeached Governor Rod Blagojevich told a staffer that a fundraiser for Jackson would donate $1.5 million to Blagojevich’s reelection campaign if President-elect Obama’s Senate seat went to Jackson

•    Senator Roland Burris was reprimanded by the Senate Ethics Committee for providing misleading and incomplete information to the Senate in advance of his confirmation to Obama’s Senate seat

•    Congressional Democrats rushed the $787 billion stimulus spending bill to a vote before it could be edited and violated their pledge to post it online for five days before signing it

•    Congressional Democrats self-righteously pushed for PAYGO regulations mandating that money be found in the budget for new entitlements, then ignored their own law to push through unfunded, extended rounds of unemployment benefits

•    Congressional leadership tailored the health care reform bill to include payoffs such as the Louisiana Purchase, the Cornhusker Kickback, and Gator-Aid, and removed these only after they were publicized

•    Congressional leadership attempted such tricks to get health care legislation passed as introducing the Slaughter Rule (aka “deem and “pass”), using budget reconciliation for something it wasn’t meant for, making the bill “budget neutral” by pairing six years of benefits with ten years of taxes, and deceiving on-the-fence pro-life Democrats with an unenforceable executive order banning health care funding for abortions

Last Thursday Democratic Representative Charles Rangel, former Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, was charged with 13 House ethics violations, including failure to disclose income, failure to pay taxes on his condo in the Dominican Republic, possession of four city-subsidized rent-controlled luxury apartments, use of the apartments for campaign committee operations, improper acceptance of corporate-sponsored trips to Caribbean islands, and intervention to award a tax break worth tens of millions of dollars to a major corporate donor to the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service.

Rangel has responded to the charges, for which he has been under investigation for two years, by offering reporters such open and informative replies as “Where I live and how I live? It’s nobody’s damn business where I live,” “Common sense dictates that members of Congress should not be held responsible for wrongdoing,” and “Why don’t you mind your own goddamned business?”

Rangel stepped down from his chairman post, which was taken over by Representative Pete Stark—who subsequently resigned over his own tax scandal.

Over the weekend Pelosi told Christiane Amanpour that Rangel’s role in her “most ethical Congress” was invisible to her: she referred Amanpour to the Office of Congressional Ethics, which Pelosi herself set up in 2009, saying, “I’m totally out of the loop. It is independent. It is confidential, classified, secret, whatever. We don’t know what it is.”

2010 Pelosi campaign commercial: “I can’t see rule-breaking from my House!”

This week Democratic Representative Maxine Waters, who serves on the House Financial Services Committee, was charged with three ethics violations related to the claim that she secured bailout money for OneUnited Bank, for which her husband had served on the board and whose stock he owned, and which received $12 million in funds. Like Rangel, Waters is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus and chose to face a trial in the fall rather than plead guilty to the allegations.

Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, who helped allocate bank bailout funds, told Waters at the time that her involvement in the OneUnited bailout was a conflict of interest and that “You should stay out of it.”

Naturally, the mainstream media is blaming the eruption of Democratic corruption on the same cause to which they attributed the Tea Party uprising… racism!

In a story on the racial angle to the recent allegations, the L.A. Times suggested this howler of a defense: “Ethics advocates maintain that lax enforcement of House ethics rules encouraged Rangel and Waters to take defiant stands.” Next on the MSM’s apologia schedule: “Obama’s terrorism experts maintain that Bush’s lax enforcement of airline security encouraged Saudi hijackers to take defiant stands.”

Camille Paglia recently praised Pelosi’s ability to corral House troops to support the health care reform bill, even though the bill is a rotting corpse of bureaucratic sleaze and fraud: “Pelosi scored a giant gain for feminism… [She] demonstrated that a woman can be just as gritty, ruthless and arm-twisting in pursuing her agenda as anyone in the long line of fabled male speakers before her… As for the actual content of the House healthcare bill, horrors!… [T]his rigid, intrusive and grotesquely expensive bill is a nightmare.”

Apparently it’s come to this: feminists are now praising women for their ability to be as corrupt as men.

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