Barack Hussein Gingrich

He's desperate, he's angry, and he's doing Romney a favor.

By JAMES TARANTO

Humiliated in Iowa, a desperate and angry Newt Gingrich is taking the offensive against Mitt Romney, whom he accuses of "looting companies when he headed the Bain Capital investment firm," reports NationalJournal.com, and "conservative interests are pushing back":

"Newt Gingrich's attacks on Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital are disgusting," Club for Growth President Chris Chocola said in a statement Monday night. "There are a number of issues for Mitt Romney's Republican opponents to attack him for, but attacking him for making investments in companies to create a profit for his investors is just wrong.''

Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh said Gingrich "is using the language of the left.''

The National Review weighed in on Gingrich's line of attack this morning, calling it "foolish and destructive.'' Former New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg joined the anti-Gingrich bandwagon in an interview with MSNBC's Chuck Todd. "We are a market economy,'' he said. Added Rep. Frank Gunta, sitting to his left: "I don't think (these attacks) belong in a Republican primary.''

Writing in today's Political Diary, our colleague Kim Strassel sums up the attacks (from Gingrich and other struggling candidates) and adds her own disapproval:

Mr. Gingrich accused Mr. Romney of "bankrupting companies and laying off employees." A pro-Gingrich Super PAC is meanwhile gearing up to release a 27-minute video that highlights workers who lost their jobs after being restructured by Bain. The PAC has also created an anti-Romney website devoted to the topic: www.kingofbain.com. [Rick] Perry, desperate to jumpstart his flailing campaign in South Carolina, said the only time Mr. Romney had ever worried about a pink slip was "whether he was going to have enough of them to hand out." Even [Jon] Huntsman, who likes to pitch himself as another candidate-manager, snapped that "What is clear is [Mr. Romney] likes firing people. I like creating jobs."

Actually, the only thing that is clear is that the GOP field is ditching first principles in a desperate attempt to stop the Romney locomotive.

On the merits, we agree with all these criticisms. It's shameful for Romney's rivals--especially Gingrich, who should know better--to be engaging in this sort of class-warfare idiocy. As Charles Murray asked in an ironically nocturnal tweet: "How can a conservative attack Romney for Bain and sleep at night?"

Associated Press

No more Mittster Nice Guy.

Yet all that said, assuming that Romney is the eventual nominee, Gingrich is doing him a huge favor. To see why, think about what happened to John Kerry, the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat who by the way served in Vietnam.
At a time of national-security crisis, Kerry planned to coast into the White House on his autobiography as a war hero. Against weak opposition, he quickly wrapped up the Democratic nomination, and no one--either opponents or the press--bothered to question the story he told about himself.
Then, once the general-election campaign was under way, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth came along to dispute his accounts of his own heroism and to remind Americans that Kerry's first foray into political life consisted of Senate testimony in which he viciously slandered fellow veterans. Kerry had no good response--in part because the Swift Boat Vets had him dead to rights, at least on the latter point, and in part because he was unprepared.
Romney is in a troublingly analogous position. At a time of economic crisis, he too is running on his biography, as a businessman who knows how to create jobs. Like Kerry, Romney faced weak opposition, at least until Gingrich's rise a couple of months ago. Timid Pawlenty and Tongue-Tied Perry tried to land a few blows, but they were barely up for a pillow fight. Gingrich, by contrast, is causing Romney some pain--and Romney is making things worse by saying things like "I like being able to fire people who provide services to me."
If Gingrich didn't attack Romney over Bain now, Barack Obama would do so in the fall. In fact, Obama will do so in the fall anyway, assuming Romney is the nominee. Others on the left, such as some guy at the Puffington Host, are already doing it:

Romney's statement [about firing people], and in fact his entire career at Bain Capital, shows that this whole Republican job creator mantra is, to steal a line from Newt Gingrich, pious baloney. The word pious fits because Republicans really do worship the top 1 percent and the Wall Street tycoons like Romney who manipulate money but don't actually build anything or create net new jobs. In fact, not only do they not create them, they actually destroy them.

By attacking now, Gingrich ensures that it won't be the first voters hear about the matter, which will take some of the sting out of the Obama attacks. He's also acting as a proxy for the president--call him Barack Hussein Gingrich--giving Romney the chance to practice and improve his defense, something he unquestionably needs to do.
Contrariwise, if Romney is incapable of learning to defend himself effectively, Republicans are better off learning that now, while there's still time to nominate someone else.
The Sum of Our Fears
Paul Bedard of U.S. News & World Report has the results of an intriguing though not terribly meaningful new survey:

In our New Year's poll, when asked what news event they fear most about 2012, Americans by a margin of two-to-one said Obama's reelection. Only 16 percent said they fear the Democrat won't win a second term, while 33 percent said they fear four more years.

Next to Obama's reelection, 31 percent of Americans said they feared higher taxes, which may be proof that the president's focus on the payroll tax cut has hit paydirt.

It's certainly not proof. Maybe the predominant tax-related worry is the increase in payroll taxes to the 2010 rate (set to happen under current law at the end of next month). On the other hand, income taxes are scheduled to rise to their 2000 levels at the end of this year, and the ever-increasing national debt and entitlement liabilities--which Obama's policies have only accelerated--are eventually going to require new taxes if not arrested.
What is one to make of the 2-to-1 ratio of people who fear Obama's re-election to those who fear his de-election? The overall numbers are too small to use them to forecast an Obama defeat, and it's generally easier to fear someone's presence than his absence (unless it's a loved one).
On the other hand, Republicans discouraged by the failure of Mitt Romney & Co. to inspire enthusiasm can take some solace in Obama's ability to inspire fear. The GOP base will have a motive to go to the polls in November even if Romney isn't the one to provide it.
Great Expectations
In a Bloomberg column, erstwhile Obama adviser Ron Klain speculates that Congress in 2012 will behave as if it were 1996 all over again:

Could the most do-nothing, gridlocked Congress in memory change direction, and could its members decide to save their own political hides? Might congressional Republican leaders choose to produce results by cooperating with President Barack Obama, even if it undercuts the party's front-runner for the presidential nomination, Mitt Romney?

The odds of this happening this year are long.

You can say that again, Ron--especially since Obama, unlike Clinton, has shown no sign of cooperating with Republicans in Congress. Klain's column may be merely an exercise in contrarianism--but if it's written with political strategy in mind, surely the aim is to reinforce Obama's anti-Congress campaign by pretending lawmakers are at fault for not cooperating.
This Stopped Clock Isn't Even Right Twice a Day
"In a sign of pessimism about humanity's future, scientists today set the hands of the infamous 'Doomsday Clock' forward one minute from two years ago," FoxNews.com reports:

"It is now five minutes to midnight," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) director Kennette Benedict announced today (Jan. 10) at a press conference in Washington, D.C.

It seems as if it's been a few minutes to midnight all our life. Turns out it's even longer than that:

The Doomsday Clock came into being in 1947 as a way for atomic scientists to warn the world of the dangers of nuclear weapons. That year, the Bulletin set the time at seven minutes to midnight, with midnight symbolizing humanity's destruction.

So in 65 years, two minutes have passed. The dire warnings have lasted almost a full lifetime. If anything, this whole exercise makes it harder to take seriously the real threat of nuclear weapons, giving it a boy-who-cries-wolf quality. Whether it's close to midnight or morning in America, it's time for the press to start ignoring the fools at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
Janet Napolitano, Please Follow Us on Twitter
Here's an odd piece from one "JWF" at the conservative Human Events:

Just sit back for a minute and imagine the howls from the media if it was disclosed that George W. Bush's Department of Homeland Security was monitoring the social media activity of journalists. The word Nixonian would be trending on Twitter and you could be assured the daily White House press briefing would turn into a free-for-all.

Well, it'll be interesting to see the reaction of Obama's adoring White House press corps when they discover their activities are being tracked by the Department of Homeland Security.

What prompts this is a report from the dubious Russian TV network RT:

Freedom of speech might allow journalists to get away with a lot in America, but the Department of Homeland Security is on the ready to make sure that the government is keeping dibs on who is saying what.

Under the National Operations Center (NOC)'s Media Monitoring Initiative that came out of DHS headquarters in November, Washington has the written permission to retain data on users of social media and online networking platforms.

Specifically, the DHS announced the NCO and its Office of Operations Coordination and Planning (OPS) can collect personal information from news anchors, journalists, reporters or anyone who may use "traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed."

Adds JWF: "Now granted what reporters and anchors tweet is available publicly, but one can only imagine the chilling effect this could have. It stands to reason if these reporters and news anchors believe what they're saying is being compiled into a database then they'll pretty much clam up and stay silent."
This has got to be the silliest paranoid fantasy we've ever encountered. Journalists are going to shut up for fear that somebody will read what they write? Our reaction to this was to check the Homeland Security Twitter account to see if they were following us. They weren't, damn it.
Metaphor Alert

• "The Doomsday Clock, a figurative timepiece used as a barometer of humankind's fate, was moved one minute closer to midnight on Tuesday, the first time it has been nudged forward since 2007."--Washington Post website, Jan. 10
• "This is the sort of hair-splitting in which this column might engage in a tongue-in-cheek item"--Best of the Web Today, Jan. 9