Let me first retract my comment about Rick Perry suggesting he had some deal with Mitt Romney to stay in the race. Now I would ask supporters of Ron Paul to explain his refusal to criticize Mitt Romney while he attacks more conservative candidates whose views are far closer his. And isn't it amazing that Newt Gingrich's adultery seems to be a big plus with many conservatives, so long as he attacks CNN? Hypocrites! If a liberal Democrat behaved like Gingrich, they would call for his eternal damnation.
Oddly, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney's campaign began issuing missives during the South Carolina CNN debate last night listing a number of items regarding fellow candidate Newt Gingrich apparently pointing to the former Speaker's "grandiose" notions about himself and his place in American politics and history. This, after Rick Santorum did his best to slam Gingrich on a perceived negative personality trait (Newt's ego) in what, to this viewer, was one of the lowest blows I've ever witnessed in political theater. But because Santorum is a self-described Christian, he gets a pass. Of course, the former senator from Pennsylvania who lost his seat in a shellacking and sees that as a stepping stone to the presidency would have us believe he has an average-sized ego and eats humble pie at every meal.
If Newt Gingrich wins the South Carolina primary Saturday:
Gingrich would not be my first choice for president right now — Mitt Romney would be — but he does fit the historic contours as I’ve been writing about them here now for several years, making two claims. First, we enter now an age of Jackson, when the heartland rises in opposition to Eastern cities influence as it did shortly after the death of Jefferson and Adams, sending the cold willies up the spine of gentry in Richmond and Boston. Jefferson’s contempt for Jackson was echoed in the establishment of his day and paralleled the “Eek, a mouse!” response of MSM’s to Grizzly Mama Sarah Palin, daughter of the forest. Second, America has always had two countervailing “creation myths” — the Boston Tea Party in 1773 and the Alamo in 1836. It is not clear yet which will dominant.
What I’ve found interesting these past few weeks is the noticeable absence of one heretofore prominent politician, even in his own state. I’m referring of course to South Carolina’s own Sen. Jim DeMint. Sure, he’s all over the Palmetto State, mixing and mingling with his constituents, and still very popular in the state. What I’m more puzzled by is the senator’s lack of visibility on the national stage, especially when all eyes are on his home state and on a group that heralded him as its de facto kingmaker — the Tea Party.
People have asked me about the whole SOPA thing, how bad a law it could be.
Sure, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) are really destructive, potentially damaging U.S competitiveness and genuinely killing jobs. However, there's some good news associated with the reaction to the bad law, news that we're missing.
As an industry, we've been able to rationalize that bad laws and politics don't matter, but now we're waking up. More importantly, this has also gotten the attention of "the Internet," meaning a lot of the people who use the World Wide Web. That includes some really smart Hill staffers who believe in the democratic potential of the 'Net.
How can so many people have been wrong about the presidential chances of Texas Gov. Rick Perry?
It wasn’t just the round-the-clock chatter on cable news TV. I can clearly remember the consensus emerging only a few months ago that if Perry were to step into the race, he would be a serious challenger to the White House incumbent. He had the track record of a governor, the social-conservative credentials and religion. Oh, and good looks, too.
I just listened to an interview with ABC’s Brian Ross on Washington’s WMAL about his interview with New Gingrich’s second ex-wife, Marianne, scheduled to air tonight on "Nightline." It doesn’t sound like it warrants the Matt Drudge siren of yesterday, like there’s anything in it that we didn’t already know about Newt’s chaotic private and public lives.
Especially if we read in the summer of 2010 John Richardson’s long (eight pages in the online version) and mesmerizing Esquire story on Gingrich. Romney and his aides must have missed it.
If the biggest shocker in the Brian Ross interview is that Newt asked Marianne, to whom he had been married for 18 years, for an “open marriage,” that’s there in the year-and-a-half-old piece. In Richardson’s words: “He asked her to just tolerate the affair [with current wife Callista Bisek], an offer she refused.” Also, there is Newt calling Marianne to ask for a divorce shortly after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, having installed Callista, 23 years his junior and a congressional aide, in their Washington apartment and in their bed.
Perhaps Mitt Romney should run for president of the Cayman Islands. If Romney does have tax-avoiding accounts in the Caymans, will Ron Paul make ridiculous excuses for Romney's low tax rates, as he did for Romney's big layoffs? This matter suggests again why Mitt Romney will not be elected president and why Ron Paul needs to decide whether he is a legitimate libertarian, or merely an apologist for the worst practices of legal abuses from the most cynical and greedy of the 1 percent.
Why must I, a cold-country New Englander and a solitary mountain dweller with a broken foot, be the only American to write about the upcoming election in Israel for leadership in the Likud, as critical to Israel’s destiny and to American interests in Israel as the fateful primary in South Carolina?
The Israeli paper Arutz Sheva reports that Moshe Feiglin, who is challenging Benjamin Netanyahu for leadership of Likud in the party's primaries two weeks from now, cited a favorable poll Tuesday morning as evidence that his chances of seriously embarrassing Netanyahu are high, and that a victory by Netanyahu is not a complete certainty: “In a poll conducted by polling company Ma’agar Mochot, about 26 percent of Likud members not affiliated with Feiglin's faction agreed that ‘it is important to vote for Moshe Feiglin in the upcoming primaries, even though it is clear that Binyamin Netanyahu will win, just so that the right wing inside Likud will gain strength.’ "
I think it was my grandmother who once said, “Nobody buys the cow, if they can get the milk for free.”
I thought about Grandma in the context of the Wikipedia protest of the SOPA bill.
In full disclosure, one of my clients is a content company that care deeply that they are being forced to give their milk away for free, thanks to the vagaries of the Internet.
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