The headline “Romney and McCain: The GOP Frenemies’ Club” showed up on my news feed last night. It sounded like something written by TPM‘s Josh Marshall or Washington Monthly‘s Steve Benen.
In fact, it was former Seattle Times columnist, amateur cheerleader, and current political blogger-pundit Michelle Malkin:
Michael Corleone said to “keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.” But what, pray tell, do we do with our frenemies? This is the awful, election-year quandary of movement conservatives. And everything you need to know about our heartache can be summed up in one image…
When they’re together, they look like they’re holding each other (and the rest of us) hostage.
Malkin’s mini-photo essay brings to mind a recent photo-essay at TPM titled, “Get Off My Lawn!: Pictures Of John McCain Looking Miserable Next To Mitt Romney.” Yes…we have Michelle Malkin and Josh Marshall publishing the same sort of photo-essay “hit” pieces against Mitt Romney. What an amazing political world we live in!
Some Republicans now seem hell-bent on reelecting Obama. Newt Gingrich supporters are putting serious money and effort into it with this new anti-Romney film:
Entitled “When Mitt Romney Came to Town,” the film produced by Jason Killian Meath, a former Republican National Committee aide, is being funded by Winning Our Future, an organization run by longtime aides to Gingrich. Sheldon Adelson, chairman and chief executive officer of Las Vegas Sands Corp. (LVS), and a Gingrich supporter, has given Winning Our Future $5 million to help air the film in South Carolina.
It’s an interesting gambit. Gingrich’s friends have done the calculus. They believe that the damage done to Romney (and to some extent, Republicans) is worth it.
Unlikely. They may slightly reduce Romney’s chances of getting the nomination. But not enough for a Newt nomination. Among other problems, his performance against Obama is substantially worse than Romney’s (RCP’s average gives Obama +1.5% versus Romney and +8.8% versus Gingrich using national polls). Republicans will, in the end, go with the candidate who performs best against Obama. That’s what happened with McCain in 2008, and it is very likely to happen with Romney in 2012.
At this point, only the “perfect storm” could sink Romney’s G.O.P. nomination prospects this year. That isn’t going to happen, if only because the anti-Romney wing of the party isn’t unified…
The tension is exacerbated by the deep divisions between two key GOP wings: tea party groups yearning for a pure small-government conservative, and evangelical Christians who want a loyal social conservative.
In one sign of their desperation, some activists are holding out for what they acknowledge is a spectacular long shot: a late-entering savior who could still qualify for enough state ballots and win enough delegates to force a brokered GOP convention this summer.
Without any clear alternative to Mitt Romney, this internal G.O.P. struggle is turning into a bloodbath, now with Gingrich’s friends putting millions of dollars into the Obama reelection effort.
Malkin picked the wrong aphorism: Mitt is no Godfather, and any frenemy-like alliances that really matter have already disintegrated.
The apt proverb here is, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” and Newt Gingrich is Barack Obama’s new best friend.
I just posted this in the previous thread, but considering Malkin’s comments, it seem appropriate to post here as well:
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It’s kind of Ironic that of the remanining nominees, the various factions of the Republican Party are rather well represented:
Rick Perry & John Huntsman – the financial/establishment “rich white guys” arm of the Republican Party, which has led the party for decades either from in front or behind the scenes. Huntsman hasn’t got a prayer in S. Carolina or the rest of the South, so he might as well get out of the race now – his 17% third-place showing is about as good as it’s going to get. He will run out of money and still have no momentum by the time the nomination process gets back to friendlier states. If Romney can pick up Huntsman’s endorsement and supporters, he will be hard for any of the other Republicans to beat.
Newt Gingrich – the rhetorical blow-hard wing whos’ only purpose is to stay in power and get rich in the process. They will say or do anything to get elected, and make up a big part of the Republican leadership in Congress. If the Democrates offered more possibilities in that regard, they would switch parties in a heartbeat – and deny that they had ever been a Republican. But his flip-flopping, typical of that brand of Republicanism, didn’t help him in N. Hamshire – people seem to have dismissed his attempts to appear “populist” and his attacks on Romney’s history at Bain Capital.
Rick Santorum & Rick Perry – the Evangelical wing of the Republican Party. This wing isn’t going to vote for a Mormon. Between them they couldn’t get a total of more than 12% of the New Hampshire vote. One of them needs to drop out, and Perry’s the logical one to do so. It will be interesting to see how much bigger a share these guys will get in S. Carolina, that will be a gauge of that element of the Republican Party’s strength in the Bible Belt.
Ron Paul – the libertarian wing of the party, previously represented by Barry Goldwater and his ilk. They hate the federal government and everything it’s done in the past century and a half, but don’t buy into the Republican social agenda. At least, they are ideologically consistent. I think, however, that Ron Paul has reached his zenith – expect that Romney’s Super-Pacs will emphasize the crazier aspects of his personality and agenda.
So what’s missing? The Tea Party, of course. Michele Bachmann’s “suspension” of her campaign left them with no candidate. This is where the Tea Party’s mixed agenda and motivations have hurt it, because it’s supporters have scattered among the libertarians (Ron Paul) and the Evangelicals (Santorum and Perry).
Newt may be aiming for Romney, but his new-found “populism” didn’t seem to have had any effect in New Hamshire.
If anything, it seems to have hurt him. Everyone knows that Republicans support ultra-rich white guys making boatloads of money at the expense of the middle-class worker and investor, but that’s not something you talk about in Republican circles. Instead, Republicans repeat the mantra that anybody who works hard can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, rich people are rich because they deserve to be rich, and the ultra-rich are “job creators”, regardless of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
No better image of Romney and what our trolls are all about exists today:
http://cdn.theatlantic.com/sta.....apital.jpg
Republicans spending millions badmouthing private equity firms to attacl a Republican presidential candidate … man, ya gotta love it!!!
@4
‘Aint life grand.
In general I find Malkin detestable, but in this case she’s pretty well nailed it. To a degree it’s a conflict between those in the GOP who aren’t insane, just greedy, and those who are both insane and greedy. Gingrich has devolved into an overgrown three-year-old who gets mad that the other kids won’t play the game his way, so he smashes all the toys and runs home to Mommy. We saw the same sort of thing happen in 2008, when the Republican puppeteers (wisely) got McCain nominated for President, and then doomed him to failure by saddling him with Palin.
Romney is a shameless serial fibber, and his whoppers keep getting more over the top! Here’s what he said today:
1) Obama “became a private equity owner” by taking over GMC and Chrysler, and “shut down dealerships and laid off thousands.”
2) “My job creation in the private sector created more jobs than Obama did in the entire country!”
Wow.
You can view the video on CNBC’s website.
Malkin makes me f’ing sick:
Wow Michelle I wish! Look at how he’s governed. Not right wing enough apparently..
What a loon.
Unless most of the remaining Rs leave the race, this is Romney’s. Paul and Gingrich aren’t leaving.
Paul hopes to have enough delegates to make some sort of statement at the convention.
The “statement”, whatever that entails, will be tempered by the goal of facilitating nepotism in the libertarian movement — Rand Paul 2016.
Gingrich invented the politics of personal destruction and he is the godfather of our current disfunctional government. Gingrich knows he cannot get the nomination, but this is personal with Gingrich now.
I’m hoping his greed doesn’t overcome his animus.
In the meantime, Republicans are predicting a “bloodbath” in the general election, and cheering their prospects.
And here I though the Republicans were against illegal drugs for recreational purposes!
Go, Newt, go! There are few things more pleasurable to watch than Republicans eating other Republicans.
RE: Michelle Malkin
When someone (generally one of my friends kids but not always) has a melt down my friends and I call it having or pulling a “Jimmy” after Jimmy Cooper the lead character in the film Quadrophenia.
Like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....re=related
Malkin’s whole career has been based on pulling one decades long “Jimmy.”
When it comes to M. Malkin, I can only half believe what she is saying when she dresses in a cheerleader uniform. Jeebus demands it.
It’s unfortunate that Romney is just too damned boring and white bread to ever to have done something fun and embarrassing in his past that could come out now and knock him off his stride.
I shudder that Mitt thinks he can lead this country, when he has absolutely no experiential grasp of how anyone but a rich white boring entitled teetotalling child of privilege lives.
LS @ 14
I surely concur. I trust people who’ve had a few bumps in life, who’ve strayed from the path a few times. Mitt Romney seems to be an automaton who has rigorously, without incident, followed a script written long ago. He has never known hardship of any sort. I just don’t see how the leader of the free world could be someone who doesn’t know how life is for the other 99%.
Libertarian branch, evangelicals, conservatives, war hawks, crony capitalists – so, what are there branches of the Democratic Party?
All I can think of is moderates, progressives and the very far left. Are there any other divisions?
@16
I’d say the very far left in America aren’t members of the Democratic party. Or if they are it’s only nominally, who else would they join up with?
There’s the working class Dem’s. Picture a woman working in a hospital, not a guy on a production line.
The liberals AKA the NPR Elite, half of whom are DINO’s. You’re 60 and still mad at your dad, good job on that one…
The Dem’s have the younger creative class, under 35 or so and mostly working on or heavily with the internet. Over 35 or so and they’re mostly liberals.
There used to be the environmental voter, but I think that’s just become the norm for most Democrats these days and is no longer a solid block on its own.
I’m sure there’s at least a few more groups out there.
There’s an interesting split in agriculture, where you have the Big Green Tractor crowd that goes for conservative Republicans and the younger crowd, on smaller farms, closer to towns, that tend to go for the D’s.
I was listening to conservative radio during the commercial.
Oh. My. God.
This conservative talking head wanted Perry and Gingrich drummed out of the republican party for questioning Romney. He wanted them to drop out. He wanted them gone. He wanted anyone who supported them to be punished. He used the term “heresy” for question Romney. To question romney was to question capitalism itself.
PI @ 16
There’s the branch, a very large branch, that believes in science, reason, and just simply what is. I consider myself part of that branch.