Can’t we end the Republican-on-Republican violence?
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s favorite slam on hated presidential rival Mitt Romney is that the former Massachusetts governor is a liberal flip-flopper who will say most anything to get elected.
Gingrich repeated the line in debates this weekend, reminding Romney that he was a timid Massachusetts moderate who ran to the left of former Sen. Ted Kennedy in 1994 — and lost.
So naturally, a PAC run by former Gingrich associates would attack Romney for being a greedy capitalist?
That’s right — aided by a $5 million donation from casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, the Winning the Future PAC has prepared a 30-minute mini-documentary accusing Romney of vicious corporate tactics while he helmed Bain Capital. The film focuses on layoffs occasioned by Bain investments.
Of course, Gingrich as a candidate has no control whatsoever over Winning the Future PAC’s activities; in fact, it would be illegal if he tried to coordinate the group’s ads.
But let’s not forget that it was Gingrich himself who first used the line of attack last month. After Romney said the anti-government Gingrich should return $1.6 million he earned consulting for mortgage giant Freddie Mac, Gingrich replied: “I would just say that if Gov. Romney would like to give back all the money he’s earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his years at Bain that I would be glad to then listen to him.”
Conservatives from The Weekly Standard to Rush Limbaugh took issue with Gingrich’s remark, correctly perceiving it as an attack upon free-market capitalism. That may be why Gingrich tried to split a hair at Saturday night’s New Hampshire debate, telling the audience “I’m very much for free enterprise,” but adding he was not so enamored of the “Wall Street model” of flipping companies, leveraged buyouts and employees laid off to maximize profits.
Talk about running to the left of Ted Kennedy! Gingrich sounds ready to join the Occupy Wall Street movement.
The fact is, leveraged buyouts, flipping companies and saving money by downsizing employees is free-market capitalism. It may represent the ugly, rapacious side of the system, but what Mitt Romney was doing at Bain Capital was working the market the way it was designed to work.
In fact, that’s just what Romney said at Saturday’s debate, noting that an attack on his work at Bain Capital is something he’d expect from Barack Obama, not a fellow Republican (and one who claims the mantle of “Reagan conservative” every chance he gets).
“But let’s not forget this is the free enterprise system,” Romney said. “We don’t need the government to come in and tell us how to make business work.”
Surely not. And that’s usually a line we’d expect to hear from a person such as Adelson, No. 8 on Forbes’ list of the richest people in the United States. With a net worth of $21.5 billion, a $5 million donation to the pro-Gingrich PAC is peanuts.
What should be curious is why Adelson would underwrite an attack on a Republican for simply practicing capitalism in a brutally efficient way.
But it’s not at all curious when you consider that many Republicans despair of Romney’s chances and are desperate to find somebody else to challenge Obama. For Adelson, Gingrich is that man, although polls increasingly show the Republican base disagrees.
No matter what else, however, Gingrich is now deprived of the chance to attack Romney as a man who will say anything to get elected, since it’s clear Gingrich will do the same. And the next time he invokes Reagan, he’d do well to remember that attacking Romney for laying people off is a line that would make the late Ted Kennedy smile.
Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist and author of the blog SlashPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/SteveSebelius or reach him at (702) 387-5276 or ssebelius@ reviewjournal.com.
