Newt walks it back
by David Atkins
It's been interesting watching the Not Romneys gingerly attack Romney for being the sort of vulture capitalist they've been diligently glorifying and deregulating for decades. They have to do it because the mood of the country is against him, and because the "Romney's a liberal" line hasn't exactly worked to knock him off the pedestal. Gingrich has been the most vocal on this front, though other Not Romneys have taken their shots as well.
Still, the big money men who control the Republican Party won't tolerate that sort of populist heresy for long. We knew the clamps would come down eventually, just not so soon:
Newt Gingrich signaled Wednesday that he believes his criticism of Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital is a mistake — and that he’s created an impression that he was echoing Democratic rhetoric.
Gingrich conceded the problem when pressed by a Rick Santorum supporter at a book signing here Wednesday.
“I’m here to implore one thing of you. I think you’ve missed the target on the way you’re addressing Romney’s weaknesses. I want to beg you to redirect and go after his obvious disingenuousness about his conservatism and lay off the corporatist versus the free market. I think it’s nuanced,” said Dean Glossop, an Army Reservist from Inman, S.C.
“I agree with you,” Gingrich said. “It’s an impossible theme to talk about with Obama in the background. Obama just makes it impossible to talk rationally in that area because he is so deeply into class warfare that automatically you get an echo effect. … I agree with you entirely.”
The flimsiness of Newt's excuse for making a cowardly retreat on Bain Capital is really something. He would stand up to Gordon Gekko, you see, if the threat of imminent Marxism weren't right around the corner in the form of a President whose principal economic advisers are Larry Summers and Tim Geithner.
I'm pretty sure even most Republicans can see through that one. Leveraged vulture capital is sacrosanct ground in the modern GOP cult of Objectivism, which means Mitt Romney's path to the nomination is all but assured. There will be some anti-Romney social issues pandering in the Bible Belt states because there is still marginal room for Republican heterodoxy on that front, but this thing is all but over.
The Republican Party is the proud standard bearer of vulture capitalism now. The only question that remains is whether the Democrats have enough independence from the influence of Wall Street cash to take a firm populist stand against it.
Update: I guess he's walking back the walkback now. Whatever. Huntsman is also out there calling for an end to the attacks on Bain Capital. The pushback from the powers that be is already underway.
.