Seems there's something deeply wrong with every Repubilcan candidate in the presidential primary. Romney has been the choice of the Republican Party establishment and polls indicate the most electable-though this may have changed for now with Gingrich in the race. Unfortunately he arouses little passion in the rank and file Republican voter. There has been a clear any one but Romney hunger from the start even as he has remained near the top of the race throughout.
One of the worst knocks for him is that he after all gave us the blueprint for "ObamaCare." The reality is that RomneyCare=ObamaCare and about all he has been able to come up with in answer is that ObamaCare is ok for the state of Massachusetts but deeply nefarious for the country, a precarious distinction to say the least.
Rick Perry seemed like a savior initially but he was long since eclipsed by Herman Cain. Cain has been dogged by multiple sexual harassment charges for which he admits money was paid off the accusers back in the 90s. And both Perry and Cain have had displayed quite and impressive level of ignorance of even basic questions of policy. Cain attacked Obama's Libya policy while admitting he isn't sure what it is. Perry wants to close three major government departments but wont be able to as he can only think of two of them.
Enter Newt Gingrich, someone who has strutted around for years like he's a big shot, always telling other Republicans what they should do though he himself did such a skillful job that he got run out of politics on a rail back in the late 90s.
The latest development about Newt though is as embarrassing and awkward as the fact that Romney is running against his own healthcare plan. As part of the GOP's revisionist history they started putting together in early 2009, the financial crisis is not supposed to be a market failure at all but a government failure. Once the train leaves the station there's no telling where revision will take us next. Maybe the over regulation of the EPA caused it. Or the problem is because Obama once made a reference to "fat cats."
Then we should support the Scott Walkers and Jon Kasichs of the world for their attempt to neuter the uppity unions that have gotten us here. If unemployment is 9 percent it must be the fault of greedy unions who demand wages that are too high-even though some Republican economists claim that our structural unemployment is so high that maybe we are already at the natural rate of employment. But no entity has served the GOP more as a scapegoat than the quasi public-private entity that is Fannie and Freddie Mac.
Turns out the First Cause wasn't the overturning of Glass-Stegall but attempts by Democrats going back to Jimmy Carter in the 70s, Clinton in the 90s to make housing more accessible to minorities and most of all, of course, Barney Frank and Rahm Emmanuel being in the back pocket of Fannie and Freddie.
Fannie and Freddie were behind it all and Barney Frank who is in bed with them made it all possible. Now it turns out that new front runner Newt actually was a paid lobbyist of Freddie Mac to the tune of $1.2 million.
Say this for Newt he may not be qualified or deserving to be President but he is a joker. It sure was funny to hear him explain that Freddie Mac paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars just to be the corporation's historian. Or that he wasn't bought to do anything nefarious and that all he did was tell them they should quit giving mortgages to people who can't afford them. Right they paid $1.2 million for him to lecture and urge them to repent. Did he also lead them in prayer?
As Krugman puts it, "The thing I think people find hard to wrap their minds around is the following non-contradiction:
1. Freddie Mac was a deeply corrupt institution
2. Freddie and Fannie did not cause the financial crisis
This has been the the favored choice from the GOP playbook to prey on this difficulty of people wrapping their minds this non-contradiction. Now the illusionary nature of this contradiction is embodied in their new current standard bearer just as the illusionary nature of their opposition to ObamaCare is embodied in Romney.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/
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