Maybe Obama reelect can finally get a day off, if for no other reason than to watch the coming onslaught. They’ve certainly done the job on Romney Republicans seemed too squeamish to do themselves, but which is now about to land hard on Mitt’s presidential campaign. Whatever vestige of Reagan’s 11th commandment was alive is now D.O.A. once “King of Bain” was born.
The debates grabbed the attention all weekend, but Tina Brown’s The Daily Beast broke the story on Friday, which the New York Times has now picked up:
Thanks to a $5 million donation from a wealthy casino owner, a group supporting Newt Gingrich plans to place advertisements in South Carolina this week attacking Mitt Romney as a predatory capitalist who destroyed jobs and communities, a full-scale Republican assault on Mr. Romney’s business background.
The advertisements, a counterpunch to a campaign waged against Mr. Gingrich by a group backing Mr. Romney, will be built on excerpts from a scathing movie about Bain Capital, the private equity firm Mr. Romney once ran. The movie, financed by a Republican operative opposed to Mr. Romney, includes emotional interviews with people who lost jobs at companies that Bain bought and later sold.
Nobody’s a better target for a swift-boating type of campaign than Mitt Romney, especially in the age of Occupy.
I know a lot about swift-boating strategy and the right’s utilization of the tactics, but they’ve never been turned back on one of their own. So, you’ll forgive me if I find something delicious in the devilishness of Newt Gingrich’s diabolical plan. Swift-boating takes scorched earth to a whole new level.
As a little history, John Kerry formed the Patriot Project after he lost the presidency to push back on swift-boating, and I was a member of the small team who worked to aid Democratic politicians, many of them veterans, being targeted by the right. One such person I helped was Rep. Joe Sestak, who called me personally and sent me a note for my work against Kurt Weldon, with Howie Klein calling my writing for Patriot Project “bareknuckle, steely-eyed analysis.” Another was the late Rep. John Murtha, also back in 2006, when I did an article of almost 4,000 words, “John Murtha: Anatomy of a Smear,” delineating the right’s smears against him and how they developed and expanded. Swift-boating is usually taking something laudable, like a veteran’s exemplary military service, then twisting it into something negative, even using it as a character assault.
Newt’s Super PAC Winning Our Future is about to give the “King of Bain” Mitt Romney a little of his own medicine. That Gingrich has David Bossie on his team, the king of “Hillary, the Movie” that launched Citizens United, is just perfect. Wayne Barrett runs down Gingrich’s swift-boat alliances today for the Daily Beast.
Citizens United, which also bought $250,000 in pro Gingrich ads in Iowa, shared the same fundraising website producer with the swift boat group. David Bossie, who runs the organization that won the Supreme Court case that opened the floodgates for the “independent” super PACs that buried Gingrich, placed a 30-second spot right before the Iowa caucus ostensibly promoting a 2009 movie that he and the Gingriches produced about Ronald Reagan. “It’s for movie sales,” a Bossie spokesman explained. – Wayne Barrett
However, what Newt Gingrich and his billionaire casino backer Sheldon Adelson, though Gingrich can’t be directly involved with the Super PAC, are doing is taking Mitt Romney’s vulture capitalism, painting it as evil and making Romney the face of it. What’s stunning is that Gingrich is calling out a fellow Republican for using capitalism, the foundation of Republicanism, and bending it to his will.
It’s the reason George Will blasted Gingrich earlier and why I wrote Newt had committed the worst offense of all: demonizing the tools of the trade of modern capitalism, which Republicans trumpet.
The tactics of Newt’s friends is something David Axelrod and the Obama team know all too well and is a strategy they’re going to unleash against Mitt Romney if he wins the nomination. Politico covered their plans in brief earlier.
Both Republicans and Democrats have no guiding vision and lifting dream to offer in 2012. It’s a race to the bottom between Mr. Cool and Mr. Ice, unless Gingrich can reverse Romney’s current trajectory. If the tactic wasn’t being utilized by Newt Gingrich it might work, but since it is and the target is the tools of capitalism the outcome is less sure.
In swift-boating, it’s more effective if the person utilizing this strategy and the tactics comes off cleaner than the person being hit.
Is this any way to pick a president?
Newt Gingrich is about to Occupy Mitt Romney’s presidential dreams.
What have we learned in the last few days? Mitt Romney thinks that it’s essential for presidential candidates to be rich. One has to assume is that at least part of the reason is how expensive the campaigns have become. Now we learn that both he and an opponent plan on spending lots of that campaign money to talk nonsense about each other. Well, not so much nonsense as pot calling the kettle black kind of stuff.
Good thing the poor and middle class didn’t end up with that money. They’d have just wasted it on food, clothes, and gasoline.
PPP shows a late huntsman surge in NH while Silver at NYT says if only Huntsman had a few more days. At least Huntsman fought for civil unions in UT against bigots. this is pathetic. And can this swiftboating by Newt do anything to alter Mitt as the GOP nom? I doubt it. But I get why he is doing it- revenge. Im betting Perry has a deal with Mitt to stay in the race- which keeps enough conservatives split which helps Mitt onward esp in SC.
Oh and it is hilarious about Mitt prattling on about he didnt know about a Mitt-pac attack ad and then he goes into details about the attack etc! Good grief save us
More POPCORN please!!!!!!
When people talk about presidential candidates and their wealth; or for that matter any politician, it should be followed by a disclaimer along the lines of: * Candidates wealth subject to criticism based on the political position and views of said candidate.
When people talk about an Independent candidate, Bloomberg always comes up, exactly because of his wealth, Huntsman is probably more of a product of the elite, than Romney. Afterall his father is a billionare.
Very good point, guyski, the idea for that “disclaimer.” The problems are of the System.
The fix is in. The winner in 2012 has already been chosen and this is all just BS. Then we get to pretend that our vote means something and that we actually have a voice in this country. Ha!
And what does it say about Americans that thousands of people (if not millions) actually cast a vote for the likes of Newt, or W, or Reagan? Or Obama?
RA – isn’t this the MO of the Republicans, i.e., Dick Cheney who had “other priorities” rather than serving in the military? George, “the shrub,” Bush also comes to mind.
So true, there is a group of Republicans who feel themselves to be an ‘entitlement’ class, advocating for wars of choice and building up the mlilitary industrial complex, but they and their children are entitled to let other peoples children do their fighting for them. You know who they are.
“When confronted by Ron Paul, Romney’s response was ‘I had a wife and children’ and Paul responded ‘When I was drafted, I served, and I had a wife and two kids’.”
Ahhhhhhh, wasn’t that GINGRICH who had that exchange with Paul?
I guess there weren’t any liberals or democrats who were so called draft dodgers.
No dearie. It’s the hypocrisy. These idiots are chomping at the bit to send thousands of Americans off to their deaths to promote their own delusional neocon fantasy but yet when they were called to do the same thing they ran and hid, used student deferrals and yet still said they supported the war in Vietnam even though they weren’t willing to fight it themselves.
GA, they are not chomping at the bit to send thousands off to their deaths. Quit exaggerating.
cjoblak……what would you call screaming that we should have STAYED in Iraq and one clowns promise to REinvade?!!!!
What do you call wanting to go into Iran then?  Thousands more American lives would be sacrificed for that.
Sure, Billl Clinton for one. The difference is that he was against the Vietnam War and unlike the Republican’s   who dodged the draft he didn’t try to smear his opponents by claiming that his opponents, Newt Gingrich foe example, were ‘unpatriotic’ for their cowardice in supporting the Vietnam War while running for their lives to do anything to avoid military service..
This is exactly correct.
Gee..It didn’t take long for the hypocrite, waa…waa..cry-baby to get the hang of this modern campaign stuff. Which means the tears were only about not using the method earlier in his campaign.
I hate negative ads so I usually stop watching TV and listening to radio when the campaigns roll around. Like I am going to trust what one side has to say about the other?
No, I would never vote for Newt because I’ve been around a while, and Newt is Newt.
I did a detailed study quite a few years ago on women, investigating all the data, etc. (some compiled by Women’s Voices Women’s Votes & many other groups).  What it revealed is that negative ads turn off women more than any other demographic. They don’t believe the ads, which also can lead them not to vote at all.
I certainly agree that Romney better learn to articulate his Bain PE time to primary opposition rather than learn it in the general when Axplofama raises it. Since a solid majority of voters favor deficit reduction, explaining cutting costs to stay within revenues in the private sector shouldn’t be an impossible analogy to use.