Republicans Exposing Themselves

Santorum's "If-You-Blinked-You-Missed-It" Romney Endorsement

Terrance Heath — Tue, 08 May 2012 15:24:30 -0400

If you blinked, you missed it. Or you probably missed it because you were fast asleep. Late last night, nearly a month after suspending his own campaign, 13 paragraphs into a 16 paragraph email to his supporters, Rick Santorum finally endorsed Mitt Romney as the inevitable Republican nominee.

Above all else, we both agree that President Obama must be defeated. The task will not be easy. It will require all hands on deck if our nominee is to be victorious. Governor Romney will be that nominee and he has my endorsement and support to win this the most critical election of our lifetime.

It was a long time coming. Seriously. Shot-gun weddings happen at a faster pace than this endorsement, and with more enthusiasm.

One assumes that Santorum includes himself in "all hands on deck." But Santorum didn't promise to do very much, other than continue "praying for [Romney] and his family." Nor did he urge his supporters to do much more.

Does that mean Santorum is going to morph into a Romney campaign surrogate. Does that mean we're likely to see Santorum stumping for Romney on the campaign trail? Probably not. And with good reason.

After all, the Obama campaign would probably have a field day comparing anything Santroum might say in support of Romney with some of Rick Santorum's surprisingly accurate attacks on Romney during the primary race. This HuffPo mashup alone could, with very little editing, be an anti-Romney TV spot.

ThinkProgress has a handy compilation, from which I've picked a few favorites.

Santorum called Romney "the ultimate flip-flopper." Of all the attacks on Romney, this is one of the most often repeated, because (a) it's true and (b) therefore effective. You could get whiplash trying to keep up with Mitt Romney's flip-flops.

The only thing more stunning than Romney's ideological agility and changeable convictions is that — contrary to what you might be inclined to think — Romney's flip-flops aren't quite the gaffes the appear to be. Neither, for that matter, are his convictions. They're more tactics than convictions, really. Thus they change whenever necessary, and always in service of Romney's real, bedrock conviction.

Digby already covered Romney's latest flip-flop. It happened in a matter of days. Romney inveighed against President Obama's "attack on religious conscience" during the last GOP debate, referring to the controversy ginned up in response to a mandate that all employer insurance plans — including religious institutions — cover contraception. After his Michigan primary win, Romney again accused the president of "attacking religious liberty," over the issue of contraception. Then, within one twenty-four hour period Romney managed to put himself on both sides of the contraception debate.

…This, really, is only the most recent of Romney's flip-flops. He's managed to either flip or forget a number of his previous positions, like his support of an open primary in Michigan. (Before "Operation Hilarity," that is.) He isn't just running from RomneyCare, after all. Candidate Romney may denounce the Obama stimulus and tout his conservative cred, but as Governor Romney proposed more than $700 million in stimulus packages to turn around Massachusetts' economy.

Proving himself perhaps a bit smarter than he thinks most Americans should be, Santorum took Romney aide Eric Fehrnstrom's characterization of Romney as an "etch-a-sketch" candidate and ran with it. Santorum said "etch-a-sketch" Romney will say anything to win the nomination. Again, the reason the "etch-a-sketch" meme spread far and wide is because (a) it's true and (b) therefore effective.

His flip-flops make him seem like a man without core convictions, but flip-flops are really a strategy employed in service of Mitt Romney's one unshakeable conviction.

Finally, there's the lowest hanging fruit that Romney's Republican opponents picked, and then threw at him: the flip-flops. It's easy to rattle a number of them off, because Romney's flipped at least once on just about every issue: contraception, health care reform, political action committees, Fannie Mae, climate change, immigration, green energy, abortion, etc.

But as Paul Waldman pointed out, Romney flip-flops like no other GOP candidate has in this race.

Mitt Romney flip-flops carefully, after a period of calculation in which he determines the most appropriate strategic positioning required to achieve his short- and long-term goals. Newt Gingrich flip-flops impulsively, taking positions that sound good at a particular moment without any apparent regard for the past or the future.

...Whenever Romney is asked to explain a flip-flop, he always has an answer, and it's the same one he'll give if he gets asked about it tomorrow or next month. It may not be entirely convincing, but you can tell he thought about it, worked through it with his advisors, and is offering the best explanation they could come up with. The explanations are crafted so that they account for whatever he has said in the past and what he intends to say in the future.

Romney's flip-flops have always been a tactic employed strategically, in the service of his short-term goal of winning the Republican nomination, and his long-term goal of winning the presidency. So far, it's been working. Not perfectly, but well enough. As of Tuesday night, Romney's pretty much achieved his short-term goal.

Now, it's about the presidency.

Santorum mocked Mitt Romney as a "Wall Street financier" who would look after "his friends on Wall Street … at the expense of Main Street America." Well, once Newt Gingrich painted a bull-eye on Romney's vulture capitalist resume, it became a surprising-but-familiar refrain among right-wing presidential wannabees, because (a) it's true and (b) therefore effective.

In fact, the "King of Bain" attack is so effective, we're guaranteed to see it again between now and November.

Hey, remember Bain Capital? Two words many of us haven’t thought of in a while. But rest assured, you’ll be hearing them a lot this fall as the Obama campaign deals with one of its biggest problems—the fact that Mitt Romney polls better than the president on economics.

…When the other guy leads in a category, a campaign has two alternatives. The first is to change the subject to a friendlier category. But the economy is a pretty big subject. Kind of hard to run a presidential campaign without talking about it. But the second path is more promising. That, of course, is to find a way to erase the advantage. The quickest and sure-firest way for the Obama team to do that is to reintroduce the Bain Capital story. But they can’t do it like Newt Gingrich did in that “King of Bain” video, which was insanely over the top. As I said at the time, the argument is not “Mitt Romney was a job destroyer.” Because sometimes Mitt Romney was a job creator. That’s an unwinnable argument. The winnable argument is that Mitt Romney worked for the 1 percent. Sometimes it helped workers, but other times it hurt them; but nearly every time, the wealthy investors, and Romney himself, came out all right. That’s the story to tell. And any story that paints a darker picture of Bain than is fair will be pounced on and ripped to shreds.

Besides, Mitt Romney's policies plainly spell out his priorities.

Budgets, Jim Wallis says, are moral documents. They reveal our priorities, and show the world what — or whom — we're willing to sacrifice. Mitt Romney has shown us both.

… Romney showed us his priorities with a budget that includes a 20% "across-the-board" tax cut that essentially requires across-the-board cuts to programs that serve and support the poor, as well as the working- and middle-classes. Romney showed us his priorities with a budget that preserves his 15% tax rate on capital gains and dividends, eliminate taxes on investment income for those earning more than $200,000 per year, and lower the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%.

Romney showed us what and whom he is willing to sacrifice, with a budget that would require cutting non-defense programs by $637 billion in 2016 alone, and $6.5 trillion between 2014 and 2021. Romney showed us who and what he is willing to sacrifice with a budget that would shred the safety net, throwing 10 million off the benefit rolls for food stamps, and leave 30 million without health care coverage provided by the Affordable Care Act.

Romney showed us what and whom he is willing to sacrifice with his embrace of Paul Ryan's budget. Romney showed us what and whom he is willing to sacrifice with his support of a budget that would end Medicare as we know it, and render America itself unrecognizable.

Most of all, Mitt Romney showed us his priorities by presenting and supporting budget plans that do all of the above without deducing the deficit, but actually increase it by $2.6 trillion

Santorum officially ended his campaign nearly a month ago. A week later, his campaign was still sending out attack mailers in which Santorum said it "It truly frightens me to think what'll happen if Mitt Romney is the nominee." Santorum still hadn't released his delegates, and was telling supporters "I haven't supported any candidate at this point." There were no plans for a Santorum-Romney meeting, and a source close to Santorum said such a meeting was "not going to happen."

Two weeks after dropping out, Santorum's silence was near deafening. Romney even held an event in Pittsburgh, but Santorum stayed away. Romney even hired Santorum's former campaign manager. CNN's Piers Morgan tweeted that Santorum admitted during a commercial break that he'd endorsed Romeny, but Santorum refused to confirm his endorsement on the air.

Finally, the Santorum-Romney meeting happened last Friday— a private meeting, no doubt in one of those "quiet rooms" Romney is so fond of. What was said, or what Santorum wanted in exchange for his endorsement, is anybody's guess, but the low-key meeting ended with Santorum still not endorsing Romney.

Finally, four days later, Santorum delivered an endorsement best summed up as, "OK. If I must." No public announcement. No press conference. No photo-op with Romney. Not even a press release. Just a near-midnight email to his supporters. Rick Santorum couldn't even be bothered to "phone it in."

But there's still another shoe that Santorum's yet to drop. Santorum followed-up his tepid endorsement of Romney in the next paragraph, telling supporters that "My conversation with Governor Romney was very productive, but I intend to keep lines of communication open with him and his campaign."

Is it me, or does that sound like Santorum kept his fingers crossed when he made his endorsement? Will the Romney campaign's phones start ringing if Mitt Romney strays too far from Santorum's positions on "pro-family" initiatives? Will Santorum yank even his lukewarm endorsement, if Romney doesn't toe the right-wing line?

Anemic endorsement aside, it's not over. Santorum's post-script promised supporters that "very soon we will be making another big announcement, and I will be asking you to once again join forces with me to keep up the fight, together." A surprising number of Republicans want Santorum for VP, and Romney has said he wouldn't rule out a Romney-Santorum ticket.

I'm not placing any bets on a Santorum-Romney ticket, but stranger things have happened (i.e. McCain's Palin pick). In the event that this one does, Santorum's already written Obama's attack script, and given the Democrats all the television ads they'll need.

Rick Perry Puckers Up

Terrance Heath — Tue, 01 May 2012 15:17:54 -0400

We can probably expect to see more of this. It will no doubt go on through the Republican convention. I mean the parade of Republican presidential wannabees now preparing to kiss up to Mitt Romney after attacking him so viciously — and accurately — during the seemingly interminable GOP primaries. (Which, by the way, are not officially over yet.) The latest to apply the chapstick and pucker up is Texas governor Rick Perry.

You may remember Rick Perry from his family's unfortunately-named hunting camp, video highlights from his inspired New Hampshire speech, or the "strong" reaction to his viral web ad. Most recently. however, the man who arguably had the best hair in the Republican presidential field made the news for flipping his endorsement to Mitt Romney.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Wednesday affirmed his support for likely GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, after initially backing Newt Gingrich's rival campaign following his own withdrawal from the race.

"Mitt Romney has earned the Republican Presidential nomination through hard work, a strong organization, and disciplined message of restoring America after nearly four years of failed job-killing policies from President Obama and his administration," the Texas governor said in a statement. "So today I join the many conservative Republicans across the nation in endorsing Mitt Romney for President and pledge to him, my constituents, and the Republican Party than I will continue to work hard to help defeat President Obama."

Perry praised Romney's "vision and record of private sector success."

His announcement came following reports that Gingrich would exit the race next week.

Gingrich is officially out as of tomorrow, and is expected to endorse Romney. It makes sense that Perry would follow Newt's lead and endorse Romney, since he followed Newt's lead so well in attacking Romney during the primaries.

As much as I'd like to take credit for teaching Rick Perry the term "vulture capitalism" with my post from early January, I can't do so honestly. After all, Newt Gingrich made attacking Mitt Romney's days at Bain Capital so easy that even Rick Perry (whom Paul Begala dubbed "the candidate for those who thought George W. Bush was too cerebral") could do it. And do it. And do it.

He may be praising Romney's "vision and record of private sector success" now, Rick denounced Romney's record as "vulture capitalism" as recently as January (just days after my post, by the way).

Addressing a retiree community in South Carolina, Perry criticized Romney's Bain Capital firm for two business deals that caused job losses in the state. He said private equity firms are "just vultures" that feed off sick companies no matter the human toll.

Campaigning in South Carolina, Perry accused Romney of "looting a company in Gaffney, SC.

"I had to shake my head yesterday when one of the wealthiest men I suppose has ever run for the presidency of the United States, the son of a multimillionaire, Mitt Romney, he said 'I know what it's like to worry about whether you're going to get fired. There were a couple times when I worried about whether I was going to get a pink slip.' He actually said this," the Texas governor said at a campaign stop in Anderson.

"I have no doubt that Mitt Romney was worried about pink slips, whether he was going to have enough of them to hand out because his company Bain Capital with all the jobs that they killed, I'm sure he was worried that he'd run out of pink slips," he continued.

Perry brought Bain Capital's takeover efforts home to South Carolina, saying that Bain "looted" a photo company in nearby Gaffney and a steel company further downstate in Georgetown.

Just a couple of days later, Perry doubled down on Romney's "vulture capitalism."

“There’s a real difference between venture capitalism and vulture capitalism,” Perry told Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity Tuesday night. “Venture capitalism we like. Vulture capitalism, no. And the fact of the matter is that he’s going to have to face up to this at some time or another, and South Carolina is as good a place to draw that line in the sand as any.”

Whether Perry actually thought through the likely reaction to his attacks on Romney's "vulture capitalism" I can't say. Perry probably didn't think Sean Hannity would compare him to to Occupy Wall Street, or that Rush Limbaugh would compare his to Fidel Castro. Newt's attack amounted to a convenient bandwagon that had plenty of media buzz following it. Perry probably jumped aboard without thinking that he was joining Newt in asking questions that Republicans aren't capable of asking.

So what changed Rick Perry's mind? Gingrich and Santorum are expected to endorse Romney, but other former Republican contenders appear to be in no hurry to endorse the all-but-inevitable nominee. Maybe Perry is hoping for another $10,000 bet. Or maybe Perry's just beating the rush and jumping aboard the last bandwagon left.

Romney, Through The Eyes of Newt

Terrance Heath — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 14:57:29 -0400

It comes to us all, eventually: that epiphanic, "come to Jesus moment" when the light of day finally penetrates our cloud of delusion, and undeniable reality slaps us hard across the face. That moment finally came for Newt Gingrich, who annouced that he will suspend his bid for the presidency. Tuesday night's five-state Romney sweep apparently did what a bounced check and a penguin bite could not.

Since it's unlikely that he's going away anytime soon, it's time to say "See you later" to Newt Gingrich. Oh, and "Thank you."

Why thank New Gingrich? It's only right to thank someone for giving a gift, especially one that keeps on giving like Newt's viciously accurate attack on Mitt Romney's vulture capitalist resume.

Let's look back for a moment.

It was early in January, and Newt Gingrich was having a "moment." We're not talking about your garden variety "moment," either, but one to rival the 1995 history-making, career-breaking "Air Force One" moment that got Newt immortalized on the front page of the New York Daily News. Stung by his fourth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, and angry at being the subject of negative ads paid for by Mitt Romney's super PAC, Newt stomped off to New Hampshire.

Gingrich didn't retreat to the Granite State to lick his wounds. Newt hit back with his own super-PAC-funded attack on Mitt Romney.

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.

“We had to load up the U-Haul because we done lost our home,” one woman says.

Democrats have signaled that they intend to make Mr. Romney’s history at Bain a central part of their case against him if he wins the Republican nomination. But Bain has also emerged as an issue in the Republican primary, despite the party’s free market stance and business-friendly policies, reflecting the depth of public anger about the economy. At an appearance here on Sunday, Mr. Gingrich suggested that Bain’s approach was to carry out “clever legal ways to loot a company.”

... The Bain-centered campaign strikes at the heart of Mr. Romney’s argument for his qualifications as president — that as a successful executive in the private sector, he learned how to create jobs — and advances an argument that President Obama’s re-election campaign has signaled it will employ aggressively against Mr. Romney.

It was classic Newt at his bitter, angry, petulant best. And the result was a thing of beauty: a near-perfect attack ad that probably brought tears to the eyes and stirred feelings of envy in the heart of many a Democratic consultant in Washington.

To be fair, Americans United for Change got there first, with their take on Romney-as-Gordon-Gekko. But Gingrich's 28-minute-long "When Mitt Romney Came To Town" (see it before it disappears down the memory hole) was huge. In one video, Gingrich spelled out the connection between profits on Wall Street and job losses on Main Street, and shifted the focus on the national discourse in a fashion similar to Occupy Wall Street.

I'll put it this way: a Republican made Wall Street's perverse business of creating wealth for the one percent, while destroying jobs for the 99% front-page news. Newt even called Romney out during the New Hampshire debate for following "a Wall Street model" where "you basically take out all the money, leaving nothing for workers."

In 2008, Mike Huckabee said of Mitt Romney, "I want to be a president who reminds you of the guy you work with, not the guy who laid you off." In 2012 Newt Gingrich hinted that Mitt Romney might actually be "the guy who laid you off." That's what we call a "game changer," boys and girls.

Newt effectively stuck a giant "Kick me," sign on Mitt Romney's back. At that point, the GOP primary had so many contenders that the debates resembled a right-wing political version of "American Idol," but Romney was already considered the "inevitable" nominee. Newt focused national attention like a laser beam on Romney's weaknesses early in the game.

Romney's claims of being a "job creator" on Wall Street were scrutinized in the media, and undermined by Bain Capital alumni who said job creation was never the point at Bain. Former employees like Randy Johnson and Donny Box came forward, and talked about what happened on Main Street when Bain gutted companies like Dade International and GS Industries. After that, the attacks on Romney's many other weaknesses — his top secret tax returns, his Wall Street wealth, his membership in "the top 0.001 percent," his $101 million individual retirement account (IRA), his Swiss bank account, his secret tax shelter in the Cayman Islands, his "special" 13.9% tax rate (and how it compares with the rest of America) — became a steady drip that will only get stronger between now and Election Day.

Not long after launching his attack, Newt tried to take it all back. In a fit of pique, he not only violated Reagan's 11th commandment, but created a perfect storm by posing too loudly questions he and his party are incapable of answering. Newt's attack confused conservatives and bombed with right-wing bloggers, because he called into question what Ed Kilgore calls conservatism's "cult of success."

At Ten Miles Square, Michael Kinsley puts his finger on something that probably defines Mitt Romney’s true bond with a Republican Party that otherwise would just as soon toss him on the dustbin of history: the cult of Success, with its creed of identifying wealth and status with virtue, and any concern for equality or fairness with vice.

...The cult of success is so central to conservative ideology in this country that it brooks little or no dissent, particularly in a Republican Party dependent on downscale white voters whose resentment of people poorer or darker or sicker than they are cannot be complicated by any doubt about the morality of markets. It’s no accident that the entire conservative commentariat came down on Newt Gingrich like a ton of bricks the moment he indulged in a producerist attack on Romney as a predatory capitalist. Start accepting fine distinctions like that, and the next thing you know you might be wondering if this banker or that oil executive is virtuous as well!

It's not nice to point out what's in the Kool-Aid, after all. That's OK. The rest of us got the point loud and clear.

Newt may be gone from the presidential campaign, but the devastatingly accurate case he made against Mitt Romney's bid for the White House lives on. I guarantee you'll hear it again between now and November. When you do, think of Newt. And say, "Thank you." After all, it's the right thing to do.

Mitt Unzipped: The Real Romney

Terrance Heath — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 04:25:39 -0400

Ann Romney, apparently a "rock star" in the Romney campaign, recently riffed on her husband's difficulty relating to regular folks, and threatened to unleash the "real Mitt Romney" upon us. During a radio interview in Baltimore, Ann Romney responded to suggestions that her husband came off a bit stiff on the campaign trail. "Well, you know what," she said, " guess we'd better unzip him and let the real Mitt Romney out because he is not!"

Fortunately, that won't be necessary. We've seen and heard plenty of the "real Mitt Romney" in the course of the GOP primary. And not just from his Republican opponents. Mitt Romney has more than revealed himself to American voters.

The Gaffe Man Cometh

Of course, there are the gaffes. So many, in fact, that they're hard to keep up with.

We know that Mitt Romney thinks corporations are people.
We know Mitt Romney can make a $10,000 bet as easily as most of us make a $10 bet.
We know Mitt Romney likes being able to fire people.
We know that even when Mitt Romney was unemployed he earned $374,000 in speaker's fees, and that it was "not very much."
We know that Mitt Romney's wife drives two Cadillacs, and doesn't think of herself as rich.
We know that, while he doesn't follow NASCAR, Mitt Romney has some great friends who are NASCAR team owners.
We know Mitt Romney has a really funny story about the time his father closed a Michgan-based factory and move operations to Wisconsin.
We know Mitt Romney is not concerned about the very poor.

There are more gaffes, and there will be even more between now and November. And they are telling. But when it comes to the real Mitt Romney, the wealth-related gaffes are really a kind of shorthand.

Mitt's Moral Document

Budgets, Jim Wallis says, are moral documents. They reveal our priorities, and show the world what — or whom — we're willing to sacrifice. Mitt Romney has shown us both.

In February, when Mitt Romney released his new economic agenda, Ezra Klein summed it up in less than 150 words.

Mitt Romney is promising that taxes will go down, defense spending will go up, and old-people programs won't change for this generation of retirees. So three of his four options for deficit reduction "taxes, old-people programs, and defense" are now either contributing to the deficit or are off-limits for the next decade.

Romney is also promising that he will pay for his tax cuts, pay for his defense spending, and reduce total federal spending by more than $6 trillion over the next 10 years. But the only big pot of money left to him is poor-people programs. So, by simple process of elimination, poor-people programs will have to be cut dramatically. There's no other way to make those numbers work.

Romney showed us his priorities with a budget that includes a 20% "across-the-board" tax cut that essentially requires across-the-board cuts to programs that serve and support the poor, as well as the working- and middle-classes. Romney showed us his priorities with a budget that preserves his 15% tax rate on capital gains and dividends, eliminate taxes on investment income for those earning more than $200,000 per year, and lower the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%.

Romney showed us what and whom he is willing 10 sacrifice, with a budget that would require cutting non-defense programs by $637 billion in 2016 alone, and $6.5 trillion between 2014 and 2021. Romney showed us who and what he is willing to sacrifice with a budget that would shred the safety net, throwing 10 million off the benefit rolls for food stamps, and leave 30 million without health care coverage provided by the Affordable Care Act.

Romney showed us what and whom he is willing to sacrifice with his embrace of Paul Ryan's budget. Romney showed us what and whom he is willing to sacrifice with his support of a budget that would end Medicare as we know it, and render America itself unrecognizable.

Most of all, Mitt Romney showed us his priorities by presenting and supporting budget plans that do all of the above without deducing the deficit, but actually increase it by $2.6 trillion

Extremist For The Privileged

Mitt Romney is no moderate. As E.J. Dionne pointed out, he is the beneficiary of a "terrible bias in the mainstream media that judges 'moderation' entirely in relation to social issues." That bias is what makes Romney's "gaffes" news, without drawing attention the glimpses of the real Mitt Romney those so-called gaffes provide.

Romney's "gaffes" look unmistakably like glimpses of the real Romney -- not a bad person, but a man with no ability to see beyond the small, cosseted world of private equity and great wealth that he inhabits. He has to be reminded that most voters live in a world where people drive their Cadillacs one at a time.

That bias, Dionne writes, allows the real Mitt Romney — an extremist for the privileged — to hide behind gaffes that are not really gaffes.

My friend and colleague Matt Miller wrote recently that “everyone knows Romney is basically a pragmatic centrist.” No, “everyone” does not know this. The evidence from his tax plan, in fact, is that he’s an extremist for the privileged.

We’re witnessing what should be called the Two Cadillacs Fallacy: Romney’s rather authentic moments suggesting he doesn’t understand the lives of average people (such as his comment on his wife’s two Cadillacs) are dismissed as “gaffes,” while Santorum’s views on social issues are denounced as “extreme.” But Romney’s gaffes are more than gaffes: They reflect deeply held and radical views about how wealth and power ought to be distributed in the United States. These should worry us a lot more than Santorum’s dopey “snob” comment or his tasteless denunciation of JFK.

I don't think most voters have been fooled, though. And those who have been fooled won't be for much longer, now that the presidential race has begun in earnest. The Republican primaries may have helped the real Mitt Romney to hide behind so-called "gaffes" and the cartoon-like extremism of his GOP opponents. But in the general election, the real Mitt Romney — the extremist for the one percent — won't be able to hide so easily.

In fact, the real Mitt Romney will almost certainly expose himself again. He just can't help himself.

Romney Exposed: The Real Race Begins

Terrance Heath — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 01:09:13 -0400

Well, as the saying goes, "It's all over but the shouting." Having slogged through a primary process that felt even longer than it was, it looks like Republicans finally have a nominee to go mano-a-mano with Barack Obama come November. Around ten o'clock last night, CNN called the Maryland, D.C., and Wisconsin primaries for Romney. The Maryland, D.C., and Wisconsin wins mean Romney is now more than halfway towards winning enough delegates to clinch the Republican nomination.

Whether they've chosen him, settled for him, or just got stuck with him, it looks like Mitt Romney will be the GOP's standard bearer from here on, and into the general election.

As I wrote early on, one of the benefits (to the rest of us, anyway) of the GOP's marathon primary race was the opportunity to hear the candidates attack one another. Not just because of nasty things they said about each other, but because they got so much right! Romney's fellow Republicans said a lot about him. They got a lot right, too.

King of Bain

No attack on Romney was vicious or effective than Newt Gingrich's attack on Mitt Romney's career as a vulture capitalist, at the help of Bain Capital. Gingrich's 27-minute documentary, "When Mitt Romney Came To Town," bore such close resemblance to progressive and/or Democratic messaging that the Obama campaign could consider at least some of its TV spots done, if only Gingrich's movie could be considered an in-kind contribution.

But, really, there was nothing kind about it. Not if you were Mitt Romney. Gingrich went a long way towards painting Romney as the GOP's own Gordon Gekko (though in truth Romney's merely one of a set), and even did a fair job of introducing Americans to Wall Street's brand of Gekko capitalism — buy a company with borrowed money, pledged against assets or earnings; increase profits; sell the company.

As one of Romney's fellow former Bain employees told the LA Times, job creation was never the point. "The primary goal of private equity is to create wealth for your investors." Bain delivered in that regard. The Wall Street Journal reported that 22% — nearly one fourth — of the companies Bain invested in ("targeted," in private-equity-speak) either filed for bankruptcy, reorganized, or closed their doors entirely. Four of its top ten "targets" even went bankrupt.

For workers at companies like Dade International, American Pad and Paper, GS Industries, the result was lost jobs, lost benefits, long-term unemployment. For Bain shareholders, it meant $2.5 billion in returns on just $1.1 billion invested. For Mitt Romney, it meant amassing a personal fortune — between $190 and $250 million, according to his campaign — during his days running Bain Capital.

In one video, Gingrich not only spelled out the connection between profits on Wall Street and job losses on Main Street, but shifted the focus on the national discourse in a way not seen since Occupy Wall Street. It took a Republican to make Wall Street's perverse notion of "creative destruction" — creating wealth for the one percent, while destroying jobs for the 99% — front-page news. And if that wasn't enough, at the New Hampshire Republican debate, Newt called Romney out following "a Wall Street model" where "you basically take out all the money, leaving nothing for workers."

It's an attack so straightforward — so easy to make, because it's so true — that even Texas governor Rick Perry managed it, when he called Romney "part of Wall Street," and explained why it applies even if Romney never had an office address on Wall Street. "I don't think you have to actually have an address on Wall Street to be a part of Wall Street," Perry told a Huffington Post reporter. "I don't think anybody gets confused that Bain Capital is part of that whole Wall Street structure. I don't think that's lost on anybody."

Washington Insider

Rick Perry scored another direct hit on Romney when he said during an Iowa event, "With all due respect to my friends who are standing on the stage with me asking you for your support, they're either Washington insiders, they're in Congress today, or either part of or have been part of Wall Street."

Actually, the "Washington Insider" criticism was directed at the all the GOP hopefuls still standing at the time. But, with Romney's Tuesday night wins, the remaining Washington insiders still in the race — Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum — will soon be joining Perry on the list of also-rans. That could mean a sharper focus on Romney Washington Insider status, for at least a couple of reasons.

Romney has filled his campaign with lobbyists and surrounded himself with Washington Insiders. According to a New York Times article, Romney's campaign "includes some of the most prominent Republican lobbyists in Washington," among his closest advisers. They're some of his biggest donors, too. At least 294 lobbyists gave over $400,000 to Romney's campaign through the end of 2011. As Rick Santorum's campaign pointed out, an ABC news from the 2002 Massachusetts governors race shows Mitt Romney bragging about his Washington connections. "I am big believer in getting money where the money is," Romney says. "The money is in Washington." So it's no surprise that Romney's got a lot of Washington Insiders in his campaign, and on his donor list.

Mitt Romney like to cast himself as the candidate running against Washington's entrenched insiders and their interests. In reality, Romney has brought Washington's entrenched insiders into the center of his campaign, and their campaign contributions ensure he'll give special attention to their interests. It's a full-circle moment for Romney, because he's been working for a long time at becoming one of them. Romney likes referring to President Obama as a life-long politician. But, as Steve Benen pointed out, since 1994 Romney has built a career out of running for office.

He's still at it, of course. And he's closer than he's ever been to landing a job in Washington, D.C.

Flip-Flopping: A Method to the Madness

Finally, there's the lowest hanging fruit that Romney's Republican opponents picked, and then threw at him: the flip-flops. It's easy to rattle a number of them off, because Romney's flipped at least once on just about every issue: contraception, health care reform, political action committees, Fannie Mae, climate change, immigration, green energy, abortion, etc.

But as Paul Waldman pointed out, Romney flip-flops like no other GOP candidate has in this race.

Mitt Romney flip-flops carefully, after a period of calculation in which he determines the most appropriate strategic positioning required to achieve his short- and long-term goals. Newt Gingrich flip-flops impulsively, taking positions that sound good at a particular moment without any apparent regard for the past or the future.

...Whenever Romney is asked to explain a flip-flop, he always has an answer, and it's the same one he'll give if he gets asked about it tomorrow or next month. It may not be entirely convincing, but you can tell he thought about it, worked through it with his advisors, and is offering the best explanation they could come up with. The explanations are crafted so that they account for whatever he has said in the past and what he intends to say in the future.

Romney's flip-flops have always been a tactic employed strategically, in the service of his short-term goal of winning the Republican nomination, and his long-term goal of winning the presidency. So far, it's been working. Not perfectly, but well enough. As of Tuesday night, Romney's pretty much achieved his short-term goal.

Now, it's about the presidency.

It's Over. It Begins.

So, it's over. Mitt Romney will almost certainly be the Republican nominee. There are other primaries to come, sure. But the last remaining candidates who might have had a shot at beating Romney are all but done. Newt is running on fumes, with minimal staff. Santorum claims he will stay in until at least April 24th, when Pennsylvania holds its GOP primary. But beyond that, it's over.

Mitt Romney knows it's over. Celebrating the three victories that put him past the halfway point in the race for delegates, Romney indicated that maybe it's time Republicans shift their focus to President Obama, instead of targeting one another.

President Obama knows it's over, too. The Obama campaign has already released TV spots attacking Romney's ties to Big Oil. The President is sharpening his criticism of the Ryan Budget, passed by the Republican majority in the House, and blasting Romney's support of it.

As I wrote at the beginning of this series, between now and November we'll probably see President Obama use many of the arguments Romney's former GOP opponents inadvertently prepared for him.

I can almost hear president Obama quoting Gingrich on Romney's "Wall Street model," and comparing his record on job creation to Romney's. Then he'll probably look right into the camera and say something like this: "Americans reject that model. I don't believe Americans are looking for a president to do for our economy what Bain did — under Mr. Romney's leadership — to the companies in its portfolio, or the workers who lost their jobs, health insurance, retirement accounts, livelihoods, and perhaps even a little of their faith in the American Dream."

I can definitely picture millions of Americans nodding in agreement with that simple truth.

And so it ends, to begin again.

Whiplash Mitt's One Unshakeable Conviction

Terrance Heath — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 14:39:06 -0500

As a Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney should wear a warning label: "CAUTION: following changes in this candidate's positions could cause whiplash and other injuries." Seriously, you could hurt yourself trying keep up with the speed with which this guy changes his mind.

The only thing more stunning than Romney's ideological agility and changeable convictions is that — contrary to what you might be inclined to think — Romney's flip-flops aren't quite the gaffes the appear to be. Neither, for that matter, are his convictions. They're more tactics than convictions, really. Thus they change whenever necessary, and always in service of Romney's real, bedrock conviction.

Digby already covered Romney's latest flip-flop. It happened in a matter of days. Romney inveighed against President Obama's "attack on religious conscience" during the last GOP debate, referring to the controversy ginned up in response to a mandate that all employer insurance plans — including religious institutions — cover contraception. After his Michigan primary win, Romney again accused the president of "attacking religious liberty," over the issue of contraception. Then, within one twenty-four hour period Romney managed to put himself on both sides of the contraception debate.

Perhaps the question was poorly worded. Or perhaps it was a slip of a tired tongue.

Either way, Mitt Romney created a new tempest when he told an Ohio news station that he was opposed to a Senate amendment, favored by conservatives and under debate in Congress on Wednesday, that would allow employers and insurers to limit coverage of contraceptives if they have religious or moral objections.

"I'm not for the bill," Mr. Romney said, but then added, "the idea of presidential candidates getting into questions about contraception within a relationship between a man and a women, husband and wife, I'm not going there."

Mr. Romney seemed to be further distancing himself from the hard-edged social conservatism of his chief Republican rival, Rick Santorum, who has argued that contraception is damaging to society.

... The episode began when Mr. Romney was asked about his view of the sweeping amendment, sponsored by Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, that would permit employers and insurers to refuse to offer health coverage that violated their beliefs.

This, really, is only the most recent of Romney's flip-flops. He's managed to either flip or forget a number of his previous positions, like his support of an open primary in Michigan. (Before "Operation Hilarity," that is.) He isn't just running from RomneyCare, after all. Candidate Romney may denounce the Obama stimulus and tout his conservative cred, but as Governor Romney proposed more than $700 million in stimulus packages to turn around Massachusetts' economy.

What's stunning about this flip-flop is the speed with which it happened. But underscores the same thing as another of Romney's ideological shifts.

To understand Mitt Romney, you have to understand the most difficult passage of his political life: how he changed his position on abortion. Not the story he tells about it, but the real story.

Romney began his political career as a pro-choicer. In the story he tells, he had an epiphany, a flash of insight, and committed himself thereafter to protecting life. But that isn’t what happened. The real story of Romney’s conversion—a series of tentative, equivocal, and confused shifts, accompanied by a constant rewriting of his past—paints a more accurate picture of who he is. Romney has complex views and a talent for framing them either way, depending on his audience. He values truth, so he makes sure there’s an element of it in everything he says. He can’t stand to break his promises, so he reinterprets them.

Parts of the story have been told before. But no one has put it together. And no one has assembled the many video and audio clips that bear witness to what happened. In this article, the first complete examination of Romney’s journey, you’ll see his transformation on camera. (You can also watch a video narration.)

When you see the story in its full context, three things become clear. First, this was no flip-flop. Romney is a man with many facets, groping his way through a series of fluid positions on an array of difficult issues. His journey isn’t complete. It never will be. Second, for Romney, abortion was never really a policy question. He didn’t want to change the law. What he wanted to change was his identity. And third, the malleability at Romney’s core is as much about his past as about his future. Again and again, he has struggled to make sense not just of what he should do, but of who he has been. The problem with Romney isn’t that he keeps changing his mind. The problem is that he keeps changing his story.

Romney may have said he's not going to "set his hair on fire," to excite the base. But his shift on contraception shows that he's willing to cut off his roots to convince the base that he's one of them.

The “religious liberty” Romney referred to was a newly discovered “constitutional right” to deny women access to contraceptives. The son of Lenore Romney, who ran for the Senate in 1970 as a reproductive rights champion, was not just abandoning positions he once said he learned from his mom. He was framing that abandonment as part of an embrace of the new GOP orthodoxy that says religious groups should define the national agenda on issues ranging from education to healthcare policy.

It was a far cry from the Mitt Romney of 2007, who in an attempt to echo John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech in favor of church-state separation (and to dispel wariness about his Mormonism as effectively as Kennedy did about his Catholicism), explained that “we separate church and state affairs in this country, and for good reason.” More and more, the formerly pro-choice social liberal has been sounding like Pat Robertson in 1988 or Gary Bauer in 2000, candidates who tried to rally the party’s evangelical base against more rational Republicans.

For Romney, there is no choice. The party he joined as a Massachusetts moderate has ceased to be. This is no longer the GOP of patricians like George Romney or even George H.W. Bush, or of Western individualists like Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan or even John McCain—all of whom maintained at least a measure of secularism in a party that has for decades been under assault by the likes of Phyllis Schlafly, Jerry Falwell and Ralph Reed.

Except that Olympia Snowe's example suggests that it is a choice. The Maine Republican's announcement of her retirement from the Senate make her the latest moderate Republican to leave shaking her head over what's become of the "party of Lincoln." Tired of bending over backwards to mollify the extreme right, Snowe simply said "Enough," and decided there was life beyond the Senate — and probably a much better life at that.

Romney has a choice, too. He's fond of saying that, if elected, he will "go to Washington, change Washington, and then leave Washington." (Probably to decamp to one of his six homes.) He just as easily do that now, rather than forge on through the GOP primaries, changing one position after another, in pursuit of the nomination of a party that still doesn't seem to want him. As his ideological 180s become more and more transparent, that idea ought to look better and better.

But Romney knows what he's doing. He means to do whatever it takes to win the nomination. So, he panders to the right because the right controls who ultimately gets the nomination. He'll swallow as much poison as they demand, if he wants to be their nominee, even if it weakens him in the general election.

That's why I say what look like flip-flops on basic conservative ideological positions are really just tactical changes in pursuit of a goal. Put another way, it's all in service to Mitt Romney's one unchangeable conviction.

If he weren’t so smug, it would almost be possible to feel sorry for Mitt Romney. Beyond the flip-flopping, has any worse actor ever attempted the role of presidential candidate? It’s beyond Romney’s powers to persuade most people of his sincerity about things he does believe, much less the many tenets of contemporary GOP faith he probably doesn’t share — assuming for the sake of argument that anybody, including himself, knows which is which.

There’s little doubt, however, that Romney believes he deserves to be president, in rather the way the fictional Lord Grantham deserves to preside over Downton Abbey. It’s his inability to conceal that sense of entitlement that makes him such an awkward politician.

It may not serve him in well that so his many flip-flops tend to lay bare the ambition and entitlement at the heart of Romney's race for the White House. But at least we know Mitt Romney has at least one conviction of which he stands firm.

Rick Santorum, Political Hack

Terrance Heath — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 15:46:20 -0500

Now that my post-20th-GOP-debate waves of nausea have subsided, I'd like note one good thing that came of the whole ordeal. Their economic agendas are disastrously wrong-headed, and their attacks on President Obama go beyond borderline bigotry. But when the remaining GOP standard bearers attack each other, they are usually spot-on.

The latest example is Mitt Romney's attack on Rick Santorum for voting "No Child Left Behind" and the earmarks that built the infamous "Bridge To Nowhere" in which he basically called Santorum (as Jed Lewison put it) an "unprinicpled hack."

"We saw Senator Santorum explain most of the night why he did or voting for things he disagreed with," Romney said. "And he talked about this being 'taking one for the team.' I want to know which team he was taking it for. My team is the American people, not the insiders in Washington, and Ill fight for the people of America."

"I dont know if I had ever seen a politician explain in so many ways why he voted against his principles," Romney added.

It's a pretty good line of attack, because sometimes Santorum's principles don't match his politics. Other times those principles change with astonishing speed, to match the political opportunity of the moment. Santorum even provided an example of the latter during the course of the debate.

Both Salon's Joan Walsh and the Washington Post's Ruth Marcus noted the whiplash inducing speed with which Santorum flip-flopped on birth control funding.

Here's Santorum on Charlie Rose, touting his support of contraceptive funding in Title X

Here's Santorum at the most recent GOP debate, saying that he always opposed contraceptive funding in Title X and promising to eliminate it. (Please pardon the Americans Elect watermark in the video. After more than an hour of searching for a clip that didn't require me to watch the entire debate again.)

Here's a definitio of "political hack."

a professional who renounces or surrenders individual independence, integrity, belief, etc., in return for money or other reward in the performance of a task normally thought of as involving a strong personal commitment: a political hack.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.

That's just one example, though. There's plenty more. Santorum's lobbied to get stimulus money for his clients, despite loudly opposing "the various stimulus packages." Santorum probably didn't even have the courage of his convictions to return the $3,151 tax credit he received as a result of the stimulus bill.

In fairness to Santorum, he was a "Washington insider" before he was a "Washington outsider." Still, he let Romney put him on the defensive, instead of putting Romney on the defensive about his tax rate. If anything, Santorum could have pointed out that while the rest of the candidates were slamming his Washington record, there's not a Washington outsider among them. Not one.

No wonder Republicans are unimpressed, and even Rush Limbaugh "cringed." It's way past prime time and the newst "not-Romney" is still winging it.

Washington Insiders, Inside The Romney Campaign

Terrance Heath — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 15:59:33 -0500

Oops. Mitt Romney might want to think twice about taking my earlier advice to ramp up his attacks on Rick Santorum's Washington insider status. At least until he manages to do something about the Washington insiders inside the Romney campaign.

For a candidate running against the entrenched interests of Washington, Mitt Romney keeps an awful lot of lobbyists around.

His kitchen cabinet includes some of the most prominent Republican lobbyists in Washington, including Charles R. Black Jr., the chairman of Prime Policy Group and a lobbyist for Walmart and AT&T; Wayne L. Berman, who is chairman of Ogilvy Government Relations and represents Pfizer, the drug manufacturer; and Vin Weber, the managing partner for Clark & Weinstock.

At least 294 registered lobbyists donated a total of at least $401,000 to Mr. Romney through the end of 2011, according to a New York Times review of federal disclosure records, while an elite group of 16 bundlers, representing interests as varied as Wall Street, Microsoft and the tobacco company Altria, gathered more than $2 million worth of checks from friends and business partners for Mr. Romneys campaign.

Other lobbyists serve on one of Mr. Romneys policy advisory teams, have hosted fund-raisers for his campaign or have joined the many influential Republicans whose endorsements Mr. Romneys campaign has hailed. Among them are David Wilkins, a former United States ambassador to Canada who lobbies for the Canadian oil industry, and Stephen Rademaker, a former State Department official who lobbies for the defense contractor General Dynamics.

Come to think of it, maybe the Santorum campaign could keep this in its back pocket to attack Mitt on having Washington insiders in his campaign when Mitt attacks Santorum for being a Washington insider. Not that I'm a Santorum fan, but it makes my job easier.

Rick Santorum - WFT? (What The Frack?)

Terrance Heath — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 15:52:48 -0500

I'd like to urge Mitt Romney to disregard his fellow Republicans' warnings not to destroy Rick Santorum, and step up his attacks on Santorum's Washington insider status. Not because I'm a Romney fan. Far from it. It's just that it makes my job easier, and Santorum opened himself up to attack when he called fracking the "new bogeyman."

Rick Santorum took aim at environmental regulations Thursday at a campaign stop in Oklahoma, a hub of the domestic energy industry. The presidential hopeful told voters that opposition to fracking is nothing more than political fear-mongering, according to CNN.

"We have to have all sorts of government regulations because of the threats of hydrofracking," Santorum said. "It's the new boogey man. It's the new way to try to scare you."

Later he imitated anti-fracking politicians and environmentalists. "Ooh, all this bad stuff's going to happen, we don't know all these chemicals and all this stuff," he said. "What's going to happen? Let me tell you what's going to happen, nothing's going to happen."

Here's what Rick Santorum calls "nothing."

Why does Rick Santorum call this "nothing"? Simple. He's been paid very well to do so.

As the Center for Responsive Politics reports, Santorum is one of the top U.S. Senate recipients of campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry and what makes those numbers so stunningly outsized is the fact that he remains one of the top Senate recipients even though the last time he ran for Senate was in 2006. Put another way, this is not a run-of-the-mill legislator who happened to get a few afterthought contributions from the industry; this is a guy who was such a sycophantic apostle of the industry that he received enough oil and gas money to keep him on the top-recipient list a full six years after he was voted out of office that is, a full six years after he raised a single dollar for a Senate campaign. In baseball terms, its the equivalent of Hank Aaron racking up so many home runs that he was able to hold the record well after he retired only with Santorum, its not home runs, its oil and gas cash.

For the industrys part, spending that kind of cash was clearly brilliant. With Santorum ahead in national Republican presidential primary polls, the oil and gas money has presciently purchased a potential major-party nominee who gives them an unthinkably powerful spokesperson: a candidate willing to actually cite his fracking-scarred state as reason to support less regulation of fracking. As expenditures go, thats about the best political investment money can buy.

C'mon Mitt. The opening title of the attack at pratically writes itself. "Rick Santorum - WTF?"

Shellacked, Mitt Fights Back

Terrance Heath — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:06:54 -0500

Funny how things change. When Herman Cain and Rick Perry imploded in one week last November, Jon Stewart called Mitt Romney "the luckiest motherfudger on Earth." That was before last night's "shellacking," when Rick Santorum trounced Romney in Minnessota, Missouri, and Colorado — three states that Romney won in 2008. Whupped by the same guy who snatched away his Iowa caucus victory, it safe to say Romney is no longer "the luckiest motherfudger on Earth." That title may pass to another 2012 presidential candidate.

To his credit, Romney isn't taking this latest humiliation lying down. He's hitting Santorum with the "Washington Insider" label — and it's likely to stick.

Romney sounded less confident than last weekend when, fresh off strong victories in Nevada and Florida, he pivoted to attacks on President Barack Obama. Instead, he contrasted his record as an outsider with that of Santorums as a former Pennsylvania senator and Washington insider in the first time hes mentioned Santorums name on the stump in weeks.

Washington cannot reform itself, Romney said at the University of Colorados campus here. And Washington will never be reformed by those who have been compromised by the culture of Washington. This is a clear choice. Im the only person in this race, Republican or Democrat, who has never served a day in Washington. In the world I come from, leadership is about starting a business, not trying to get a bill out of committee.

...Romneys surrogates began their attacks on Santorum on Monday, when it became clear the former senator was gaining on him. Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Romney ally, attacked Santorum for earmarking while in Congress, and attacking the ex-senator via email for his criticisms of Romney for his health care bill while governor.

Former 2012 hopeful and former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, who was ultimately humiliated by Romney's loss to Santorum in his own state, took to his role as Romney surrogate with considerable gusto, even before the Minnesota caucuses.

Former Minnesota Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty released a statement Monday attacking Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum leading up to Tuesdays Minnesota Republican caucuses.

The former governor dropped out of the Republican race in August after a poor showing in the Iowa Ames Straw poll and shortly thereafter he endorsed former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Now, with a day remaining until the Minnesota Republican caucuses and Mr. Santorum leading Mr. Romney in a recent poll of Minnesota voters, Mr. Pawlenty is hoping his popularity in Minnesota will help sway voters to select his candidate Mr. Romney.

...One of those attacks consisted of comments from Mr. Pawlenty regarding Mr. Santorums record as a Pennsylvania senator. The former Minnesota governor calls Mr. Santorum a nice guy, but attacks his record as having called for too many earmarks.

Rick Santorum is a nice guy, but he is simply not ready to be President, said Mr. Pawlenty in a statement. As a U.S. Senator, he was a leading earmarker and pork-barrel spender. He described himself as very proud of the billions of dollars in pork-barrel projects he championed, and promised to defend the wasteful spending.

Apparently, that one hit home. Romney and surrogates must have gotten something right, because Santorum actually defended his earmarks.

Rick Santorum, under attack from Mitt Romney's campaign for his history of securing earmarks during his time in the Senate, said Monday his record was similar to many other conservative politicians.

"Jim DeMint, a favorite of the tea party, supported earmarks at the same time I did," Santorum said on CNN's "John King USA."

"I've now opposed earmarks because they were abused. But during the time I was supporting them, so was Jim DeMint and just about every other member of Congress. It was abused and should be banned. I'm taking the position of banning them."

...Santorum said on CNN that Romney also supported earmarks before Republicans collectively shunned the practice.

I don't know if "I was for earmarks before I was against earmarks" counts as much of a defense, but Santorum does have a point: until recently, everybody was doing it.

I can't vouch for whether Santorum is a "nice guy," but labeling Rick Santorum a Washington insider is so easy that even Rick Perry could do it. That's because Rick Santorum is a Washington insider.

Santorum's work the with "K Street Project," not only established Santorum as a Washington power broker during the heady days when the GOP held a virtual lock on government, but probably laid the foundation for Santorum's post-Senate career as a lobbyist.

Beginning in 2001, after Republicans seized control of Congress and the White House, then-Sen. Santorum (R-Pa.) began hosting Tuesday morning meetings with a select group of lobbyists. These meetings were part of a larger plan originally launched in the 1990s by Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), conservative activist Grover Norquist and others when the GOP retook the House of Representatives after 40 years of Democratic control to pressure lobbying firms and trade associations to dump their Democratic lobbyists and replace them with Republicans. Named after the Washington business corridor famous for housing lobbying firms, the K Street Project was aimed at installing a permanent Republican majority in Washington.

Journalist Nicholas Confessore explained Santorum's role in the K Street Project in a 2003 Washington Monthly article: "Santorum's responsibility is to make sure each [top lobbying job] is filled by a loyal Republican a senator's chief of staff, for instance, or a top White House aide, or another lobbyist whose reliability has been demonstrated. After Santorum settles on a candidate, the lobbyists present make sure it is known whom the Republican leadership favors."

This wasn't just backroom chatter. There were real direct effects on policy. When Jack Valenti, the longtime chief of the Motion Picture Association of America, retired, Republicans led by Santorum and DeLay sought to pressure the trade group to hire a Republican. The MPAA ultimately replaced Valenti with former Clinton administration Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, deeply offending leaders of the K Street Project.

Santorum brought up the Glickman hire at a closed-door Republican caucus meeting and was quoted in a 2004 Roll Call article saying, "Yeah, we had a meeting and, yeah, we talked about making sure that we have fair representation on K Street. ... I admit that I pay attention to who is hiring, and I think it's important for leadership to pay attention."

Later in 2004, the Republicans in Congress voted down $1.5 billion in subsidies for the movie industry. Grover Norquist told Roll Call at the time that the movie industry's hire of Glickman was one of the reasons Republicans scuttled the subsidies. "Hollywood has recently expressed contempt for the Republican leadership in the House, Senate and White House," Norquist said.

And when it comes to lobbying, Santorum was definitely a player in Washington's "Inside Game" (as explained by expert player Jack Abramoff.)

Santorum's connections with Big Coal lobbyists are part of the story, too. Santorum's "aw, shucks" demeanor when speaking about his coal-mining grandfather, and his decision to come to the aid of "a local coal company from my area." Santorum wasn't so much helping the little guy as going to work for an old friend he'd helped out many times before, as a member of the Senate.

Rick Santorum likes to brag about how he helped a poor local company fight big, bad government regulations on greenhouse gas emissions. "My grandfather was a coal miner," Santorum said at a debate in New Hampshire this week. "So I contacted a local coal company from my area. I said, look, I want to join you in that fight. I want to work together with you."

But Consol Energy, the company for which Santorum was a "consultant," wasn't some bare-bones local outfit-it's one of the largest coal mining companies in the United States, and its largest shareholder is the German utility RWE. And Santorum wasn't doing volunteer work: He was paid quite handsomely for his services, to the tune of $142,500 from 2010 to August 2011. He only ended his role with Consol when he launched his presidential bid last spring.

Santorum's relationship with the coal company began long before his consulting gig; Santorum and Consol had a mutually profitable association during Santorum's tenure in the Senate, too. Consol donated more than $73,800 to Santorum during his time as a legislator while simultaneously spending more than $1 million lobbying Congress on pollution limits, mine reclamation, worker health benefits, and tax policy, according to lobbying disclosure forms filed with the US Senate Office of Public Records.

...It's not entirely clear what Santorum did during his tenure as a Consol consultant, which started in 2007 after he was defeated for reelection. A spokesperson for the company told the New York Times he was hired "to provide strategic counsel on a variety of public policy-related issues." Although he was never registered as a lobbyist, former legislators can still be adept at maximizing their clients' influence without actually having to officially register as lobbyists under the law.

Big Coal's may have been Santorum's favorite lobby, it wasn't the only one corporate interest. Politico also reported on Santorum's seven-year-old attack on the National Weather Service. In 2005, Santorum sponsored legislation that while leaving the agency intact would have severely restricted its ability to distribute information directly to the public. The Political article says opponents criticized the bill as a reflection of an "outdated worldview" that government-sponsored information should flow through private, for-profit entities before reaching citizens.

But former congressman Alan Grayson writes that Santorum's anti-NWS crusade had little to do with conservative principles.

Now you must be thinking, "Wow, that guy Santorum is a REAL conservative." Santorum recognizes that government weather forecasts are meteorological socialism; they are a serious infringement on your constitutional right not to know whether it will rain tomorrow. Santorum sees that weather forecasts are a government takeover of the skies. In fact, Santorum is such an astute and profound conservative thinker that he probably realizes that traffic lights are a government takeover of the roads.

But this note is not about traffic lights. It's about Rick Santorum and government weather forecasts. And why Rick Santorum tried to ban them.

Here's why. It's because AccuWeather is a commercial weather forecasting company, and AccuWeather employees gave Santorum more than $5,000 in campaign contributions. Then he introduced the bill. Which subsequently and consequently led to Santorum being named as one of Congress's "most corrupt politicians." Which is saying a lot.

Mitt Romney was wrong when he said "Americans are the only people on earth" who put their hands over their hearts during the national anthem, but he's right about Santurm's "Washington insider" status and earmarks addiction.

No surprise here. Like I said before, one of the great things about the Republican primary seasons is that America gets to see how much Republicans get right when they attack each other. After Tuesday, it looks like the GOP is in for a prolonged battle, and they'll probably spend most of it confirming the worst about each other — while America watches.

Rick Santorum says his Tuesday victories prove that "conservatives are beginning to get it." As the GOP primaries drag on, more and more Americans are likely to "get it," where the GOP is concerned.

[Images via DonkeyHotey & Flickr.]