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Go Home Catching On: A Bad Year For A Plutocrat

THE STUMP NOVEMBER 28, 2011

Catching On: A Bad Year For A Plutocrat

BY ALEC MACGILLIS

When I earlier today addressed the Union Leader's endorsement of Newt Gingrich, I had not yet seen any of the supplemental TV interviews with Joe McQuaid, the publisher of the arch-conservative New Hampshire newspaper. Now that I have, though, I see that McQuaid is out there making a critique of Mitt Romney that goes beyond the endorsement's implicit suggestion that he is someone who lacks "courage and conviction," is not "grounded in their core beliefs about this nation and its people" and "who tells us what he thinks we want to hear." Specifically, McQuaid is making a separate point that I made explicitly in this space just a few weeks ago: this may not be the best year to be running Willard Mitt Romney at the top of one's ticket.

Here's how McQuaid put it in an interview on Fox News: “I think — and this is crazy, but so are we — that Gingrich is going to have a better time in the general election than Mitt Romney. I think it’s going to be Obama’s 99% versus the 1%, and Romney sort of represents the 1%.”

And here's how I put it on Nov. 8, reacting to polling showing Barack Obama doing far better among white working class voters when put up against Romney than when he is put up against a generic Republican:

"...At a time when voters are in a deeply populist mood and generally awakening to the stark reality of extreme income inequality, is the Republican Party really on the verge of nominating a man with an estimated $250 million to his name, who made his money as a private-equity titan, who 'looks like the guy that fires you,' and who likes to expound on the personhood of corporations?"

Now, one can quibble with the Union Leader's judgment that the candidate better suited for this populist moment is a man who has a $500,000 revolving credit account at Tiffany's and has become wealthy through a brazen network of corporation-coddling entities that have brought in $100 million over the past decade, as described exhaustively in Sunday's Washington Post. Still, it seems notable that even conservatives like McQuaid are beginning to take note of Romney's potential unsuitability for this moment in time.

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9 comments

Hating the rich has one advantage from my perspective and that would be if it could tar the impact of money on politics, i.e. if when money bags Karl Rove the Advertiser showed up to tamper with a local election, where the locals can't compete, the ads were to be treated like an awful stench.

- Nusholtz

November 28, 2011 at 4:16pm

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I believe the Democrats are focusing on Romney, because Romney would be the most difficult candidate for Obama to have to run against. All the other Republicans have so many uber-Conservative negatives that it would be easy for moderates and independents not to vote for them. Thus Romney is the one to worry about. Not to mention, I believe all the OTHER Republican candidates are also focusing on Romney for the same reason. Of course Romney is the candidate of the 1%, but ALL Republican candidates are for the 1%. Trying to pretend that any Republican candidate cares at all for the 99% is simple Orwellian double-think.

- AllanL5

November 28, 2011 at 4:58pm

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What kind of a newspaper publisher says "we" in reference to one political party?

- DP1024

November 28, 2011 at 6:18pm

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Slick Willard!

- mcmahon.an

November 28, 2011 at 8:20pm

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AllanL5 - Exactly. Romney has weaknesses, no doubt about it, and his plutocrat status is one of them. But he is only one of two candidates in the Republican field whom I would worry about in a general election. (The other is Huntsman, who's never going to come within a mile of the nomination.) Most of the others are clowns. Gingrich is the best of the lot--he can at least sound like he knows what he's talking about--but he makes Bill Clinton look like a model of restraint, maturity, and dignity. If he got nominated, Obama's main job would be to stay out of the way while Gingrich's own ego toppled over and squashed him. Rick Perry is Bush without the brains or integrity. Even Republicans think he's a moron. Bachmann is a somewhat brighter version of Sarah Palin, and like Palin she appeals only to the wingiest of nuts. Cain might be able to brush off sexual harassment charges in the primary, but they'd come back to bite him hard in the general, and his "9-9-9" shtick wouldn't survive an all-out assault by Obama. Ron Paul is the modern-day Barry Goldwater, beloved by libertarians and dismissed as a crank by everyone else. There are three other guys in the race who could lay claim to being "serious" politicians instead of book-touring clowns: Santorum (his Google identity notwithstanding), Roemer, and Johnson. However, while they may be serious politicians, they aren't *good* ones. Santorum practically lives in Iowa these days, he's the arch-social-conservative in a state that loves social conservatives... and he's polling seventh there. If that's the best he can do, it's no wonder he lost his Senate seat. Roemer and Johnson don't have enough support to even bother polling. If Romney wins, his plutocrat status will certainly be an opening for Obama to attack. But if he doesn't, the GOP is toast.

- Dausuul

November 29, 2011 at 2:02am

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I would not have said this during the July and August Debt Ceiling Doldrums, but it's actually a good time to be Barack Obama today given the two men who are the likeliest Republican nominees -- Slick Willard (love it, mcmahon) and Newticles. Almost a heads-I-win, tails-you-lose proposition. If only we can keep Europe from completely melting down in the next 12 months!

- wildboy

November 29, 2011 at 9:37am

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Wow, this big shot conservative dropped that "99 percent" line so casually and smoothly, it was like was his saying own name - delicious. Now THAT's what I'm talking about in terms of branding, marketing, owning the narrative Democrats. Give it a try sometime (while you're hiding from the kids in the streets who are doing your work for you).

- WandreyCer

November 29, 2011 at 11:36am

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oops, should say "it was like he was saying his own name..."

- WandreyCer

November 29, 2011 at 11:37am

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I may have been too quick to dismiss Johnson above. It seems he's contemplating running as a Libertarian. Here's hoping.

- Dausuul

November 29, 2011 at 12:42pm

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