Newt has made another Gingrichian mistake in his latest retort
to Romney.
His response to Romney’s request to give back the
Freddie Mac money is misguided for the newly minted front-runner.
It is not a Conservative position. But is it a Gingrich position?
It just might be.
Gingrich’s statement in
full:
“If Gov. Romney would like to give back all the money he’s
earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his
years at Bain that I would be glad to then listen to
him.”
Surely, Mr. Speaker, you jest?
If Newt is actually attacking the work of Romney and other
financiers in streamlining and re-structuring businesses, he’s not
carrying any Conservative position; rather, he’s setting up a tent
on Occupy Wall Street (OWS) territory: an extreme, anti-capitalist,
class-warfare posture that’s inherently un-Republican,
un-Conservative, and unserious.
There’s a gargantuan difference between what Governor
Romney did as a private-sector agent in business exchanges between
corporations, and Newt’s taking money from a boil on the backside
of the Federal Government — one of the worst antagonists of the
mortgage bubble tragedy: Freddie Mac.
First of all, one worked and profited by bringing
companies together in market-based transactions within the
parameters of free enterprise.
The other stoked the fires of a conflagration that
scorched first the mortgage industry, then the entire economy. By
giving strategic advice about how to further metastasize Freddie
Mac’s influence into the mortgage industry, market transactions
were steamrolled by the nimble “persuasion” known Federal lending
practices and regulations. Then, by firing a flaming missive of
anti-capitalist antipathy into the heart of the free market
(calling into question the actions of Bain Capital and other
corporations whose purpose it is to save markets, bolster
industries, and feed fledgling enterprises), Newt Gingrich turned
his Freddie Mac misfeasance into Conservative
malfeasance.
Newt Gingrich’s attacking the re-capitalization and
re-structuring of companies and corporations by market-based means
should be called out for what it is: reprehensible. When companies
are sick or failing or under-performing, they seek out and, if they
are lucky, find ways and other companies to help them save
themselves and turn a sow’s ear of an idea into a warehouse of silk
purses. This is how misguided companies find direction and hungry
ideas find paydirt. And it’s what we call a market-based solution.
If that sort of market-based ingenuity and self regulation is
offensive to Newt, he has some explaining to do, not only to
Republicans whose support he seeks but to the Democrats whose party
line he’s stolen.
