Rick Perry Experiences Blowback From His Attacks On Romney
Rick Perry’s odd populist attacks on Mitt Romney of late have cost him a major supporter:
Columbia, South Carolina (CNN) – One of Rick Perry’s leading financial supporters in South Carolina is defecting to Mitt Romney – and he told CNN Thursday that Perry’s sharp criticisms of Romney as a “vulture capitalist” were the main factor in his decision.
Both Perry and Newt Gingrich recently began hammering Romney as a predatory capitalist who looted companies and fired workers when he was running the private equity firm Bain Capital in the 1980s and 1990s.
Barry Wynn, the former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party and a financial adviser in Spartanburg, said the escalating rhetoric about Romney’s business background is “destructive.”
“It’s just a dance I didn’t want to be a part of,” Wynn said in an interview, explaining his decision to leave Perry’s campaign.
Wynn, along with a handful of other previously neutral South Carolina moneymen, will publicly endorse Romney on Thursday.
“This latest attack, it’s so foreign to me, I couldn’t see myself being a part of that,” he explained. “I don’t think you can be on both sides of free market capitalism. A big part of me being a Republican for the last 40 years is that I think it’s the best hope to protect free market capitalism, the growth engine of our economy.”
Wynn was part of a group of Republican bundlers who traveled to Texas last August to meet with Perry before he launched his presidential bid.
But he said the Texas governor’s latest message is contrary to “everything that Republicans have been struggling for.”
“It’s hard enough to make that case for capitalism, and to have people in our own party attacking the case, it’s not good for the party or good for the country,” he said. “It kind of falls into this politics of envy that the Obama campaign is going to be all about between now and November.”
Of course, this move could have something to do with the fact that Perry is currently averaging 5% in the polls in South Carolina and 3.5% in the polls in Florida. After all, nobody wants to back a loser and it’s always advantageous to be on the winning team. In any event, this is likely to hurt Perry not just in fundraising but also in any effort to comeback in South Carolina.
Perry’s already a dead man walking – I’m far more interested in how the blowback is affecting Gingrich. He and Newt both are basically hammering Romney from an OWS/99% perspective – that Romney & his ilk and their brand of rape & pillage capitalism is bad for society & the economy overall… If Gingrich actually makes a strong showing in SC’s primary after taking this position, how many heads in the GOP will explode, trying to make that kind of pivot?
In other words, Perry’s campaign is dead, and he will likely quit after South Carolina, or mayhaps Florida.
Good riddance.
“…this politics of envy that the Obama campaign is going to be all about…”
30 years later the real-world result of supply-side economics has been that the largest share of the gains made dueing that time-frame have gone to a relatively small number of people…as was the very intention of the policies. Since Reagan took office middle and lower class incomes have remained relatively flat…while the highest earners have seen an almost 300% increase in income. Had the gains of these last 30 years been broadly shared…had the gains been more equitable….had the supply-side theory worked…had there been trickle-down…then the burden of paying for social programs and basic infrastructure and public services would necessarily have to be very broadly shared…be more equitable. However, because the bulk of the gains have gone to a very few, the bulk of the revenue to pay for social programs and infrastructure and public services must necessarily come from the very few who have received those gains.
Supply-Side economics didn’t work and public policy must now reflect that failure. One group benefited and in return that group should assume the burden of that benefit…not shirk it as Romney and the GOP intend to keep doing at any cost.
This is not class warfare…it’s not populism…it’s not envy…it’s just very basic mathematics.
Bingo.
While the GOP certainly likes to claim their policies are supply-side, most of them don’t actually understand what this term means. Tax cuts are not, in and of themselves, supply side. Only properly structured tax cuts are. And conversely, there is much more to supply-side than just cutting taxes over and over.
In particular, the majority of the Bush tax cuts, which came largely in the form of tax credits, have absolutely no supply-side effects. Indeed, if you ask Republicans why tax cuts are good for the economy, they tend to make demand-side arguments (“letting people keep more of their money will encourage them to go out and buy more”). The irony here is that this is a Keynesian argument.
@Stormy Dragon: Well, a key tenet of SS economics could be phrased thusly:
“If you want to inject a certain amount of money into the economy to encourage growth, it’s more efficient to give large amounts to a few key segments of society (often short-handed to ‘tax cuts for the rich’) than to give a modest amount of money to a large number of people (a la tax rebate checks).” The idea is that the folks who get big checks will spend that on things like capital investments, which should generate more paying jobs, and have a greater impact on the economy as a whole, whereas giving every taxpayer $500 or so will only increase consumer spending for a month or so.
It’s a philosophy that sounds quite reasonable on paper, but it has a major problem: it can _only_ work like that if the US economy is a completely closed system – that money “poured” into the top has nowhere else to go but to “trickle down” to the lower tiers (yes, that’s where that term comes from). And that ain’t so. For the past several decades, we’ve seen that money poured into the top has gone overseas, out of the US economy altogether, increasing class divisions and making class mobility harder and harder to achieve. And it’s not welfare recipients or illegal immigrants that have been doing it. It’s the sociopathic fat cats who simply don’t care if the rest of the country burns to the ground, as long as their gated community still gets lawn service 3 days a week.
No, the key tennent of supply-side economics (at least real supply-side, not the bastardized Republican politician version of it) is that you grow the economy by encouraging the production of more goods and services.
The only way tax cuts play into that is indirectly: from a supply-side standpoint we don’t care if taxpayers get to keep more of their income, we’re just trying trick them into increasing the labor pool by making it more attractive to work longer hours.
That only works if:
1. The tax cuts come in the form of marginal rate reductions (as noted they didn’t, two thirds of the Bush cuts were in the form of credits which have no effect on marginal rates)
2. There’s a labor shortage (there’s not)
3. We’re focusing on people who’s income correlates strongly with hours worked (that is, the middle income brackets, not the top income brackets).
Labor supply simply isn’t the bottleneck right now, and even if it were, Republicans aren’t actually making policies that would encourage people to work more. Actual supply-siders would, right now, be looking for other ways of increasing production than tax cuts.
@legion:
Hint: if your explanation of some policy includes the phrase “the idea is that X will spend” at any point, it’s a demand-side argument, not a supply-side argument. Supply-side doesn’t care what people spend on anything, it cares what people produce. As per Say’s Law, if we produce more, demand will increase of it’s own accord.
@Stormy Dragon:
Bingo. I think this is where we’re differing – you are correct in your description of how it’s _supposed_ to be, rather than the GOP’s use of it as just another wealth-transfer tool.
Of course, even Say, later in life, realized that this was at best a gross oversimplification, and flatly wrong in certain conditions (like the conditions we’re in now). Hence, your “That only works if:” comment, and as you note, none of those “if”s currently exist.
When you allow an unlimited number of illegal aliens to invade your country and pay for their housing, food, deliveries, medical care, energy, Social Security, and education – for 30 million – you don’t think that cost us?
We did this already in the 1980s…and look where it go us.
The cost of illegals equals our annual deficit.
Trying to make a budget with a population that is ever-expanding and an unknown factor is like trying to tie a ribbon on the tail of a running rabbit.
@DefendUrLife:
Defend; Where did you the idea that any illegal alien get’s any thing from our government?They can not receive any housing that is why there are 5 family’s living in a garage.
They can not get free food from the government and no food stamps either.
What kind of deliveries are you talking about?
They can not get free medical care just in an emergency, This is called a humanitarian thing to do? loo kit up if you don’t know the meaning.
What free energy do they get?
Social Security is imposable to get without an account number. If they some how get a Social Security card and get a job they will be paying into Social Security with no chance in hell of ever getting any thing back.
As for welfare goes no chance of receiving any, even legal immigrants have to be in the U.S. for five years before becoming eligible for it.
The illegals pay taxes every time they buy something.
What makes you think that it is so easy to get free stuff from the federal government?
Education is payed by the state they have infested not the federal.
We did what in the 80’s
The only thing I can think of is when Reagan gave them all amnesty.
Is that it? If so that made them legal then they had to pay taxes pay into Social Security etc.
where did you get that inflated number for illegals in The U.S.A.
About 11.2 million illegal immigrants were living in the United States in 2010, a number essentially unchanged from the previous year, according to a report published Tuesday by the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington.
The Wall Street Journal, in its “Monthly Economic Forecasting Survey: April 2006,” conducted from Apr. 7-11, 2006, obtained the following answers from 46 economists:
Illegal immigrants often benefit businesses by filling low-wage jobs that are difficult to fill with Americans. But illegal immigrants can add to the costs of U.S. social programs. On balance, has the U.S. economy benefited more than it has been harmed by its current population of undocumented workers?
It has benefited more than it has been harmed 96%
It has been harmed more than it has benefited 4%
Apr. 7-11, 2006 – Wall Street Journal
DefendUrLife you should really find the facts before you comment. I do it so I don’t look so
misinformed.