There surely will be a statue of Sarah Palin when the Temple of Political Chutzpah is erected. The former half-term governor and failed candidate, who never came clean about anything, says that Mitt Romney has brought his Bain Capital problems on himself by not being transparent and offering no documentation for the claim that he created 100,000 net jobs and refusing to release his tax returns.
For the record, Palin was never transparent, never offered documentation for anything unless subpoenaed, and has refused to release her tax returns.
“Gov. Romney has claimed to have created a 100,00 jobs at Bain, and people are wanting to know, is there proof of that claim and was it U.S. jobs created for United States citizens? … And that’s fair,” she told her buddy Sean Hannity of Fox News when asked about Rick Perry’s “vulture capitalism” charge against Romney.
“That’s not negative campaigning — that’s fair to get a candidate to be held accountable to what’s being claimed,” she added.
Citing President “machine” and the billion dollars his campaign will have behind him, Palin also suggested that it’s better for the Republican hopefuls to face a barrage of attacks from their own GOP rivals, rather than deal with them for the first time during the general election.
“It’s kind of like a come to Jesus moment for some of these candidates, and that’s healthy and that’s good,” she said. “It is rough and tumble. It’s not beanbag, as Romney and others have called it, and these guys have to be prepared for this.”
In case you missed it, and neither Palin is generating the kind of interest they once were, Todd Palin endorsed Newt Gingrich this week. The Missus has not yet indicated on whom she will bestow her tarnished imprinteur.
While the Republican presidential candidates have at it with Wiffle Ball bats, President Obama is quietly raising hundreds of millions of dollars — if not the billions that Palin claims.
The Obama campaign and Democratic National Committee raked in a combined $68 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, bringing its total 2011 haul to $222 million — an impressive take but not quite up to the blistering pace set by the Bush-Cheney reelection machine over the same period.
Perceived complacency by some supporters is a concern for the president’s campaign brain trust, which generally has viewed its cash situation as unassailable.
“Too many of our supporters think, ‘they don’t need our money’ or they don’t have to give now,” campaign manager Jim Messina said. “Look, I get why people would think that, but they are completely wrong. . . . We have to build a ground organization now, not in six months.”
Still, he emphasized the campaign’s strength remains at the grass roots level: About 1.3 million donors have sent money to the combined Obama-DNC effort, with 583,000 people giving during the most recent quarter alone. More than 98 percent gave $250 or less, Messina said, with the average donation at $55.
After stops in Iowa and New Hampshire, states that have largely weathered the recession, the Republican clown car has arrived in South Carolina, a state that has not been quite so fortunate with unemployment at 9.9 percent, nearly 1.5 percent above the national average.
As it does in much of the rest of the country, the economic gap looms large in the Palmetto State. Since 2007, South Carolina has lost 78,000 jobs, many of them in construction, and the smaller government-coddle the rich message being peddled by many Republican president wannabes may not play well.
Governor Nikki Haley, who is on the short list of future potential presidential candidates, has endorsed Mitt Romney and in a recent campaign stop with the candidate boasted about all of the new jobs she is bringing to the state.
Among the obstacles to Mitt Romney becoming the nominee is his faith. Unfair as it may be, some evangelicals and others consider the Mormon Church to be a cult.
But a new poll of Mormons found that they believe that the acceptance of Mormonism is rising and that Americans in general are ready to elect a Mormon as president.
Less than 2 percent of the population is Mormon and the faith is consistently ranked near the bottom, along with Muslims and atheists, on favorability surveys of various groups.
William Kristol on the Bain Capitol kerfuffle:
Romney, if he’s to be the nominee, will have to do more than smugly dismiss concerns about aspects of modern finance as simply an assault on free markets. It will be fun for the Romney campaign over the next few days being defended by conservatives and free marketers against Newt’s assaults. It was fun in 1992, when I was in the Bush White House, having our allies ridicule arguments, first by Pat Buchanan and then by Perot, as silly and uninformed. It wasn’t so much fun losing a few months later.