ROMNEY, THE EARLY PRIMARIES, AND ENVY: Hopefully you’ve all heard by now that Romney won both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, the latter by a healthy 16-point margin. (The former, it turns out, may not actually have been a win.) Now all eyes turn to South Carolina, where polls put Romney up above second-place Gingrich by about 5 points. Surprisingly, Rick Santorum’s support appears to be waning, big time, in the Palmetto state, and libertarian Ron Paul is surging, currently sitting in third place. At this point, Romney’s nomination appears all but inevitable, especially considering that the three “conservative” alternatives -- Perry, Santorum, and Gingrich -- are all remaining in the race and thus splitting the Not-Romney vote. (By the way, what in the world is Perry still doing in this campaign?) Gingrich has been doing the most damage to Romney by pummeling him on his record at Bain Capital, where he made millions of dollars on the backs of bankrupt, collapsing companies. Not really a great American success story. Gingrich’s SuperPac ran a 30-minute only somewhat factual “documentary” on Bain, and has been in full-throated assault mode every since New Hampshire, despite outrage among conservative circles that this validates the Obama campaign’s aim to go after Romney for the same thing. (Hint: It does!) Amazingly, Romney appears completely unprepared for the attacks. This week on the Today show, he claimed that questions from other Republicans about his tenure at Bain and the propriety of making millions by firing thousands of workers, looting pensions, and shutting down businesses were about nothing more than “envy”. He even went so far as to suggest that talking about income inequality -- the issue the Obama campaign calls the “central challenge of our time” -- is inappropriate on the campaign trail: “I think it’s fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms and discussions about tax policy and the like. But the president has made it part of his campaign rally.” “Where are these rooms?” Hendrick Hertzberg asks. And, if they’re discussing the massive inequality created and perpetuated by conservatives’ regressive policies, why are they quiet at all?
ROMNEY STRUGGLES TO BE LIKEABLE: Earlier, I said that Romney’s nomination was all but inevitable. The one stumbling block appears to be Romney himself, who is, purely and simply, not a likeable person. Campaign reporters have taken notice, and have provided us with some illuminating -- and truly hilarious -- accounts of this zillionaire (one of the 3,000 richest men in America) trying to relate to normal humans. It isn’t pretty. Here he is trying to be folksy by (incorrectly) guessing people’s age and ethnicity. Here he is trying to relate his love for his grandkids by talking about who he’ll bequeath his massive fortune to. Here he is making the wildly implausible claim, “There were a couple of times I wondered whether I was going to get a pink slip." And then following up by proclaiming he “never imagined” he would run for president. Here’s an account of his general awkwardness on the campaign trail. This account of a fairly disastrous town hall is even more entertaining. The point is that acting like a normal person, someone with personal intuition and compassion, does not come easily to the Mittster. (If you have any doubt about his compassion deficit, watch this video -- and pay special attention to his shit-eating grin as he walks away from a very sick man with a legitimate question.)
OBAMA’S GUTSY RECESS APPOINTMENTS: On January 4, the President announced that he would be making three new recess appointments: three new members to the National Labor Relations Board, which had been deprived of a quorum -- and, by extension, of the power to enforce national labor laws -- since 2008, and Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, which was created by the 2009 Wall Street reform bill. The GOP had vowed to block any nominee to the CFPB out of ideologically pique, despite the fact that the statute -- passed by Congress and signed by the President -- requires a director to head the new agency. As Steve Benen explained, this signaled “a radical embrace of nullification”: “As a matter of legal and institutional principles, Americans haven’t seen tactics like these since the Civil War.” Obama’s move was controversial, however, because Republicans in the Senate had specifically sought to prevent such appointments by holding pro forma sessions throughout the holidays, so they could claim the Senate was not technically in recess. And so it will shock no one to hear that the GOP was apopolectic over Obama’s so-called “power grab.” Here’s John Yoo and David Addington -- Bush administration officials who were responsible for designing and justifying his torture policies -- decrying the recess appointments as an extreme and unconstitutional overstepping of presidential authority. For real. The GOP claims that the Senate minority has sole authority to decide whether they’re in recess, and thus unfettered power to block all appointments. But the absurdity of the GOP’s claim to be in recess is perfectly encapsulated by this amazing catch by Jon Bernstein, who quotes a House Republican decrying the appointments while in the same breath acknowledging that Congress was in recess. (And here’s Joe “You Lie” Wilson explaining, with regards to a separate matter, that Congress “doesn't return from recess until Jan. 17.”) Today, the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel published its legal opinion assessing the constitutionality of the appointment, finding that the appointments were legal because the pro forma sessions did not provide an opportunity for the Senate to actually consider the nominations.
Hilarious Anecdote of the Week: Rick Perry tries to call on a mannequin.
Fun Video of the Week: Jimmy Kimmel explains exactly how gay marriage could spell the end of humanity.
Bonus Fun Video of the Week: The Daily Show on Gingrich’s general dickish condescension. (Part 2, which is also hilarious. Watch the whole thing!)
Must Read of the Week: Lakhdar Boumediene provides a haunting account of the seven years he spent Guantanamo -- locked up apparently for no reason at all.
Bonus Must-Read: Dahlia Lithwick on the ten-year anniversary of Guantanamo.
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