In an interview on CNN, Romney told Soledad O’Brien: “I’m not concerned about the very poor.” Quote, unquote. What a disaster. What was he thinking?

Now, to be fair, in context, Romney was trying to say: I don’t care about the very poor, or the very rich, I’m concerned about all Americans – and, especially, middle-class Americans.

But that’s not what he said. Again, what he said was: “I’m not concerned about the very poor.” And that was a huge gaffe.

In itself, it might not be so serious. But, for Romney, it ranks right up there with other monumental gaffes, like: “I like firing people.” And: “Wanna bet $10,000.” And “I made a little bit of money giving speeches, not so much.” Which turned out to be $375,00. And “the banks aren’t bad people.”

Taken together, they portray Romney just as he is: a man hopelessly out of touch with average Americans. A man who has no idea what it’s like, after busting your butt, to struggle to pay your bills at the end of the month.

But, at least, Romney is speaking the truth. He, in fact, does not care about the very poor. Or the middle class.

That’s my parting shot for today.

Tribune Media Services

Political junkies like me have never seen anything like it: Running 20 points behind, just a week before the South Carolina primary, Newt Gingrich catapulted to the top of the pile and ended up defeating Mitt Romney by 12 points. It’s almost enough to make a believer out of you.

Indeed, his 32-point tour-de-force in just seven days is stunning, given that Gingrich, whose entire campaign staff walked out on him last summer, ran an embarrassing fourth in Iowa and New Hampshire. It’s all the more remarkable when you realize that his entire campaign is based on three big lies: he’s a Washington outsider; he’s not a lobbyist; and he’s a small-government conservative. Liar, liar, pants on fire!

Only if you define “outsider” as someone born outside of Washington could Gingrich be considered not part of the Washington establishment. He was elected to Congress in 1979, and hasn’t left Washington since. He served in Congress for 20 years, four of them as speaker of the House, just two heartbeats away from the presidency. Since resigning in disgrace from Congress, he’s operated inside the Beltway while serving on several boards and commissions, advising Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, founding and leading several for-profit consulting companies, and appearing as a paid commentator on Fox News. He and his third wife Callista live in McLean, Va., one of Washington’s most elite, and most expensive, suburbs.

Newt Gingrich, in other words, is exactly what Washington is full of. You see them every day at The Palm, the Capitol Grille, or the Four Seasons Hotel: old, white men who used to be somebody. They came to Washington as a young man, held an important job until they quit or were fired, and never went home. They hang out here, in all the favorite watering holes, hoping somebody will recognize them. If Newt’s not part of the Washington establishment, there is no Washington establishment.

And if Newt’s no lobbyist, there are no lobbyists in Washington, either. It doesn’t matter whether he actually went up to Capitol Hill and “registered” as a lobbyist. He has an office on K Street. He meets with members of Congress and state legislators about legislation impacting companies who pay him handsomely — including $25,000 a month from the chief lobbyist of Freddie Mac — to represent them. In other words, he does what Bob Livingston, Larry Craig, Dick Gephardt, and Trent Lott do. He opens doors and peddles his influence all over town. Enough with silly word games. He’s a lobbyist.

Newt also tries to appeal to tea partiers by painting himself as an authentic Ron Paul, Ronald Reagan-like, small-government conservative — which, if claimed by anybody else, would be condemned by Newt as “pious baloney.” Throughout his career, Gingrich has always promoted big ideas for big government. He voted for creation of the Department of Education and supported Medicare Part D. He championed universal health care, with an individual mandate. Together with Nancy Pelosi, he called on Congress to take action against global warming. He’s advocated a new federal initiative on brain research. He calls himself a “Theodore Roosevelt Republican.”

Just this week, Newt told Florida voters that, if elected president, he would establish an American colony on the moon — and begin regular shuttle service to and from Mars — by 2020. At the same time, he says he’s prepared to declare war on Iran and Cuba. He’s offered no evidence of how much these new initiatives would cost, nor where the money would come from. Although, as a member of Congress, he did author the “Northwest Ordinance for Space,” allowing moon residents, once they numbered 13,000, to petition Congress to become our 51st state.

As for President Reagan, although Newt invokes Reagan often, he wasn’t always so full of praise. In Congress, he accused Reagan of “impotence and incompetence.” And he blasted Reagan’s summit meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev as “the most dangerous summit for the West since Adolf Hitler met with Neville Chamberlain in 1938 in Munich.” For his part, President Reagan refers to Gingrich only once in his diaries, saying Newt’s ideas on a budget freeze would “cripple our defense program.”

As speaker, in fact, Gingrich received so much criticism from fellow Republicans that he once asked Senate Leader Bob Dole “Why do people take such an instant dislike to me?” Dole reportedly explained: “Because it saves time.” True then; true today.

© 2012 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

And Newt’s sudden rise in the polls is all the more astounding because it’s based on three big lies.

One, he’s an outsider. Talk about pious baloney. He came to Washington in 1979 as a newly-elected Congressman, served in Congress for 20 years, and he’s never gone home. If he’s not part of the Washington establishment, there is no Washington establishment.

Two, he’s not a lobbyist. More baloney. True, he may not have actually “registered” as a lobbyist. But he has an office on K St. He meets with members of Congress and state legislators about legislation impacting companies who pay him to represent them – pocketing $25,000 a month, for example, from Freddie Mac’s top lobbyist. That’s influence-peddling. That’s lobbying.

Three, he’s a limited-government conservative. Nonsense. He’s advocated colonies on Mars, full-scale federal initiative on brain research, an individual mandate on health care, and federal action against global warming. And he calls himself a “Teddy Roosevelt Republican.”

If conservatives knew the truth about Newt, they wouldn’t support him.

That’s my parting shot for today.

Tribune Media Services

CHARLESTON, South Carolina. —You have to see it on the ground to believe what a mess Republicans have made of this election. It’s the worst way to run a primary campaign — unless your goal was to lose the election, in the first place.

The Republican Party started out with one big advantage: Despite getting off to a gangbuster start in 2009, just one year later President Obama looked like he’d run out of gas. His popularity plummeted. Democrats got shellacked in the mid-term elections. Obama’s legislative agenda never got off the ground. Even liberals — no, especially liberals — were disappointed with his failure to fight for or deliver on several key issues. Consensus among many political observers: Obama was a weak president whom Republicans could easily deny a second term.

Given such a golden opportunity, how did Republicans blow it? Let me count the ways. Six of them. First, they took too much for granted. They convinced themselves that Obama was so unpopular that all they needed to win was to stand as “the non-Obama.” After three years, they had nothing to offer. They never came up with any agenda of their own except voting “no.” That’s never enough to win, especially when you’re up against such a crafty opponent.

Second, they left most of their best players on the bench. Seriously, nobody can argue with a straight face that this year’s posse of nine candidates was the best the Republican Party had to offer. Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels, Jeb Bush, Haley Barbour. Any one of them would have provided Republicans a stronger horse to ride in 2012.

Instead, third, they fielded a bunch of clowns. Any self-respecting Republican must be embarrassed to call Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, or Ron Paul a candidate for president of the United States. The very fact that any member of the public or media would take them seriously shows how low politics has sunk in this country. And yet every one of them had a turn, however briefly, on top of the pile.

The worst of them, by far, is Newt Gingrich, who reinvents himself faster than Mitt Romney. And that’s no mean trick. Newt appeared in a national TV spot with Nancy Pelosi warning about global warming; now he doesn’t believe in it. He advocated an individual mandate for buying health insurance; now he opposes it. He warned that passage of President Clinton’s economic plan would cause a recession; now he takes credit for all the jobs created during the Clinton administration. He sucked all the money he could out of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac; now he wants to shut them down. He was a serial adulterer; now he campaigns as a Christian conservative.

No matter what happens in South Carolina, there is no way Newt Gingrich will be the party’s nominee. Republicans should have laughed him off the stage long ago.

Meanwhile, fourth, Republicans rejected and tossed overboard the strongest candidate of them all. Jon Huntsman looks presidential. He’s smart, articulate, and good on his feet. He has the best resume, as businessman, governor and ambassador. He was the one candidate who stood a good chance of beating President Obama, and the one candidate Obama feared most. Unfortunately for him, but fortunately for Democrats, Huntsman had everything it takes to win — except the support of his own party. Which Republicans will soon regret.

As a result of all of the above, their fifth mistake was to settle for Mitt Romney, who may be the strongest one left standing, but is still a very weak campaigner and the worst possible nominee for 2012. When the number one issue is jobs, the last thing Republicans need on top of the ticket is a man who spent 15 years destroying jobs, who admits he only pays 15 percent in taxes, and who considers the $375,000 he made last year in speaking fees “not very much” money. You could not be more out of touch with middle-class Americans.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, Republicans couldn’t resist a sixth and final mistake: mercilessly beating up on Mitt Romney over his record at Bain Capital to the extent that he will be known, from now to November, as a “corporate raider,” “job destroyer,” and “vulture capitalist.”

All in all, it’s a heck of a way to run a primary — and lose an election.

© 2012 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

“Scott Walker sat on a wall. Scott Walker had a big fall. But not all of the Koch Brothers millions could not put Scott Walker back together again.”

How sweet it is! For America’s working families, it’s two big wins in a row.

First, John Kasich tried to destroy collective bargaining in Ohio. And the people of Ohio rose up in anger and rejected his plan.

Then, Scott Walker tried to gut workers rights in Wisconsin. The people of Wisconsin waited patiently for a year – until it was legal to do so – and then they rose up in righteous outrage, too – one million strong! – and demanded Walker’s recall.

One million signatures! What a glorious day for all working families in Wisconsin. And what a powerful message to Republican politicians everywhere.

First in Ohio, now in Wisconsin, the American people have spoken: We believe in the rights of workers, union and non-union. We believe in the right of collective bargaining. We believe that workers deserve the wages and benefits they fought so hard to win for their families.

And any politician who tries to destroy the middle class does so at his own peril.

That’s my parting shot for today.

In fact, he was the only one of nine candidates – unlike Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, or Mitt Romney – who was never, not even briefly, at the top of the pack.

And Republicans should be asking themselves: Why not?

That’s what’s significant about Huntsman’s departure from the race. Not his endorsement of Mitt Romney. But his party’s rejection of their best candidate.

I disagree with Jon Huntsman on many issues. But he’s got an impressive record as businessman and political leader. He’s smart, he’s photogenic, he’s articulate, he’s a strong campaigner. There’s no doubt that he would have been the strongest candidate against President Obama.

But there’s no room for that kind of thoughtful, reasonable, moderate person in the Republican Party anymore.

Today, Barack Obama is breathing a sigh of relief because Jon Huntsman is no longer in the race.

And, some day soon, Republicans will regret it.

That’s my parting shot for today.

Tribune Media Services

He barely won the Iowa primary. He handily won New Hampshire. He’s going to win South Carolina next. So now we know the Republican nominee for president will be: Gordon Gekko.

And we also know what he stands for. In the 1987 film “Wall Street,” corporate raider Gekko told shareholders of Teldar Paper Company: “I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them!” He went on: “The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works.”

See what I mean? In a textbook case of “life imitates art,” that’s the very same business philosophy espoused by the real-life candidate, Mitt Romney: “Greed is good.” It’s the perfect bumper sticker for the Romney campaign.

Am I being unfair in comparing Mitt Romney to the heartless Gordon Gekko? Not according to his fellow Republicans. As former CEO of Bain Capital, Romney argues that buying up companies and shutting them down is just the way capitalism works. But Newt Gingrich doesn’t buy that. He asks: “Is capitalism really about the ability of a handful of rich people to manipulate the lives of thousands of other people and walk off with the money?”

Romney further argues he was helping workers and investors alike. But Ron Paul disputes that. He points out that in a typical leveraged buy-out, “the wealth is taken from the middle class and it goes to the select few, who are the insiders.”

Romney calls it venture capitalism at work. But Rick Perry has another name for it. “I happen to think that companies like Bain Capital could have come in and helped these companies, if they truly were venture capitalists,” he told voters in Lexington, S.C. “But they’re not — they’re vulture capitalists.” Romney, of course, didn’t help his case by declaring, “I like being able to fire people.”

Imagine! We thought the Republican contest would center on a debate over Romneycare. Instead, it’s boiled down to an attack on corporate greed. Can capitalism go too far? Those are the same arguments used by Ted Kennedy against Mitt Romney in 1994. You expect to hear them from the leaders of the Occupy movement. But nobody expected them in a Republican primary.

Trying to shame or silence his critics, the Romney campaign accused Gingrich and others of trying to “swift-boat” the former Massachusetts governor — a theme quickly picked up by the media: “Is Gingrich swift-boating Romney?” But, as reporter Ari Berman points out in The Nation, that comparison is absurd.

There’s a big difference between the attacks on John Kerry’s war record in 2004 and the questions raised about Mitt Romney’s business record in 2012. The entire Swift Boat campaign was nothing but one big fat lie. But Gingrich and Perry are only telling the truth. Corporate predators like Bain Capital do, in fact, swoop in on distressed companies, leverage them with debt, strip them down, fire workers or export jobs, and then sell companies off for scrap — while investors walk away with huge profits.

Citing the success of Domino’s, Sports Authority and Staples, Romney brags about creating a “net 100,000 new jobs.” But he’s offered no proof of that claim, and his numbers don’t add enough. The 100,000 figure includes current employers of all three companies, hired long after Bain left the scene. And it doesn’t factor in the thousands of jobs Romney/Bain destroyed by looting other companies. Indeed, out of 77 companies taken over by Bain, the Wall Street Journal found that 22 percent had either filed for bankruptcy or simply shut their doors. The truth is, Romney was never a job creator. He was a wealth creator. And it’s a lie for him to suggest otherwise.

Just as it’s a lie to suggest that he ever lived in fear of getting a “pink slip.” As reported by the Boston Globe, Romney had a deal with Bain Capital that allowed him to return to his former job at his former salary if things didn’t work out. For him, there was zero financial risk.

Mitt Romney will soon emerge from the primaries as a successful, but badly-battered, candidate, which is great news for the Obama campaign. They won’t have to produce any new anti-Romney commercials for the general election. They can just air the same commercials run by Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry in the primary. Ain’t politics fun?

© 2012 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Tribune Media Services

Mitt “Landslide” Romney may have won the Iowa caucuses by a whopping eight votes, but everybody knows the real winner was former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum.

After wandering in the wilderness, neglected and forgotten, for the past year, Santorum surprisingly emerged as the only serious challenger to Romney. Whether it’s because Iowa voters suddenly discovered his social conservative beliefs or because so many Evangelical ministers turned to him at the last minute after striking out with every other possible alternative to Romney, Santorum’s near-win catapulted him to the top of the anybody-but-Mitt pile.

But, as Newt Gingrich or Herman Cain might warn him, Santorum may soon discover that it’s better to be on the bottom and ignored than on the top and under the microscope. That’s especially true in Santorum’s case, because he may have more baggage than all the rest of them and because his political opinions are far, far from the mainstream.

For starters, disagreeing with the Supreme Court’s 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut decision, Santorum believes states should have the right to ban all forms of contraception. As recently as last October he asserted: “One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country.” Birth control, he believes, is “a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” Santorum also opposes the Supreme Court’s 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision, which strikes down the ban on sodomy.

Welcome to Santorum’s world: no more condoms, no more pills, no more diaphragms, and no more oral sex. In fact, no more sex at all outside of marriage and, even among married couples, only for the purpose of making babies. Seriously, we expect that from the pope. But from the president?

Those couples still allowed, on occasion, to have sex would, of course, be limited to heterosexual couples. Santorum is solidly against gay marriage. He would not only ban future gay marriages, but — in a total contradiction to his assertion of states’ rights above — he would autocratically nullify any such unions already sanctioned in Iowa, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Vermont, and the District of Columbia.

Santorum would also, of course, reinstate “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” But, he insists, that’s not to pick on homosexuality. “It’s not, you know, man on child, man or dog, or whatever the case may be,” he told the Associated Press. In other words, Santorum has no problem with gays or lesbians, as long as they never have sex and never wear a U.S. military uniform.

Americans might also be surprised to learn that Santorum has a problem with working moms. In his book, “It Takes a Family,” he bemoans the fact that so many women are finding it “more socially affirming to work outside the home than to give up their careers to take care of their children.” And, while most Americans welcome the winding down of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Santorum, alone among Republican candidates, advocates the use of military force to bring about regime change in Iran.

One other little-known fact about Santorum: While campaigning as an outsider, he is, in fact, like Newt Gingrich, the ultimate Washington insider. After losing his Senate seat, he didn’t go back to Pennsylvania. He stayed in Washington, raking in big bucks (more than $900,000 in 2010) by peddling his influence to companies seeking favor from Congress or the administration. Santorum’s clients included Consol Energy, a leading player in the controversial natural gas extraction technique called “hydrofracking.” He was also paid $341,000 for serving on the board of Universal Health Services from 2007 to 2010, during which time UHS was sued by the Justice Department for defrauding Medicare.

Like Gingrich and Herman Cain before him, Santorum also has his share of ethical problems to explain, including two blatant conflicts of interest. As senator, he formed a charitable foundation called “Operation Good Neighbor,” headed by Pennsylvania developer Michael O’Neill — for whose firm, Preferred Real Estate, Santorum secured $8 million in federal grants. And Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee over Santorum’s accepting a $500,000 mortgage on his $640,000 home in Leesburg, Va., from The Philadelphia Trust Company — even though the bank’s policy was to make loans to investors only, and Santorum was not one of them.

With all that baggage, Democrats should hope and pray Rick Santorum becomes the Republican nominee.

© 2012 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

But, as Newt Gingrich or Herman Cain could tell him, Santorum may soon learn it’s better to be on the bottom and forgotten than on the top and under the microscope.

Because, once the microscope goes on Rick Santorum, Americans will learn that he has, maybe, more baggage than all the rest of them. This is not a man with average American opinions.

Santorum, for example, as a strict Catholic, is on the record as against all forms of birth control. No more condoms, no more pills, no more diaphragms – just lots more unwanted babies.

Santorum is not only against gay marriage, he is also against any exercise of homosexuality, which he equates with “man on dog.” Whether he’s speaking of his own experience, we don’t know.

He thinks all mothers should stay at home and take care of their children, instead of getting a job, and he supports going to war against Iran to prevent their getting a nuclear weapon.

In short, Rick Santorum probably thinks Pope Benedict XVI is too liberal.

God, I hope he’s the Republican nominee.

That’s my parting shot for today.