Jobs, Not Job-Seekers


It's the myth that won't die, apparently.

Five or six weeks ago, Robert Oak stated flatly "there is no labor shortage in the United States.    None, and that includes high skilled labor.     Relying on the Bureau of Labor Statistics, he explained

In 2010, there were 3,531,000 computer & mathematical related occupation workers. Yet in 2008, there were 3,676,000. In just this occupational category alone, the United States is down 145,000 jobs, or -4%. The same is true for engineers and architects. In 2010 there were 2,619,000 people employed in these occupations, yet magically, in 2008, average, there were 2,931,000, another drop of 312,000 jobs, or -10.6%.  

He noted, as the graph (below) from the BLS indicates,

the unemployment rate for professionals, those with college degrees in specialized areas should be below 2.2% for full employment. Clearly the above shows not only is there no worker shortage in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, there are U.S. citizens needing a job.

Yet, the President remarked in his State of the Union message

I also hear from many business leaders who want to hire in the United States but can't find workers with the right skills.    Growing industries in science and technology have twice as many openings as we have workers who can do the job.     Think about that- openings at a time when millions of Americans are looking for work.    It's inexcusable.   And we know how to fix it.

Oh, no, he doesn't.    Or at least if he does, he's not letting on that he knows.       Instead, the President has a scheme, to be led by Education Secretary Arne Duncan of Chicago, which would hasten the demise of the  American public school system through a combination of abridging teacher tenure, expanding the scope of charter schools, and other "reforms" which have failed to demonstrate success.

Obama, more intent on being "transformative" than effective, continues to peddle the self-serving fable from the American business community that it would so love to hire more individuals, but they just aren't qualified.      It is, though, self-serving also for the President.   Were he to propose the corporate world assume even a modicum of accountability for devastating unemployment, he not only would incur condemnation from the GOP but would indirectly be acknowledging that joblessness remains far too high.     The problem is not the Washington establishment, public or private, you see; it's American workers.      They simply are too darned uneducated.

Until recently at least, the White House was expecting the nomination of Mitt Romney, the worst possible scenario imaginable, given the individuals who have been part of the GOP's presidential race.      Romney, of course, wouldn't suggest that the private sector should assume any responsibility for the high  unemployment rate.      But his campaign slogan is "Believe in America."       "Americans" might be conflated with "America" in the minds of American voters, who might come to suspect that the challenger believes in America, and in American workers, more than the incumbent.      And that could be disastrous.

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A Debt He Knows Intimately


MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell remarked Tuesday

I talked to a top Romney adviser tonight who said, 'Look, if Mitt Romney can not win here in Florida then we're going to have to try to reinvent the smoke-filled room which has been democratized by all these primaries. And we're going to have try to come with someone as an alternative to Newt Gingrich who could be Jeb Bush, Mitch Daniels, someone.' Because there is such a desperation by the so-called party elites, but that's exactly what Gingrich is playing against.

That reflects the thinking of Steve Schmidt, campaign advisor for presidential nominee John McCain, who after the South Carolina primary projected "we're probably moving toward the declaration of war on Newt Gingrich by the Republican establishment. And if Newt Gingrich is able to win the Florida primary, you will see a panic and a meltdown of the Republican establishment that is beyond my ability to articulate in the English language."

Jeb Bush probably could have his arm twisted, but likely would prefer another four years for people to forget the disastrous presidency of brother George.        With Chris Christie the primary surrogate of Mitt Romney and Haley Barbour exposed as the best friend a felon ever had, there is renewed interest in the GOP establishment in Mitch Daniels.       The Indiana governor had a minor audition last night as he delivered the Repub rebuttal to the President's State of the Union address, in which we heard "in three short years, an unprecedented explosionof spending, with borrowed money, has added trillions to an already unaffodable national debt.    And yet, the President has put us on a course to make it radically worse in the years ahead."

When The New York Times' Ross Douthat in early 2010 promoted Daniels as a presidential contender, The New Yorker's George Packer recalled

Daniels was Bush’s head of the Office of Management and Budget from 2001-2003 (what happened to the surplus inherited from Bill Clinton during those years is a separate story). He was responsible for forecasting the budget in the event of a war with Iraq. His number came in at fifty to sixty billion dollars. Compared to what some experts were forecasting, it was an astonishingly low figure. But even Daniels’s projection was too much for the Bush White House, which was intent on keeping unpleasant scenarios about the war out of the public eye, and Daniels’s own spokesman, Trent Duffy, was sent out to talk the number down. Lawrence Lindsey, Bush’s top economic adviser, had said the war could cost as much as two hundred billion, and Daniels had dismissed the figure as “very, very high.” As for the cost of rebuilding Iraq, by April of 2003—with the war already under way—O.M.B. had asked Congress for the paltry sum of 2.5 billion. By the end of last year, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had cost over a trillion dollars.

A lot of people underestimated the consequences of that war. What worries me is that Daniels’s projection was the budgetary equivalent of the Rumsfeld Pentagon’s failure to commit enough troops for the occupation. “Very, very high” reminds me of what Paul Wolfowitz said in response to General Eric Shinseki’s estimate that stabilizing Iraq would take several hundred thousand troops: he dismissed it as “wildly off the mark.” Wolfowitz and Daniels weren’t just mistaken. They were guaranteeing that the Administration wouldn’t be ready if things went wrong. They were contributing directly to the disaster that followed the fall of Saddam. And they were acting out of ideological conviction or bureaucratic loyalty rather than cold analytical judgment. In short, when the stakes were as high as possible, Daniels showed very little independence or common sense, the qualities that Douthat credits him with.

Daniels also helped turn the large surplus handed to President Bush by President Clinton into a huge surplus.      As the chart below, from a signed editorial by Teresa Tritch of the NYT, indicates, today's deficit results far more from the wars Bush waged and his big defense budgets, the economy which tanked during Bush's second term and, especially, the tax cuts he implemented.      The 43rd President is far more responsible than is the 44th President for the national debt Republicans suddenly became concerned about 36 months ago.      The seeds of, in Daniels phrase, impending "national bankruptcy," were planted not by Barack Obama or  the "big, bossy government,"  the which he considered far less "bossy" when it was supplying the Indiana governor with the stimulus funds that allowed him to balance state government.        Some of those seeds were planted by Mitch Daniels and thereafter continually watered by the president whose critical contribution to economic disaster he ignores.

Criticize, even condemn President Obama who, after all, extended the Bush tax cuts which helped drive deficits and the national debt.     But doing so with the guy who applauded the policies is shameless- or would be if his party had any sense of shame.

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Chinese Spoken Here


If President Obama is to be believed- a leap of faith with any president- we won't have to join Jon Huntsman in an immersion course of Mandarin Chinese.

In the inspiring and progressive first portion of the President's State of the Union message last night, Obama declared

Meanwhile, America is more productive.  A few weeks ago, the CEO of Master Lock told me that it now makes business sense for him to bring jobs back home.  (Applause.)  Today, for the first time in 15 years, Master Lock’s unionized plant in Milwaukee is running at full capacity.  (Applause.)

So we have a huge opportunity, at this moment, to bring manufacturing back.  But we have to seize it.  Tonight, my message to business leaders is simple:  Ask yourselves what you can do to bring jobs back to your country, and your country will do everything we can to help you succeed.  (Applause.)

We should start with our tax code.  Right now, companies get tax breaks for moving jobs and profits overseas.  Meanwhile, companies that choose to stay in America get hit with one of the highest tax rates in the world.  It makes no sense, and everyone knows it.  So let’s change it.

First, if you’re a business that wants to outsource jobs, you shouldn’t get a tax deduction for doing it.  (Applause.)  That money should be used to cover moving expenses for companies like Master Lock that decide to bring jobs home.  (Applause.)

Second, no American company should be able to avoid paying its fair share of taxes by moving jobs and profits overseas.  (Applause.)  From now on, every multinational company should have to pay a basic minimum tax.  And every penny should go towards lowering taxes for companies that choose to stay here and hire here in America.  (Applause.)

Third, if you’re an American manufacturer, you should get a bigger tax cut.  If you’re a high-tech manufacturer, we should double the tax deduction you get for making your products here.  And if you want to relocate in a community that was hit hard when a factory left town, you should get help financing a new plant, equipment, or training for new workers.  (Applause.)

So my message is simple.  It is time to stop rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas, and start rewarding companies that create jobs right here in America.  Send me these tax reforms, and I will sign them right away.  (Applause.)

Hopefully, the side will join the President and congressional Democrats in that effort.

Hopefully, but improbably.        At approximately 4:30 into his rebuttal (video, below) to the State of the Union message, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels contended

The late Steve Jobs- what a fitting name he had- created more of them than all those stimulus dollars the President borrowed and blew.      Out here in Indiana, when a businessperson asks me what he can do for our sate, I say 'First, make money.    Be successful, if you make a profit, you'll have something left to hire someone else, and some to donate to the good causes we love.'

Steve Jobs was nearly unparalleled (and maybe not "nearly") in making a profit, roughly $8.3 billion of it.      But he used little of that money "to donate to the good causes we love," apparently choosing (as is his right) to donate little to charity.  

It's fitting, too,  that the notoriously anti-union governor of Indiana would identify the late co-founder of Apple as the prototype of a company which creates jobs.

It seems that Jobs did create jobs- just not primarily in the United States.        Soon after the entreprenuer's death in October, Mike Daisey, in an op-ed in The New York Times, acknowledged the "design perfection and business acumen" of Jobs, then added

Apple’s rise to power in our time directly paralleled the transformation of global manufacturing. As recently as 10 years ago Apple’s computers were assembled in the United States, but today they are built in southern China under appalling labor conditions. Apple, like the vast majority of the electronics industry, skirts labor laws by subcontracting all its manufacturing to companies like Foxconn, a firm made infamous for suicides at its plants, a worker dying after working a 34-hour shift, widespread beatings, and a willingness to do whatever it takes to meet high quotas set by tech companies like Apple.

I have traveled to southern China and interviewed workers employed in the production of electronics. I spoke with a man whose right hand was permanently curled into a claw from being smashed in a metal press at Foxconn, where he worked assembling Apple laptops and iPads.     

On Saturday, The Times reported

Apple employs 43,000 people in the United States and 20,000 overseas, a small fraction of the over 400,000 American workers at General Motors in the 1950s, or the hundreds of thousands at General Electric in the 1980s. Many more people work for Apple’s contractors: an additional 700,000 people engineer, build and assemble iPads, iPhones and Apple’s other products. But almost none of them work in the United States. Instead, they work for foreign companies in Asia, Europe and elsewhere, at factories that almost all electronics designers rely upon to build their wares.

“Apple’s an example of why it’s so hard to create middle-class jobs in the U.S. now,” said Jared Bernstein, who until last year was an economic adviser to the White House.

“If it’s the pinnacle of capitalism, we should be worried.”

Though Obama proposes to reward companies which employ Americans and stop rewarding companies which believe their patriotic duty is lowering the unemployment rate abroad, congressional Democrats have been down this road before.      Sixteen months ago, Senate Democrats voted overwhelmingly for legislation which would have exempted

companies that import jobs from paying the 6.2 percent Social Security payroll tax for new U.S. employees who replace overseas workers who had been doing similar work.

The two-year exemption would be available for workers hired over the next three years. The tax cut — estimated to cost about $1 billion — would be partially offset by tax increases on companies that move jobs overseas.

The bill would prohibit firms from taking deductions for business expenses associated with expanding operations in other countries. It would increase taxes on U.S. companies that close domestic operations and expand foreign ones to import products to the U.S.

The bill failed when every Republican in the United States Senate voted to encourage companies to keep employment up in other countries, and down in the U.S.

Good luck, Mr. President.    But getting congressional Republicans to commit to this country rather than other nations- when a rhetorical appeal to American Exceptionalism is far more emotionally satisfying- will not be easy.






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Merely Abortion Politics


Ron Santorum has not been the worst Republican running for his party's presidential nomination and, at least as long as Newt Gingrich is around, will not be.      He did for example, offer up the finest comment at the first South Carolina (Myrtle Beach) debate, stating

This is Martin Luther King Day.     This is a huge deal in the African-American community, because we have very high rates of incarceration, disproportionately high rates, particularly with drug crimes, in the African-American community.

The bill I voted on was the Martin Luther King Voting Rights bill.      And this was a provision that said, particularly targeted African-Americans.     And I voted to allow- to allow them to have their voting rights back once they completed their sentence.

Less impressive than Santorum's singular reference to Martin Luther King Day (though he probably knew it would gain him applause from neither GOP activists nor primary voters) was Santorum's actual position on the issue.       Once felons have "done their time," completed their sentence, states should allow them to vote, which might give them a sense of having a small stake in the functioning of society- and is simply a matter of fairness.    The courage, in an age of vigorous Republican efforts at voter suppression (aimed at blacks most of all) to support voting rights for felons who have completed their sentence, should not be underestimated.        Most of those affected aren't black- but as Republican audiences know (and Santorum acknowledged), a disproportionate number are.

However,  the former Pennsylvania senator and Virginia resident probably would be offended if he weren't judged most of all on his pro-life credentials.       Accordingly, in a column conveniently published in The Wall Street Journal on the Christian day of worship, Santorum emphasizes "my opponents whisper that they are pro-life, but I fight the battle in the trenches and will continue to do so."

That is demonstrably true in the case of his primary primary opponents, Gingrich and Mitt Romney.     (Ron Paul whispers louder but as the states-rights candidate, wants abortion policy left to the states.)      But Santorum's accuracy otherwise wanes, notably when he claims President Obama

supported federal funds for abortion through ObamaCare and told Catholic Charities that there was no room in the inn if they wanted to help women abused by sex traffickers and be pro-life at the same time.

Except in rare instances, no*; and no (although "no room in the inn" is a nice, if obvious, touch).

Opinions differ as to whether the Affordable Care Act authorizes "federal funds for abortion." Unfortunately, those on Santorum's side are mostly wrong.  

Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), a faithful supporter of the anti-abortion cause, maintains

(T)he Senate bill allows elective abortions to be offered through the newly-created individual state health insurance exchanges and multi-state health plans administered by the Office of Personnel Managment (OPM), and through federally-subsidized plans in already-existing community health centers.

Anyone who doesn't earn enough money would qualify for a federal subsidy to help pay for their health plan in the state exchanges, including plans offering elective abortion coverage.
(U)nder this proposal, community health centers would receive a dedicated stream of money outside the annual congressional process to fund the government which is where the Hyde prohibition is maintained.    So that means that for the first time federal money could be used to fund abortion at a community health center.

Admittedly, the Act does not preclude abortions to be offered through the individual state health insurance exchanges and multi-state health plans.       But they cannot be aided, directly or indirectly, by government funds.       Timothy S. Jost of the Washington and Lee University School of Law explains

The Senate bill, like the House bill, prohibits the use of federal premium subsidies to pay for abortions that are not covered by Medicaid (that is, cases of rape and incest or of physical threat to the life of the mother); provides that the government cannot require health plans to cover abortion; prohibits health plans and federal agencies or state and local governments receiving federal funds from discriminating against providers because of their unwillingness to provide for, pay for, provide coverage for or refer for abortion; and leaves in place all state laws regulating abortion and federal law regarding conscience protection or willingness to provide abortion.

Moreover, the Act requires those plans which provide coverage to collect a separate premium, which must be held in a separate, strictly-regulated account.      *In pre-existing condition plans, whether run by the state, or the federal, government, no public funds can be used for any abortion not necessitated by rape, incest, or a threat to the life of the mother.

Community health centers now will receive additional funding, through a new Community Health Center Fund.       The ACA does not change the centers' policy on funding of abortions, which have been subsidized only in the aforementioned instances in which pregnancy resulted from rape or incest or poses a threat to the life of the mother.

Last year, according to ABC News, the Department of Health and Human Services changed its program to combat sex trafficking from a contract to a competitive grant.     It also added a clause "about giving strong preference to applicants that provide victims with comprehensive case management services" including information on, and referrals to, 'family planning services and the full range of legally permissible gynecological and obstetric care."

HHS officials appear determined to arm such victims with as much information as possible about their options rather than leaving them in the figurative dark; their opponents, not so much.      The critics, moreover, choose to slander the Obama Administration additionally with being anti-Catholic, including Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) charging "If we were to have a litmus test that Catholics need not apply...."    

Catholic groups, primarily Catholic Charities and the Conference of Bishops, have received approximately $100 million more in grants from Obama's HHS than they did in the last three years of the Bush Administration.      But that inconvenient fact will not deter Santorum nor anti-abortion activist Chris Smith (R-NJ), who has accused the Department of "an unconscionable abuse of power."

Notwithstanding Santorum's charge that Catholic Charities "cannot help women abused by traffickers and be pro-life at the same time," the organization can help women abused by traffickers and be pro-life.    It even can help the women, be pro-life, and receive federal funds; it simply cannot help the women, be pro-life, and play by a different set of rules from others receiving a subsidy.     If Rick Santorum does not recognize that, he ought to identify the article and section of the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing a right to a government subsidy.

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Gingrich Wins, For Now


"If Nancy Pelosi has this information, Barack Obama has this information."

That might have been wishful thinking on the part of Romney communications director Gail Gitchko.      She spoke a day or two before the South Carolina primary when her candidate, contrary to what I expected a week and a half ago, was poised to lose to Newt Gingrich. But it may have been more than grasping at straws.    

Gingrich voters are under what is likely a false impression. Analyzing the Gingrich victory, Dave Weigel this morning noted that when he talked to South Carolina Republicans

In Charleston, a voter named Jayne Harmon claimed that Gingrich would “dismantle” the president.In Monck’s Corner, I learned that Gingrich would “humiliate” him. 

In Columbia, I was told that Obama would be “lacerated” or “annihilated.” When Gingrich spoke, and repeated his promise to challenge Obama to seven debates, a biker named Vincent Sbraccia hoisted his sign and screamed: “Wipe the floor with him! Wipe the floor with him!”

Not so fast. Let's turn the clock back to Newt's heyday, when he was obsessed with the evils of adultery when committed by Democrats.     Marvin Olasky interviewed Gingrich to determine what David Schippers, chief investigative council to Representative Henry Hyde (R-Ill) for the inquiry into impeachment of Bill Clinton, termed the "roadblocks" put up by Gingrich to investigation of the President. Olasky reported

My interviewing was part of an attempt to reexamine an extraordinary statement by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, Gingrich's chief lieutenant from 1995 through 1998. In the course of a long interview last fall, he told me that President Bill Clinton "found out about the Gingrich affair and called Newt over to the White House for a private meeting between the two of them." Armey argued that Clinton pressured Gingrich to go easy on that year's impeachment drive "or I'll start telling your story." He claimed the two leaders "had many meetings that we didn't know about where they'd drink wine and smoke cigars and talk about their girlfriends."

Olasky found that opinions differed as to the likelihood that Clinton met with Gingrich and blackmailed him.  He concludes

Gingrich insists there was no blackmail, and my sense is that he's telling the truth—but knowing blackmail is possible plays on a man's mind. Based on all the interviews, it's clear that Gingrich had secret meetings with Clinton and that Democratic Congressmen Beryl Anthony and Barney Frank knew about Gingrich's affair. It seems highly likely that the White House knew about the affair and that Gingrich suspected Clinton knew. It seems likely that this concern affected his conduct in some way.

Today's intelligence report is of a very different sort but emanates from that era.    The House Ethics Committee concluded its investigation in 1997

saying in its findings that Gingrich had misled the committee in its investigations. The eight-member panel stopped short of saying Gingrich had lied, but said the then-speaker had been either "intentional" or "reckless" in his representtions of his activities during the investigation.   The ethics committee, which is divided evenly on party lines, voted 7-1 in favor of its judgment, and recommendation that the full House vote to reprimand Gingrich and require the reimbursement of $300,000 for extra time spent on the investigation as a result of Gingrich's misstatements.


The House did overwhelmingly approve the reprimand, voting 395-28 to approve the punishment.   Twenty-sic Republicans broke ranks to oppose the punishment. An official reprimand is a step below censure in severity of congressional discipline.

The committee's report long ago was made public. However, additional documents and details considered by the committee remain confidential and are probably what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was referring to when in December she told Talking Points Memo

One of these days we'll have a conversation about Newt Gingrich. I now a lot about him. I served on the investigative committee that investigated him, four of us locked in a room in an undisclosed location for a year. A thousand pages of his stuff.

The time is not now, not when Gingrich threatens to upend the only declared GOP candidate who stands a reasonable chance of defeating President Obama. And the vehicle may not be Nancy Pelosi, given that after her statement, she would be a prime suspect.      

If Newt is nominated, there may be no need to get the information into the public domain, just as there was no need for Bill Clinton to blow the whistle on the Georgian in 1989. Gingrich knows the material exists and is accessible and if he is nominated, it might be enough to turn him from the tiger he portrays into the pussycat who would face Barack Obama.
  

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What He Is


Let's be clear about this.

Newt Gingrich's considerable surge nationally, and near-astronomical surge among Republicans in South Carolina, may be due to a few factors.    But the combative style which has endeared him to Republican voters was most significantly manifested in the Monday night debate in South Carolina.

Five Thirty Eight's Nate Silver, who as of this morning gives Newt Gingrich an 82% chance of winning today's primary, notes "one pollster showed an incredible 22-point swing against Mr. Romney and toward Newt Gingrich over the course of a 24-hour period after the Monday night debate."

One of the two major clips coming out of the presidential debate hosted by GOP TV and GOP Press on Monday night featured Mitt Romney unable to defuse the issue of release of his tax return(s) which, incomprehensibly, he also was unable to accomplish in the Thursday night debate, sponsored by CNN, the Tea Party Patriots, and the Southern Republican Leadership Conference.

But the most dramatic moment occurred when Gingrich was asked about his idea that children supplant janitors in schools.       Charging (without detail, facts, or statistics) that New York City janitors "make an absurd amount of money," the Pennsylvanian turned Georgian turned Virginian lectured Juan Williams and asserted "the fact is that more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history."

You won't be surprised that the claim is false.     Brooks Jackson of USA Today's factcheck.org reports (emphasis theirs)

We asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition service for month-by-month figures going back to January 2001.     And they show that under President George W. Bush the number of recipients rose by nearly 14.7 million.    Nothing before comes close to that.

And under Obama, the increase so far has been 14.2 million.   To be exact, the program has so far grown by 444,574 fewer recipients during Obama's time in office than during Bush's.

Jackson notes "Gingrich would have been correct to say the number now on food aid is historically high" (or that) "the number has risen sharply since Obama took office.

But that wouldn't have gotten the job done.       It's one thing to point out that more individuals are on food stamps now than ever before but that doesn't directly tie the situation to President Obama.       Neither does noting the number of people on food stamps has jumped considerably since Obama became president; it the reason may have been unrelated, and it does not suggest (directly or indirectly) that it wasn't Barack Obama's intent.       Make no mistake, however:     "more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama" means that Obama himself has done it- and apparently, with intent and motive.      Unless Mr. Obama is moonlighting as social services/human services director of 50 states, he couldn't have done it himself.         Or intentionally, even indirectly.      

The claim is absurd, suggesting that Newt Gingrich's motive may not be pristine.       James Fallows understands (emphasis his)

Newt Gingrich knows exactly what he is doing when he calls Obama the "food stamp" president, just as Ronald Reagan knew exactly what he was doing when talking about "welfare Cadillacs."    There are lots of other ways to make the point about economic hard times - entirely apart from which person and which policies are to blame for today's mammoth joblessness, and apart from the fact that Congress sets food stamp policies.    You could call him the "pink slip president," the "foreclosure president," the Walmart president," the "Wall Street president," the "Citibank president," the "bailout president," or any of a dozen other images that convey distress.     You decide to go with "the food stamp president," and you're doing it on purpose.

If Joe Lieberman had been elected, I would be wary of attacks on his economic policy that called him "the cunning, tight-fisted president."     If Henry Cisneros had or Ken Salazar does, I would notice arguments about ineffectiveness phrased as "the manana administration."   If Gary Locke were in office, then "the Manchurian candidate" jokes that had been used on Jon Huntsman would have a different edge. And so on.

It shouldn't take a two-by-four applied to the cranium of the nation's media for Newt Gingrich to be recognized, and identified, as what he is.

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CNN's Hanging Curve


Newton Leroy Gingrich gets caught with his pants down, a story which "has now gone viral on the Internet," as CNN's John King put during Thursday's GOP presidential debate (transcript, here).        

Working on his second wife, Gingrich was on the sixth or seventh year of his affair with Callista Bisek, conducted in part at his marital home.      After he called Marianne Gingrich and asked for a divorce, they went into counseling, and soon afterward Newt asked for an open marriage.      His wife was not pleased.    He left Marianne and later married Callista.

That didn't come from the recent interview, practically on the eve of the critical South Carolina primary, Marianne gave to ABC News, but from her interview over 17 months earlier with Charles Pierce.      Still, there was Newt Gingrich defiantly telling John King last night "My--my two daughters, my two daughters wrote the head of ABC and made the point that it was wrong, that they should pull it."     (There was no word from Gingrich on whether famed right-wing Republican blogger Matt Drudge should be flogged for obsessing over the matter during the day.)

Not surprising really.     After an interview with the second Mrs. Gingrich, The Washington Post's James V. Grimaldi revealed that Newt's two daughters- Kathy Lubbers, as president and chief executive of Gingrich Communications (disbanded when Gingrich decided to run for president last year); and Jackie Gingrich Cushman, who has earned over $56,000 working for her father's campaign committees- were/are on Gingrich's payroll.       No one ever accused the former House Speaker of being stupid.

So it is a fantasy of the right that the interviews with Marianne Gingrich recently held with ABC and The Washington Post were a part of a liberal media conspiracy to destroy any chance that Newt or any of the other GOP candidates has to defeat President Obama.     (Other than Romney, each has taken care of that himself or herself.)      Grimaldi writes Marianne "said she was speaking out because she wanted her story told from her point of view rather than to be depicted as a victim or suffer a whisper campaign by supporters of her former husband's presidential bid.     She said she had received so many requests for interviews that 'it was unavoidable' and 'I knew I wouldn't get through this year without' doing an interview."

But of course the real issue isn't the candidate's infidelity or his impulse to have his daughters do his dirty work.    Nor was it likely he was lying when he termed the story "false," though given that he didn't say what part of the story was "false," Newt may have avoided actually lying.     Republicans, after all, do nuance, even less than they do accuracy.

The disconnect between Newt Gingrich's private behavior and his public advocacy makes clear how so little Gingrich may say as a candidate can be believed.       Grimaldi describes the scene two days after Newt asked Wife #2 for a divorce:

Newt Gingrich gave a speech at a conference titled "The Demise of American Culture" sponsored by the Republican Women Leaders Forum in Erie, Pa.  Gingrich extolled the virtues of the Founding Fathers and criticized liberal politicians for supporting tax increases, which he said hurt families and children.    In the speech, which was televised on C-SPAN, he spoke often of God, families and values.

"When a liberal talks about values, will he or she actually like us to teach American history?"   Gingrich told the women's group.   "Will they actually like young people to learn that George Washington was an ethical man?   A man of standards, a man who earned the right to be father of this country?"

Marianne Gingrich said she was surprised at the timing.   "How could he ask me for a divorce on Monday and within 48 hours give a speech on family values and talk about how people treat people?" she said.

But the hypocrisy isn't news to anyone over, say, the age of 40, or anyone who can remember this is the way Republicans used to do business.       They would talk about family values publicly and then behave privately as they wish- precisely because their rhetoric gave them license with their base.     In a May, 1988 piece Gingrich wrote for the hard-right Human Events, he

attacked Clinton and the Democrats for both the outrageous demonization of Independent Counsel Ken Starr and the House Democrats for refusing to vote for immunity for four potential witnesses in the campaign finance investigation.

The administration's legal fight to shield the testimony of Secret Service agents in the Lewinsky case was the last straw, Gingrich said.

The speaker once again pledged to say during every public appearance that Americans have the right to know the truth about the Lewinsky matter and that the president is not above the law.

But Republicans will be largely excused by their base for their ethical failings because they really didn't want to do it.      Their words, it is believed, prove as much.

The Huffington Post's Howard Fineman, though, gets to the heart of the distortion of the democratic process the debates inadvertently have created.      Before the debate began, he presciently noted "The audience of 1,500 will comprise members of the Southern Republican Leadership Conference and Tea Party Patriots, as well as state and local officials from South Carolina.     Expect them to boo lustily- and to amplify an already loud theme in conservative and Republican circles; that the "mainstream" media is against them."      Fineman wrote

The changing role of the "mainstream" media is one explanation for the vox populi tone. Facing conservative suspicion, some networks decided to partner with Tea Party, state party or other grassroots organizations to stage the debates, and part of the co-sponsors' price was to bring along a partisan audience. (Thursday night's CNN debate is co-sponsored by the Southern Republican Leadership Conference.)

In an era of reality TV shows and other in-front-of-a-live-audience programming, a debate with an absent or silent crowd is also a tough sell, too sedate and silent for today's tastes.And even by the standards of the recent past, this season's debate formats and candidate strategies seem to lead more inexorably to snappy sound bites designed to play to the crowd.

Digby responds "well, yeah.    CNN has been especially whorish in this regard, not only sponsoring debates with the Tea Party but hiring their spokespeople as "analysts" and catering to them as Real Americans in contrast to everyone else." The pairing of the mainstream media with the GOP will be far more potent than any arrangement they could make with the Democratic Party.      Fineman quotes Democratic consultant Mandy Grunwald observing "First, there weren't always audiences. And if there were, they would tend to cheer for their guy or gal, and that was about it. Nothing like this."    

And there will be "nothing like this" at Democratic debates.      Most of the hootin' and hollerin' by the GOP faithful has been linked to criticism of the media by a (Republican) candidate.     Democrats don't do media bashing.     (Think, for example, of Congressman- uh, er, ex-Congressman Weiner.   And ex-Governor Spitzer.    And John Edwards.)       And if the media continue its collaboration in debates with the Republican Party (or even both parties), the Democratic Party will be fighting with one arm figuratively tied behind its back.   

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