The liberal Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. ends his column this way:
Which leads to this observation from Gingrich: “I think there’s a real difference,” he said, “between people who believed in the free market and people who go around, take financial advantage, loot companies, leave behind broken families, broken towns, people on unemployment.” Yes, there are different kinds of capitalism.
Romney’s victory speech suggested that he hopes that the campaign will be about whether President Obama wants to turn the United States into Europe. A more relevant discussion would be over what American capitalism is — and should be. Thanks to Gingrich and Perry, this debate is now unavoidable.
So it appears as if Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry have done a masterful job of securing what most political strategists consider to be the key demographic in South Carolina’s Republican Party: E.J. Dionne voters.
When Dionne, who is about as reliable a liberal and as passionate a supporter of Barack Obama as you’ll find, is praising Republican politicians for their comments on capitalism, it tells you almost everything you need to know.
Well done, gentlemen. Well done.
E.J is not quite into donning the beyond-parody conventional lib-lab wisdom of the moment clown suit that is Tom Friedman's habitual garb, but he's certainly getting ready to take his place in the putt-putt car. Only several weeks ago he was proclaiming that Gingrich was the rabid conservative "revenge of the base." Now, tempis fugit, Gingrich is tagged with the role of progressive tribune of anti-capitalist justice. n nGingrich is Gingrich. Tommorrow it will be another tangent, another apology, and so it goes. But let's have some sympathy for the guy as far as EJ goes. EJ could work in Tamerlane, the Great Gatsby, and the Clydesdale horses into another meaningless melange of partisan pieties, though at least his metaphors wouldn't be mixed. This is, after all, a guy who cherry-picked some statistics from EU wages pre Euro debt crises wipeout to prove that socialism can really be a better economic engine than capitalism. n nWell, whatever.
Lets have more serious debate in this country. I dont think EJ is praising Newt and Rick here. He just says because of their actions the argument about what capitalism is is unavoidable. n n"A more relevant discussion would be over what American capitalism is — and should be. " n nI think EJ is actually right! We need a discussion about this. I despise corporatism and chrony capitalism! I want free market capitalism. I want government to get out of the pockets of business, get out of the way of its citizen entrepreneurs and do the right thing, the will-of-the-people thing. n nIts this arrangement thats strangling the middle class. Let me work, earn my own money and make out of life what I can.