It Just Keeps Getting Better

Justin Elliot:

A significant portion of the seed money that created Mitt Romney’s private equity firm, Bain Capital, was provided by wealthy oligarchs from El Salvador, including members of a family with a relative who allegedly financed rightist groups that used death squads during the country’s bloody civil war in the 1980s

But, y’know, the world turns round and round. Once upon a time money went from U.S. taxpayers to the Reagan Administration, which sent it to the right-wing government in El Salvador, which used it to form death squads, which terrorized the country, so the wealthy oligarchs had to find a safe place to dump their money. So they unloaded several million into Bain capital, and Mittens made several fortunes, and now he’s tapping on some of that wealth to run for President. Ain’t capitalism grand?

Also — in the New York Times, Michael Shear writes that Romney’s wealth was not an issue in 2008. Now it is. The times, are they a-changin’?

South Carolina Primary Eve

Nate Silver’s most recent data:

South Carolina VOTE
PROJECTION
CHANCE
OF WIN
Newt Gingrich 35.4% 62%
Mitt Romney 32.7 38
Ron Paul 16.0 0

Obviously Newt’s recent racist tirade won over much of the Confederate vote in SC. But there’s also this, Nate says:

Some of this, I suspect, is because voters in both parties seem to have developed a resistance to falling in line when the news media expects them to. There were numerous reversals of momentum in the 2008 Democratic primaries, some of which seemed to represent an open rebellion by voters against the news media’s expectations of how they might behave. Even candidates as strong as George W. Bush in 2000 — who may have been the best non-incumbent primary candidate ever, with exceptionally strong fund-raising totals and polling numbers — have encountered a few bumps along the road.

Personally, I think seeing a bunch of smug, overpaid “pundits” on television schmooze about how Candidate X is “inevitable” before votes are cast does pre-dispose some of us to support Anybody But X. The only thing that’s saved Mitt’s ass so far is that the “Anybodies” are such nobodies.

From what I’ve read, Mitt had a really bad debate last night. He got booed for his tax return evasion. Richard Adams says Romney as much as admitted that his tax returns are a political liability. He also actually referred to his own Massachusetts health reform plan as “Romneycare.”

On top of that, the Romney campaign is circulating a video that shows Mittens being insufferably 1 percentish toward a heckler. Someone off camera asks Romney what he plans to do for the 99 percent, and Romney replies —

Let me tell you something. America is a great nation, because we’re a united nation. And those who are trying to divide the nation, as you’re trying to do here, and as our president is doing, are hurting this country seriously. The right course for America is not to try to divide America, and try and divide us between one and another. it’s to come together as a nation.

And if you’ve got a better model — if you think China’s better, or Russia’s better, or Cuba’s better, or North Korea’s better — I’m glad to hear all about it.

But you know what? America’s right, and you’re wrong.

This is what they think is a “good” answer? Someone said Romney might as well start wearing a top hat and a monocle.