Well now this is interesting...
Gingrich locked up a decisive victory in the state. With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Gingrich pulled in 41 percent of the vote, to Romney's 27 percent. Rick Santorum finished in third with 17 percent, followed by Ron Paul with 13 percent. Herman Cain, who dropped out before the first contest, garnered 1 percent.
If you remember there was a "bombshell" dropped on Gingrich just before the voting with his ex-wife arguing that he asked for an open marriage so he could screw Calista's brains out while still being married to his (at the time) wife.
But let's remember a few things.
First, Marianne pretty much stole Gingrich from his first wife. She was younger (and didn't have cancer.) So that Marianne got hosed by the same game with Calista is rather ironic -- and, in my opinion, just desserts. If you do something like this in the first instance, that is sleeping with a married man and his marriage breaks up as a consequence (in whole or part) and you "win", you shouldn't be surprised when the same thing happens to you later on.
This doesn't make Newt any less of a douchebag for doing what he did -- he is a douchebag and I cannot support any political candidate with that set of personal ethics. I understand divorce and it does happen for perfectly-legitimate reasons. But if you want to screw someone else you first ask for the divorce from your present spouse and then start hosing the new woman (or man.) If your pants (or dress) come off first you've demonstrated that you are incapable of keeping a vow. While we all sin and we all do things we regret in our lives in this case Newt did it twice, which means (1) it wasn't a singular mistake, and (2) he wasn't in any way remorseful and (3) he did not correct his behavior. In other words he didn't think there was anything wrong with what he did, other than getting caught.
I disagree but that's my call based on my analysis. You're welcome to your own opinion.
In any event mudslinging of this sort has been a time-honored (and successful) way of knocking off Republican candidates and lawmakers for a couple of decades. It doesn't work on Democrats and many would argue that the real issue there is a difference in professed ethics and thus the problem is hypocrisy (rather than the act itself.)
Well, maybe yes and maybe no, but this time when the hurlers pulled the pin on Mr. Grenade instead of waiting until it was hurled at Gingrich it immediately exploded, blowing back on the other candidates and media.
Oops.
The question is whether this marks the end of the use of this tactic or if it's an anomaly. We'll eventually find out, but I suspect the mudslingers will be a bit more careful next time now that the delay fuse burn time on those moral bombs has been shown to be a bit unreliable.
The results in South Carolina take the race to an effective two-way deal -- Gingrich and Romney. Ron Paul was behind Santorum, pointing out what I've said since the primaries began -- he's wrong in two very serious areas, and he blew up his run for the White House by being wrong in these two places.
Indeed, if he was right in just one of them (foreign policy linked to energy) he'd be in first place.
If you read Leverage you'll find that I spend a lot of ink on this point -- because it is critical to both understand and correct. We have a monstrous overseas military presence precisely because we've spent 30 years refusing to solve our energy issues and behind every unit of economic output is a unit of energy.
If you don't understand this and thus why we must resolve the energy issue at the same time we resolve our over-reach in the military realm you are unfit to be President.
While none of the Republicans "get it" in this regard in totality they're approaching this from the perspective of leaving the military spending alone. That won't work either because we can't maintain this level of spending and increases the Republicans want, but the voters have a visceral understanding that if we leave the foreign entanglements without addressing the fact that a huge part of our energy supply comes from these unstable parts of the world we're instantly and completely screwed and in South Carolina they responded to that rhetoric by rejecting the man pushing the "walk away" point of view. In that regard they are exactly correct and given the choices available to them, none of whom espouse the correct position, they voted for "least bad" which is all they could do in a primary contest.
In many ways the monetary policy issue is even more important, simply because we are running out of rope on our national debt-addiction rappelling adventure and the floor is still 100' down. That's a serious problem -- and "gold standards" do not (in fact cannot!) fix it. The only fix that works is to demand and enforce a zero-CPI standard with honest statistics, along with an end to federal government borrowing -- period. "Hard money" .vs. "Fiat money" is immaterial; if you permit fraud in the monetary and credit system, as we have, the rest simply does not matter and yet if you put a cork in the frauds and lock up the scammers then you quickly come to the conclusion that allowing a handful of producers of some metal, the majority of which are foreign entities, is the last group you want running your monetary policy!
The Paulites get this wrong and so does Ron Paul himself despite the historical fact that the United States had massive inflationary bubbles and detonations of them during the time it was on the Gold Standard. 1873 anyone (as just one example.)
The real problem in 1873 as with all other similar blowups was the issuance of bogus debt instruments unbacked by anything. In the case of 1873 concentration was in railroads and related construction all financed by long-duration bonds (and therefore subject to high degrees of price risk due to their duration) but which were entirely-speculative and in fact for which there was no actual demand in the economy for the services (transportation to be provided by said railroads) at a level sufficient to meet the intended expense. It didn't help that we were playing games with our exports (and Europe with its imports) much as China and the US are today, effectively hiding the bubble's impact for a period of time and allowing it to inflate to ridiculous size. When the over-leveraged positions became exposed the game collapsed and the Long Depression followed.
Naked shorting is against the law when it is done with stocks for the specific reason that it is counterfeiting. It is the representation in the marketplace of something that does not exist, diluting the value of all legitimate copies of the same thing. By the same token issuance of unbacked credit is in effect counterfeiting of a nation's currency and thus has the effect of diluting all of the legitimate units of currency in the system.
When naked shorts are exposed for what they are the unwind is vicious, immediate and destructive. The solution to these problems cannot be found in more fraud through shifting these counterfeit securities to the legitimate balance sheet. It is only found through (1) acceptance of the unwind that must occur, (2) punishment leveled at those who committed the offense and (3) strong forward sanctions to prevent it from happening again.
We must fix our monetary system or we will, irrespective of a hard or fiat currency, continue to have the same problems appear over and over again.
Exactly none of the Republican candidates get this right and yet it is the central issue that must be front-and-center in this campaign as the monetary rope has run out.
