Visual source: Newseum
John Dickerson:
"I'm a business guy," Mitt Romney likes to say. He hardly needs to. He so exudes corporate prowess, he could wear a tiny corner office as a lapel pin. For months, "I'm a business guy" has been the mantra of his campaign: It meant he understands the economy and has been in charge.
Now, on the eve of the New Hampshire primary, his rivals would like to make that phrase poison in his mouth. Instead of a successful businessman who can help create jobs and improve lives, they are painting Romney as a ruthless Wall Street home wrecker. "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?" Newt Gingrich asked Monday. "I do draw a distinction between looting a company, leaving behind broken families and broken neighborhoods and then leaving a factory that should be there."
Matt Bai:
You’ve tried shredding his record, mocking his ideology, assailing his truthfulness. It’s come to not very much. So if you’re Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum or Jon Huntsman or Ron Paul, how, exactly, do you stop Mitt Romney?
The answer is: You probably don’t, or at least not in any mortal way. But in this thing about Bain Capital and the factories it closed, Mr. Romney’s rivals might just have found something he needs to worry about, now and in November.
Andrew Leonard:
It is no surprise to see Mitt Romney attacked as a caricature of Gordon Gekko, the corporate raider immortalized in Oliver Stone’s 1987 film “Wall Street.” As far back as 1994, when Romney ran for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy successfully defeated him by utilizing that exact attack strategy. And it is in no way fundamentally wrong.
Like Gekko, Romney made his fortune buying and selling companies; and like Gekko, he believes that his “greed is good” version of rough-and-tumble creative destruction is a positive force for America, weeding out the bad performers and nurturing lean-and-mean profit engines. If you are looking for the paradigmatic exemplar of the new style of capitalism mogul launched by the Reagan revolution, Romney is your man. Michael Douglas’ Gordon Gekko is merely ersatz.
The shock is to see Newt Gingrich and his financial backers channeling the Oliver Stone critique so passionately and wholeheartedly. If you have not seen the three-minute advertisement “When Romney Came to Town,” the soon-to-be debuted documentary lambasting Romney as the enemy of the American worker, prepare to be flabbergasted.
Jules Whitcover:
Hammered over his insistence that he is not a politician, Mr. Romney also made a remark that seemed to reinforce both his elite family background and an apparent attitude that only financially privileged candidates ought to seek public office. He cited his father, George, a Michigan governor who unsuccessfully sought the presidency in 1968, who told him: "Mitt, never get involved in politics if you have win election to pay a mortgage." The counsel could be taken as endorsement of the notion that only the well-heeled should run.
In all this discussion about Mr. Romney the citizen-candidate, he also insisted that he challenged Kennedy in 1994 knowing he couldn't win, telling his partners in his firm, "I'll be back in six months. Don't take my chair." The comment may have reinforced his insistence that he wasn't acting as a politician -- but, if true, it raises a question about his wisdom and judgment.
Tim Reid:
Whether or not he gets to the White House by eventually beating Democrat Barack Obama in November's presidential election, Romney is already on the verge of making history.
No Republican candidate has ever followed a win at the Iowa caucus, which Romney secured narrowly last week, with victory in the New Hampshire primary, and virtually everyone but his opponents expects that he will do just that on Tuesday night.
Kathleen Parker:
There is method to Gingrich’s madness. In fact, though Romney spent more on ads, the most damaging ones for Gingrich came from Ron Paul’s campaign, which accused the former speaker of serial hypocrisy. But Gingrich has focused his anger and bitterness on the candidate he deems the greatest threat to his own candidacy. The battle for votes between Santorum and Romney, neither of whom wants to insult the other, most likely will be fought on the front lines of Gingrich’s own internal war.
Richard Cohen:
Mitt Romney is starting to get on my nerves. He reminds me of Reggie, the rich, handsome, athletic and effortlessly superficial character in the “Archie” comics. He does almost everything well, and he looks like a million bucks (leveraged for much more), but he rings hollow, like the class president who would bring glee to all of Riverdale High by slipping on a banana peel. I’d kill for that.
Lately, Romney has been on something of an insincerity tear. This son of a big-state governor, this Harvard Law School graduate, this multimillionaire, this hunk with the voice of an AM radio weatherman (“Good morning, Southland!”) has been portraying himself as an average guy.
The New York Times:
The more Mitt Romney pretends to empathize with the millions of Americans who are struggling in this economy, the less he seems to understand their despair. And the rest of the Republican field seems to have no more insight into the concerns of most voters than he does.
Mr. Romney claims his background as a businessman provides him with an understanding of the economy and the ability to fix it. His opponents — particularly Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul and Rick Perry — say their political experience provides the same advantage. In truth, none have offered anything but tired or extremist economic prescriptions, providing little evidence that they can relate to those at the middle or bottom of the ladder.