Wednesday Open Thread [8.29.12]

Matt Taibbi:

“But what most voters don’t know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America’s top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth.”

“By making debt the centerpiece of his campaign, Romney was making a calculated bluff of historic dimensions – placing a massive all-in bet on the rank incompetence of the American press corps. The result has been a brilliant comedy: A man makes a $250 million fortune loading up companies with debt and then extracting million-dollar fees from those same companies, in exchange for the generous service of telling them who needs to be fired in order to finance the debt payments he saddled them with in the first place…”

“If Romney pulls off this whopper, you’ll have to tip your hat to him: No one in history has ever successfully run for president riding this big of a lie. It’s almost enough to make you think he really is qualified for the White House.”

The NRSC is pulling out of New Mexico and Missouri and investing heavily in North Dakota, where the GOP is facing an unexpectedly difficult fight to pick up an open Senate seat, Politico reports.

The campaign arm of the Senate GOP is “canceling its ads in New Mexico, where Democrat Martin Heinrich appears to be pulling ahead of Republican Heather Wilson, and Missouri, where Rep. Todd Akin’s comments about abortion and rape have damaged his campaign and caused national Republicans to flee the state.”

I highly doubt this, given Clint Eastwood’s very public socially liberal statements over the years, but maybe. Eastwood would be a better get for independents than Palin or Trump.

“A well-placed Republican source tells Townhall that Oscar-winning director and actor Clint Eastwood will travel to Tampa, Florida to attend Mitt Romney’s nominating convention this week… Our source — who spoke on the condition of anonymity — could not confirm if Eastwood is, in fact, the intriguing ‘to-be-announced’ speaker, but stated unequivocally that the Dirty Harry star will arrive in Florida late on Wednesday or early on Thursday, and will return to southern California on Friday.”