The long overdue downfall of Gordon Gekko

Salon.com:

Gingrich's scorched earth attack on Romney leaves no doubt: Reagan-era capitalism is finally on its deathbed

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.

Much is being made of whether Gingrich has broken some sort of unspoken code of Republican primary collegiality by declaring class warfare on Romney. As Jonathan Chait argues, you can question whether a fellow GOP candidate is a true conservative, but to call him a “plunderer” is, or should be, beyond the pale. Plundering is what capitalism is all about! The free market is supposed to be built on the principle of unrestrained plunderation. Or it would be, if Democrats didn’t keep getting in the way with their socialist-leaning regulations.

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