Greek Debt Crisis Is Not Over

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — More than two years after it came clean about its addiction to debt, Greece may finally have begun its long and painful road to recovery.

Greece’s fractious political leaders struck a deal Thursday to make deep cuts in government jobs and spending to help save the country from a default that could shock the world financial system.

The deal, under negotiation since July, is one of two critical steps Greece must take to receive a €130 billion ($170 billion) bailout from other countries in Europe and around the globe. It was announced by Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos’ office and will be scrutinized during talks in Brussels between finance ministers from the 17 countries that use the euro.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said no final agreement unleashing the bailout money would be reached Thursday. He said more work had to be done to fulfill the conditions for a bailout.

In addition to the fiscal austerity mandated by the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, Greece is close to an agreement with private investors who hold nearly two-thirds of its debt to sharply reduce the country’s borrowing costs.

Greece needs the bailout by March 20 so it will have enough money to redeem €14.5 billion worth of bonds coming due. If it doesn’t make that payment, it will be in default. Financial analysts fear that could set off a chain reaction similar to the financial meltdown triggered by the collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers in the fall of 2008.

The bailout will ease some of the uncertainty that has unsettled Europe and the world financial system for more than two years, but it will not bring down the curtain on Greece’s debt drama.

Greece remains in a deep recession. Unemployment is 20.9 percent after the economy’s third straight year of decline. Its government finances and its economy are being dragged down by costly political patronage, tax evasion and special protections for some favored trades.

Greece will be struggling to pay its debts for years, says Domenico Lombardi, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “The scope of the problems that have to be tackled in Greece are so huge and so entrenched,” he says.

Efforts to fix those fundamental problems, at the behest of Greece’s increasingly exasperated creditors — including prosperous Germany — are moving slowly, if at all. If they are not solved, Greece may find itself back at the edge of default.

The deal Greek political leaders struck Thursday includes a 22 percent cut in the monthly minimum wage to €586 ($780), layoffs for 15,000 civil servants and an end to dozens of job guarantee provisions.

Greece is also close to a vital debt-relief deal with banks, hedge funds, pension funds and other private investors. Under the tentative deal, the private investors would exchange €206 billion in Greek government bonds for €30 billion in cash, plus €70 billion in new bonds. The cash would come from the €130 billion package from Europe and the IMF. The new bonds would have a lower average interest rate and a longer term of maturity.

The combination of less principal to repay when the bonds mature and less interest to pay every year until then means Greece would spend about 70 percent less than it would have without a deal.

The debt held by the European Central Bank and other public institutions accounts for one third of Greece’s national debt and is not part of this tentative deal. However, ECB President Mario Draghi said Thursday that the bank could distribute to member countries the profits it stands to make on Greek bonds, leaving open the possibility of additional debt relief for Greece.

If Greece were to default, investors would become reluctant to lend to other heavily indebted European countries for fear they would not get their money back, pushing their borrowing costs even higher than they are now.

Those other countries include Italy, which has an economy six times the size of Greece’s. Most analysts say Italy is too big to bail out.

The specter of default has hung over world financial markets for more than two years. Whenever there has been progress — and, indeed, U.S. stock indexes have doubled from the lows they reached in March 2009 — Greece has always stood in the way of more.

And while the immediate danger appears to have passed, it is far from clear whether Greece has won enough debt relief to fix its finances for good.

Its economy — ultimately the key to handling debt — remains in a deep recession. It shrank at an annual rate of 5 percent in the third quarter of 2011. Earlier in the year, it was shrinking at an 8.3 percent rate, about as fast as the United States economy was shrinking during the worst of the Great Recession. Thousands of shops and small businesses, vital to the Greek economy, have gone bankrupt. And protesters have taken to the streets of Athens regularly to denounce the government and its austerity measures.

Greece’s troubles with debt go back to the 1980s, when successive governments began increasing the size of government and the number of public employees. By 2010, the total had reached 750,000 full-time employees — including 10,000 Greek Orthodox priests and 81,000 military officers — and 150,000 on part-time contracts. That was almost one in five people in the Greek labor force.

Government jobs became a way of rewarding supporters of Greece’s two main political parties. The parties made matters worse by raising the wages of government employees to unsustainable levels. At the same time, the government was lax about collecting taxes. It had to issue ever more debt to cover its spiraling wage bills.

At first, bond investors lent freely, at interest rates slightly higher than for economic powerhouse Germany. After all, Greece was one of the 17 countries that use the euro. All had promised to observe strict budget and deficit limits. And while on paper the treaty that created the 27-country European Union forbade bailouts, there was a vague sense that Europe could not let a country go bust.

Then came Oct. 21, 2009. A newly elected government in Athens told its European partners that its finances were far worse than the previous government had disclosed.

The national deficit, the difference between what the government took in and what it spent, was not 3.7 percent of annual economic output, as had been believed. It was 12.5 percent, and that was later revised higher to 15.4 percent. One condition of being in the eurozone was that countries were required to keep deficits to a manageable level of no more than 3 percent of economic output.

Investors around the world, still reeling from the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the worldwide financial crisis just a year earlier, began looking hard at risk. They demanded higher interest rates to loan Greece money by buying its bonds, and Greece’s borrowing costs soared.

On April 27, 2010, ratings agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded Greek bonds to junk status — the first time a eurozone country was given a non-investment grade rating.

The next month, other euro countries and the IMF intervened. They promised €110 billion in loans — to be paid out in stages — so that Greece could pay its debts as they came due.

The terms of the bailout were harsh: higher taxes and deep cuts in public spending and wages at least through 2020, a package of fiscal belt-tightening known as austerity. As it took hold, the Greek economy sagged further, and it’s expected to remain weak for years.

The second €130 billion bailout package would come as loans plus €30 billion in cash that would go to the private creditors who agree to swap their bonds. Greece would use an additional €40 billion of the bailout money to invest in the country’s banks, which stand to take massive losses as part of the debt-relief deal.

Even with the debt relief and the bailout money, it will be difficult for Greece to ensure that its new, lower level of debt is manageable, or that it will be able to sell bonds at favorable interest rates over the next decade. Greece will have to continue to borrowing money to repay holders of bonds that mature, as well as to finance budget deficits that will continue, even though they’ll be smaller.

“I do not think the plan will work,” says Uri Dadush, director of the international economics program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Dadush says Greece needs even more debt relief.

But a responsible budget and sound economic policies are supposed to convince investors that the country will be able to pay its debts, and thus should be able to borrow at affordable rates.

In recent weeks, other countries in the European Union have made some progress in doing just that. In the final months of last year, countries such as Italy and Spain watched helplessly as yields on their debt spiraled ever higher. Governments fell in Rome and Madrid.

The new governments moved swiftly to cut spending. The result has been an easier time raising money in the bond markets and much lower rates. On Nov. 25, the interest rate on Italy’s two-year bonds was 7.40 percent. On Friday, it was 2.96 percent, the lowest since June 2010.

Much of the improvement, though, is credited to the European Central Bank, which announced a program in December designed to help stabilize shaky banks in the eurozone. The ECB said it would loan the banks unlimited amounts of money at 1 percent interest and for three years instead of the normal one. The banks responded by borrowing €489 billion ($632.6 billion). They’ve used at least some of that money to buy government bonds — extra demand that has helped bring down governments’ borrowing costs.

But Greece’s problems are so severe it has remained locked out of the bond market.

Greece’s outstanding government debt is about €350 billion, an amount equal to more than 160 percent of its annual economic output. The budget reforms and debt-relief deals aim to get that figure down to 120 percent by 2020. The United States has a debt-to-gross domestic product ratio of 100 percent. But because it is seen by investors as one of the safest countries to lend to, its borrowing costs have stayed low.

For Greece, the target of 120 percent is still a relatively high figure. According to the IMF, it is on the outside limit of what is manageable. And the figure assumes that Greece’s economy will meet expectations for economic growth — no sure thing after years of ever deeper recession.

Also in question is whether Greek voters, who will choose a new government in an election tentatively set for this spring, will put up with eight more years of austerity.

Romney Will Struggle to Gain Conservative Backing

The resurgence of social and cultural issues in voters’ minds poses new challenges for GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney as he reels from surprising losses Tuesday to conservative favoriteRick Santorum.

The economy remains the No. 1 issue of concern for a majority of Americans. But the recent hoopla surrounding the Obama administration’s support of contraceptives, the court ruling against California’s same-sex marriage ban and heated debate aboutabortion access has created a perfect storm that has pushed these seemingly dormant issues to the surface.

“They’ve never been far from the surface. A lot of people thought the social issues had disappeared but that has never been the case,” said Karlyn Bowman, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who focuses on polling data and public opinion. “These issues are obviously very important within a conservative party, the Republican party.”

Even the general public has increasingly leaned to the right. In a Gallup poll last month, 40 percent of Americans identified themselves as conservative, 35 percent as moderate and 21 percent as liberal. The numbers marked the third straight year that conservatives outnumbered moderates, which have declined steadily since the early 1990s.

An overwhelming number of Republicans – 51 percent – dubbed themselves as “conservatives” while 20 percent classified themselves as “very conservative,” far outweighing moderates. The poll also found that independents, who make up the largest political group in the country, were mostly conservative-leaning, with 41 percent putting themselves in that category.

“In recent years, conservatives have become the single largest group, consistently outnumbering moderates since 2009 and outnumbering liberals by 2 to 1. Overall, the nation has grown more ideologically polarized over the past decade,” the analysis stated. “The increase in the proportion of conservatives is entirely the result of increased conservatism among Republicans and independents, and is also seen in Americans 30 and older — particularly seniors.”

Santorum, with his staunch anti-abortion stance and Christian ideology, has strong backing among conservatives who still view Romney and his record with skepticism. Newt Gingrich was able to attract some of that conservative support in South Carolina but his personal record, including two failed marriages and an affair with his current wife while he was still married, has come under much public scrutiny.

Santorum “has been a consistent conservative in the debates. He’s raised a lot of social issues that haven’t been the focus of Romney and Gingrich in the debates,” Bowman said.

The former senator from Pennsylvania supports a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, as well as banning abortion even in the case of rape and not allowing homosexual couples to adopt children.

Romney, meanwhile, has struggled to convince the Republican base of his conservative credentials. Most recently, he came under fire for allowing “abortion pills” as governor of Massachusetts. In 2005, Romney signed a law that required all Massachusetts hospitals, including those owned by religious groups, to provide emergency contraception to rape victims.

Romney had initially opposed that requirement but later said that “in my heart of hearts, is that people who are subject to rape should have the option of having emergency contraception or emergency contraception information.”

That same year, Romney vetoed a law allowing the disbursement of the controversial morning-after pill by pharmacists without a doctor’s prescription, but the state Senate overrode his veto.

Romney’s business record has worked in his favor, with exit polls in early states showing that most primary voters viewed it with a favorable eye. But his changing views on highly volatile social issues, including abortion, have yet to win him favor among conservatives. Such hesitancy was in full display Tuesday in Minnesota, where Romney did not carry a single county even though its former governor, Tim Pawlenty, campaigned for him.

“Romney has to go back to mollifying that base, which is not something he wanted to do,” political analyst Norm Ornstein said. “What it means for Romney is that he’s going to have to make more and more sharply conservative pledges and try to trigger even more of that conservative antipathy [against President Obama].”

But that could be a challenging task for the former governor who faces a more difficult road to the nomination than many expected. “The more he does this, he looks phony,” Ornstein said.

The focus on social issues among the U.S. electorate doesn’t bode well for Obama either. He has taken much heat for his administration’s decision to require religious schools, universities, charities and hospitals to provide contraceptive services in their insurance plans.

House Speaker John Boehner today became the latest Republican to jump into the showdown, saying that if the administration doesn’t reverse the policy, Congress will.

“In imposing this requirement, the federal government is violating a First Amendment right that has stood for more than two centuries, and it is doing so in a manner that affects millions of Americans and harms some of our nation’s most vital institutions,” Boehner, R-Ohio, said on the House floor. “If the president does not reverse the department’s attack on religious freedom, then the Congress, acting on behalf of the American people and the Constitution we are sworn to uphold and defend, must.”

The House, comprised of a number of freshman lawmakers who won based on their firm opposition to abortion, has already introduced a number of bills tightening abortion restrictions and defunding Planned Parenthood.

Still, if the Republican race goes into the summer, as many now expect, even the focus on social issues would bode well for the president, experts say.

“Certainly one of the things that’s happening now is people are feeling less frantic about the economy and so other issues do emerge more,” Ornstein said. “Are they going to supersede the economy? If they do, that’s great news for Barack Obama, even if he suffers some with the decision on contraception, because it’s a signal that the economy is receding as an issue and if the economy is receding as an issue that means things are going well.”

Conservative Political Action Conference Outlook

Who needs more GOP primaries? Although the campaign to select a Republican nominee has just started a quiet period, there will be more than enough political excitement this weekend inWashington, D.C., at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC. If you’re giddy about the presidential race, Mitt Romney,Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich will speak; if you’re interested in conservative ideas, Paul Ryan will be giving the keynote address; if you’re eager to meet C-list celebrities, Stephen Baldwin and Chuck Woolery will both be speaking; and if you’re just looking for love, there will be a conservative dating event as well. And, if you’re a political reporter looking for another delegate-free presidential vote to cover after Tuesday night, there will be a presidential straw poll as well.

CPAC is a nearly 40-year-old event held by the American Conservative Union annually, and has been likened to a “Mardi Gras for the Right.” According to Alyssa Farah, the communications director of the College Republican National Committee who has attended the conference every year since she was a freshman at Patrick Henry College, “its giant strategy session meets party.” By day, it’s a frantic political networking event, with attendees “going in and out of different speakers and trying to brush elbows.” By night, it becomes “a much more informal atmosphere” with “cocktail receptions,” culminating in the Reaganpalooza party on the last night of the conference, held at the Teatro Goldoni, a pricy Italian restaurant on K Street.

The event in recent years also been has been punctuated with controversy over the participation of a GLBT Republican group, GOProud. Its participation in the past sparked controversy, as other social-conservative organizations like the Family Research Council and the Concerned Women of America boycotted in protest. This year, however, GOProud was dropped as a co-sponsor. (Although to balance things out, CPAC excluded the John Birch Society as well). According to GOProud Executive Director Jimmy LaSalvia, “this was the best thing that ever happened” to the organization, which advocates for “gay conservatives and their allies.” He said “all the folks that ranted and raved did nothing but good stuff [and] raise[d] our credibility, membership and budget.”

But while the fireworks over the participation of GOProud are now relegated to the past, the rise of Occupy Wall Street has raised the potential for new conflict. Occupy DC has announced that it will “Occupy CPAC” to protest what it terms “a gathering of bigots, media mouthpieces, corrupt politicians, and their 1 percent elite puppet masters.” The presence of Occupiers should not create any internal conflict among conference attendees, but it does create a significant potential for protests and unrest around the conference, which is being held at a Washington, D.C. hotel. But whatever media frenzy the occupiers may create will pale compared with the infinitely more polarizing and headline-grabbing force of Sarah Palin, who will be present.

Palin, who has never before appeared at CPAC, will be speaking before thousands of active movement conservatives, and the national political media, in the midst of a contentious GOP presidential primary. Although she has yet to endorse a candidate, the 2008 vice presidential nominee has frequently spoken highly of Newt Gingrich. Her husband, Todd, has even endorsed the former House speaker. Given Rick Santorum’s big night last Tuesday, an endorsement of Gingrich would be a huge boost for a campaign that has struggled since losing the winner-take-all primary in Florida at the end of January. Whether Palin explicitly endorses Gingrich or not, her speech is sure to be pored over by the national media, practicing a kind of Kremlinology, Wasilla-style, to get hints of her views on the race.

The most important moment for those looking for portents of what’s to come in the GOP primary contest is the annual presidential straw poll held on the last day of the conference. Although Ron Paul has won this popularity contest the past two years by “stacking the deck” according to chief Santorum strategist John Brabender, the straw pool looms as having some significance, since as it is being held at the beginning of the February hiatus in the GOP primary race. Further, Paul is at a comparative disadvantage this year because he won’t be at CPAC, unlike his three main competitors—instead, he will be campaigning in Maine, in what Brabender terms “a real race.” The CPAC straw poll isn’t as critical as, say, a nonbinding primary in Missouri, but it still will be viewed as an indicator of the candidates’ relative popularity in the conservative movement. Plus, it’s the only election that’s also the pregame party for Reaganpalooza.

Way What?? Romney HAD Mojo… WOW

Romney Losing His Mojo After Caucus, Primary Losses to Santorum

 Rick Santorum’s sweep exposed glaring weaknesses in Mitt Romney’s candidacy. Howard Kurtz on whether the ex-senator can capitalize on conservative qualms about Romney.

It’s easy to wave away Santorum’s triple triumph in Minnesota, Missouri, and Colorado as an exercise in symbolism that netted him no delegates. But as a snapshot of the state of the GOP race, it’s a rather dark picture for Romney.

“These results are a serious blow to Romney that crystallized the conservative questions about his bona fides and punctured it,” says Ari Fleischer, the former Bush White House spokesman. “If your campaign is built on inevitability, a puncture can take you down.”

Ed Rollins, the veteran GOP strategist who briefly ran Michele Bachmann’s campaign, says Romney “has been running for six years and never quite connected. He’s spent no time talking about his years as governor, which is not exactly an all-star four years. He now wants to pretend he’s a right-winger, and it’s just not believable.”

Adds John Feehery, a former House Republican official: “Santorum doesn’t have any organization or money—he’s able to win based on the idea that the base doesn’t like Romney.” Romney “struck a bad chord” with his gaffe about not being concerned about the very poor, says Feehery: “Many conservatives, especially Christian conservatives, actually care about the poor.”

Romney is still the likely nominee, of course, but these and other GOP analysts are saying for the first time that Santorum has a shot. They see him as having eclipsed Newt Gingrich, whose fortunes have sagged since his brief, shining moment in South Carolina.

Given that Romney was coming off solid wins in Florida and Nevada, his vote totals on Tuesday were stunningly weak, even if social conservatives form the backbone of the electorate in the three states.

As Ron Brownstein points out in National Journal, Romney got 25,900 votes in winning the Minnesota caucuses four years ago; this time, in finishing third, he won only 8,090. The same pattern held in the Colorado caucuses, which Romney won last time with 42,218 votes; on Tuesday he finished second with 22,875. And he drew just over a third as many votes in Missouri’s beauty contest as in 2008.

Maybe the results amounted to a giant protest vote. Maybe Romney does poorly when he doesn’t have much time to campaign or when he doesn’t pour money into attack ads. But there may well be something deeper that goes to both style and substance.

Romney comes across as overly scripted, and sometimes aloof, whether he’s hitting his talking points or reciting “America the Beautiful.” He’s a bit ill at ease among average voters. What was striking about his concession speech Tuesday night was that when he talked about his father struggling to make it as a carpenter, he seemed to be speaking from the heart. (Of course, Dad went on to become head of American Motors and Michigan’s governor, so that’s the closest Romney can come to a rags-to-riches narrative.)

And what, at its heart, is Romney’s message, other than that Obama is flailing and the former head of Bain Capital is the man to fix the economy? Romney lacks an animating idea that would bring voters to their feet and faces such complications as the similarities between Obama’s health-care reform and his own in Massachusetts.

“The conservative electorate of 2012 really is hungry for the authentic, Washington-changing candidate,” Fleischer says.

Perhaps that’s why the Romney camp is now going after Santorum as a Beltway insider. Top adviser Eric Fehrnstrom told MSNBC that Santorum and Gingrich are “two peas in a pod—longtime Washington legislators.” And a Romney email blast portrayed Gingrich and Santorum as wild-eyed earmarkers, with such headlines as “Santorum Brought Over $1 Billion in Pork-Barrel Spending Back to Pennsylvania” and “Santorum Voted for the Bridge to Nowhere.”

It’s no accident that Santorum, a favorite of religious conservatives, used his Tuesday-night speech to trumpet his opposition to the White House rule requiring Catholic organizations to offer contraception in health-insurance plans—an issue that has been heating up in recent days.

“If he becomes the champion of the conservative Catholic/Christian coalition, he could be very credible,” says Rollins. “He’s a tough debater. There are no liabilities to him. He’s every bit as knowledgeable as Gingrich, though not as articulate. He’s more disciplined in his message. He is the true-blue Catholic; Gingrich is a convert who’s had multiple marriages.”

Santorum “knows the issues better than Romney does,” Feehery says. “He’s got a better message and is more consistent.” One political weakness, says Feehery, is that Santorum is not a Tea Party favorite: “He’s a big-government conservative, a traditional Republican—a George W. Bush compassionate conservative.”

“Santorum doesn’t have any organization or money—he’s able to win based on the idea that the base doesn’t like Romney.”

Santorum’s ability to remain in the first tier depends in part on whether his big night triggers a flood of donations, so he doesn’t get buried in Michigan or Arizona by millions in negative ads. One question is the extent to which Wyoming financier Foster Friess, who has been bankrolling Santorum’s super PAC (as well as The Daily Caller), is willing to open his checkbook.

It may turn out that Santorum is only the latest in a series of Not-Romneys—Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich—who flash across the political landscape before burning out. But if Santorum can eclipse Gingrich and get Romney one-on-one, as in Missouri, or if they alternate tackling the frontrunner in states where each man is the strongest, this race isn’t over by a long shot.

Mitt WHO?? Don’t Think I Know That Fella.

Mitt Romney’s No More Of a Mystery Than Barack Obama

 Romney may take both sides on issues and encourage voters to project what they want onto him, but he is not hiding his “real” nature any more than the president is. With both men, it’s called politics, says Lee Siegel.

The current meme, taken up with a vengeance by the liberal media, is that no one knows who the real Mitt Romneyis. Why does that sound familiar?

True, I have no idea what Romney believes on virtually any issue. Like everyone, I am struck by his pattern of presenting inconsistent positions with no apparent recognition of their incoherence. The real conundrum is why this man seems so compelled to take both sides of every issue, encouraging voters to project whatever they want on him, and hoping they won’t realize which hand is holding the rabbit. He either does not know what he believes or is willing to take whatever position he thinks will lead to his election.

I am sure that no liberal would disagree with that assessment of Romney. I am as sure of that as I am of the fact that most liberals heartily assented to those very words when they were used to describe President Obama six months ago in the New York Times, in a scathing op-ed essay by Drew Westen. I’ve quoted them almost verbatim.

There were dissenters, to be sure, but the chorus of hosannas that rose from the liberal media in response to Westen’s criticisms was almost unanimous. And now, with the presidential election looming, those very criticisms have been displaced from the president who was widely perceived, by his own supporters, to be an empty suit, onto his likely opponent in the fall.

Yet to say that both Obama and Romney are hiding their “real” natures beneath contradictory positions is to mischaracterize them. With rare exceptions, a modern democratic politician possessing a real, unalterable nature is an oxymoron. When someone is described to us as being very “political,” we know that we are being told to keep our guard up. Why, then, do we keep expecting our politicians to reassure us with their integrity? They are political, through and through, and we should stop being so shocked, shocked, when they act politically.

With rare exceptions, a modern democratic politician possessing a real, unalterable nature is an oxymoron, writes Lee Siegel., Chip Somodevilla / AP Photo

In Romney’s case, no one wants to accept that he is merely being a politician. Instead, he is dangerously mystified. Several months ago when he said during a televised debate, using the exact same words, that the was “not concerned about the very poor,” no one made a peep—and he didn’t even add the bit about fixing the safety net if necessary that he did when he repeated the sentence last week. Now, however, he utters the very same words and a terrible uproar ensues. What did he mean? What did he really mean? Was he being accurately quoted?

Yet he was doing what just about every Republican politician does, which is to reassure the middle class that he was not going to shift his attention away from them to the poor. After all, the poor don’t vote in great numbers, and when they do, they usually vote Democratic. But the liberal media was, again, shocked, shocked, to find a Republican speaking like a Republican. Why does the “Mitt-bot” keep making such flubs, they asked? Endless analysis of his “enigmatic” character followed. The result was to deepen and mystify a simple political remark. By the time the analysis was over, Romney seemed to be sympathetic to the middle class, the rich and even the poor, whose safety net he was going to fix.

The unflattering comparisons being drawn between Romney and his father also only make him more attractive, by raising the hope that the apple will not fall far from the tree. The standard narrative now is that George Romney, as governor of Michigan, presidential candidate, and secretary of Housing and Urban Development, was an honest, decent man who stuck to his guns, no matter what. Maybe. And maybe that is pure nonsense.

The Republican George Romney is being celebrated for standing up to his party on civil rights, for example. He was indeed a staunch defender of civil rights. But he also was the governor of a Democratic state, at a time of growing liberal consensus. His anti-labor stance and business experience as CEO of American Motors Corporation guaranteed him the support of Detroit’s growing affluent Republican suburbs. His business-minded opposition to big-business—i.e. his former competitors, Detroit’s Big Three—and his strong civil rights stance guaranteed him much of the liberal vote, as well as a decisive black vote. In his successful second run for governor, he garnered 30 percent of Michigan’s black vote, something no Republican candidate in the state had ever done.

Romney pere’s powerful advocacy of civil rights policies at HUD was admirable and honorable. But it also undercut his former presidential rival, Richard Nixon, and strengthened his base among liberals and blacks in Michigan, should he have decided one day to run for Senate. (In the event, his wife Lenore ran for Senate instead, and lost.)

Even George Romney’s notorious change of heart on the war in Vietnam—the mother of all flip-flops—is being hailed as an example of courageous moral resolve. Running against Nixon for the Republican presidential nomination, Romney declared in August 1967 that he had been brainwashed into supporting the war during a 1965 trip to Vietnam, and now proclaimed his opposition to it. His reversal could have been on high moral principle. Then again, it could be that he was trying to make an end-run around Nixon using the same cut-both-ways strategy he had used to get elected governor of Michigan. In his campaigns for governor, he had appealed to the liberal wing of the GOP in order to win over Democratic voters. It had worked when Romney contrasted himself with the disastrously right-wing Goldwater in the early sixties. That it didn’t work as he tried to contrast himself with Nixon didn’t mean that Romney wasn’t hoping it would.

The saintly father, the complex, multi-faceted son—even as they are displacing their unhappiness with Obama’s “unknowableness” onto Romney, the liberal media is mystifying Romney in some weird inversion of its mystification of Obama three years ago. For liberals, of course, the mystique is a horrible one. But in some disturbing sense, by making him a mystery instead of treating him as a politician, they are doing Romney’s work for him. Voters who are tired of politicians and of “more of the same” love an exciting new mystery.

Being a Black Actor in Hollywood is Not easy At All

What Charlize Theron Doesn’t Get About Black Hollywood

by Allison Samuels Jan 24, 2012 8:14 AM EST

During Newsweek’s Oscar round-table, The Help’s Viola Davis tried to speak about the difficulties of being a black actress in Hollywood—but a well-intentioned reply from Theron was just another example of the problem.

Charlize Theron surely meant no harm. The actress genuinely thought she was complimenting fellow thespian Viola Davis during this year’s Newsweek Oscar roundtable when she told Davis, “You’re hot as shit.’’

Their exchange revolved around Davis’s comments on finding work as an African-American actress. Davis, who has won praise for her starring role in The Help, was attempting to explain the difficult plight of being black and female in the movie industry. “I’m a 46-year-old black woman who really doesn’t look like Halle Berry, and Halle Berry is having a hard time,” said Davis.

No doubt hoping to forge a sisterly bond, Theron rushed in to reassure Davis that she was indeed “hot’’ and naively implied that a simple change of attitude would make a world of difference. Her exact words—“You have to stop saying that, because you’re hot as shit.’’

How sweet of Theron to say, and how thoroughly misguided and offensive as well. Davis was honestly confronting a number of painful and complicated issues faced by many women of color in Hollywood today—issues Theron (who was born in South Africa to parents of European descent) more than likely has never encountered and would have done well to listen to. The Oscar roundtable was the perfect forum for such a discussion, and yet Theron’s verbal charity managed to downplay the importance of Davis’s point. What difference does it make if Davis stops speaking a truth if the reality remains?

In Hollywood, where even legendary filmmaker George Lucas had to fight and ultimately use his own money to get an all-black film (Red Tails) made, black actresses still struggle to find quality work. When they do, they are rarely cast as ideals of beauty or objects of desire. On the odd occasion that they are, only a certain look will do. Berry, who is biracial, has long been viewed as Hollywood’s most beautiful black actress, and some would argue that much of her success is based on that belief. Apparently Theron didn’t get the memo that mainstream culture strictly dictates what beauty is—and by those narrow standards, Viola Davis doesn’t fit the bill. Has Davis graced the covers of any of the beauty and fashion magazines that Theron lands with ease, whether she has a project or not? She hasn’t. Davis’s only covers on major publications such as Entertainment Weekly and The Hollywood Reporter also featured her costars from the film or George Clooney. Her “hotness” was apparently not enough to warrant a solo appearance despite the fact that she may soon snag her second Oscar nomination for The Help. The reasons for this are as varied as they are disturbing, and Theron’s overly simplistic advice only underscores the lack of understanding many have around a reality they either don’t comprehend or don’t fully appreciate.

Davis’s work has been consistently stellar throughout her career, yet her most celebrated role to date may just be that of a maid to a white family during the ’60s in the Deep South. Some viewed The Help as another stereotypical representation of black life, but Davis still found a way to shine in her work. Diverse and well-defined parts such as the ones Theron enjoys—a ruthless killer in one film, a dying woman in love in another—aren’t offered to Davis, nor are well-paid endorsement deals with Christian Dior. In the world Davis lives in, you take a role like the one of Aibileen in The Help because you’ve long given up on the notion that more balanced, nuanced parts about women who look like you are on the horizon. You understand that even in major films that feature African-American male stars, you may not get to costar as the wife, girlfriend, or partner because big studios get more “bang for their buck” when the female is of another race.

As one studio executive pointed out, “black man, black women, black kids equals black movie.” So when Will Smith does a film like Hitch, Eva Mendes gets to play his love interest and not Viola Davis. As well meaning as Charlize Theron is, she has no clue what it means to be a dark-skinned African-American woman whose beauty is seldom showcased in national commercials for perfumes or on mega billboards on Sunset Boulevard or even celebrated in the latest video by the hottest rappers. In the world Theron lives in, simply not saying something makes it go away. In Davis’s world, it doesn’t.

 

Skrillex The Grammy-Nominated DJ Changing Dance Music

 

Meet Skrillex, the Divisive, Grammy-Nominated DJ Who’s Changing Dance Music

 Skrillex has emerged as the most talked-about DJ in electronic music, drawing huge crowds to his raucous live shows, amassing millions of hits on YouTube, and garnering five Grammy nods—including Best New Artist. The 24-year-old opened up to Marlow Stern about his meteoric rise.

by Marlow Stern  | February 9, 2012 6:40 AM EST

 

On a cool February evening in downtown New York City, a deluge of fans are packed against the glass of a trendy clothing store to see DJ phenom Skrillex. Earlier that day, black, medallion-like credentials were hand-delivered to attendees. One side bore the DJ’s logo; the other, a cryptic message to meet at the store and “BE BLINDFOLDED & DRIVEN TO A SECRET LOCATION.”

 ”Nobody knows what’s going on, but it’s going to be epic!” exclaims Annie, a 23-year-old elfin woman with pink bunny ears, two-rainbow hula-hoops slung over her shoulder like nightclub ammunition, and ripped fishnets. She took off work that evening to see Skrillex.

After collecting our blindfolds and being shepherded on buses, we’re driven to the secret location, blindfolds are removed, and we’re guided down a set of dark stairs only to be greeted by a bizarre shirtless man in an animal fur hat grunting and lighting small fires on the floor with a tube of kerosene. Walk a few steps further and there’s a topless woman covered in candle wax and a contortionist. Inside the caliginous lounge, there are lasers illuminating walls covered in graffiti, and staffers donning masquerade masks.

Just after midnight, Skrillex emerges and takes the reins behind the DJ booth. “MY NAME IS SKRILLEX!” he screams to wild applause, before dropping a remix of his genre-mashing dubstep anthem “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites,” that has racked up 62 million views on YouTube, and counting. With each wobbly, distorted bass riff and womp-womp-womp robotic fluctuation, bodies explode in epileptic fits.

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In the DJ booth, Skrillex is a man possessed. His alert eyes dart back and forth between his laptop and MIDI controller like a cat on speed as he peers through oversized (prescription) nerd glasses obscuring his Corey Feldman-esque mug. Hopping back-and-forth behind a plethora of machinery, his elbows flail about in every direction like a hyphy dancer—furiously twisting knobs and pressing buttons—while his long, greasy black mane dances in the air to the music. Amid the controlled chaos, his intense gaze is broken only when he manages to stop every few moments and acknowledge the crowd with an arm wave or a shout of, “WHAT’S UP NEW YORK CITY!”

A look at the phenomenon that is Skrillex

Earlier that day at a hotel in Midtown Manhattan, Skrillex is hunched over in a booth, sipping on a pineapple-grapefruit juice (he doesn’t do drugs, instead subsisting on a diet of sugar-free Red Bull and vodka).

“I passed out in the cab over here,” he says between yawns.

Given his non-stop touring schedule (322 performances in 2011 alone) and tireless work ethic (tinkering with new tracks in hotel rooms till the sun comes up), the diminutive mix-master is understandably exhausted.

“My music doesn’t really fit into what people think of as ‘pop music,’ and it’s not made for the radio.”

Sonny Moore, 24, has been producing and performing electronic music under the alias Skrillex since 2008. The name, he says, is something he created phonetically and proceeded to use as his email handle. He’s been called the Quentin Tarantinoof dance music, pulling from a variety of different genres—dubstep, euro house, trance—and creating demented electro tapestries. Sunny melodies are interrupted by violent wobble bass drops, robotic yelps, and shrieking glitches with the cumulative effect of an aural spinal tap.

In the past year, however, Skrillex has experienced a meteoric rise—emerging as the de facto poster child for the recent dance craze stateside.

 

With no major label marketing machine behind him, the surge in popularity was accomplished in true DIY fashion: through incessant touring and Internet word-of-mouth. He’s released four EPs over the Internet, the most recent of which is titled Bangarang. His YouTube videos get tens of millions of views. Facebook singled him outas one of the year’s most prolific artists, boasting two of the top six most-played songs on the social network. He’s one of the stars of director Amir Bar-Lev’s (The Tillman Story) music documentary RE:GENERATION, in theaters Feb. 16. And the cherry on top: he’s not only been nominated for five Grammy Awards—tied with music luminaries Radiohead and Lil Wayne for the third most of any musical act—including Best New Artist, but also has become the literal poster childfor the Grammy Awards ceremony on Feb. 12.

“It has been great to see Skrillex come through over the last year,” Tiësto, a world-renowned Dutch DJ, told The Daily Beast. “He has brought a new fresh energy to dance music—inspiring up-and-coming producers as well as bringing a new audience to the scene.”

However, a handful of bloggers and electronic musicians from across the pond—where dubstep, the genre Skrillex most frequently toils in, originated in the late ‘90s—have taken issue with the DJ’s ascent. His detractors have dubbed his music “brostep” or “bruvstep”—a male-centric American style that they claim is akin to metal music, emphasizing middle-register sounds and characterized by aggressive timbres. “It’s like someone screaming in your face for an hour,” said Rusko, an acclaimed British dubstep DJ, in an interviewwith BBC Radio 1.

“What are we gonna do, form a united front against Skrillex?” said Skream, a British DJ regarded as the founding father of dubstep, in an interviewwith The Quietus. “It’s just bitchiness, it really is. You haven’t got to like his music, you don’t particularly have to like him, but there’s no reason you can’t like what he’s done—he’s smashed it. He’s up for five Grammys.”

Avicii, a rising star in the DJ scene from Sweden whose catchy song “Levels”is currently playing in taxi cabs across New York City, agrees with Skream, telling The Daily Beast: “Sonny is a very determined and passionate soul. His complete domination of an entire electronic sub-genre that he became the named leader of proves just how resourceful and respected he is.”

The other major misconception that bugs Skrillex, he says, is when people claim he received a record-label makeover similar to much-maligned pop star Lana Del Rey.

“That pisses me off ‘cause nobody gave me anything,” says Skrillex. “People think that a label came in, scooped me up, and created an image to sell to people. That couldn’t be further from the truth.”

After discovering he was adopted in 2004, a then 16-year-old Moore ran off to Georgia and auditioned to be the guitarist for the screamo band, From First to Last—a group of Hot Topic-clad fellas rocking piercings and flat-ironed hair. He instead assumed the role of singer until leaving the group in 2007.

“[The adoption] tripped me out and I kind of went off and buried myself in the band and making music for a while, writing a lot of lyrics about being adopted,” said Skrillex. “I was too young to know about being a part of a band and the whole process.”

Skrillex, who has since made up with his adoptive parents, decided he wanted to be a DJ after witnessing Daft Punk—and their massive, monolithic DJ pyramid—at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena in 2007. And he now sports a new, distinctive look—or more specifically, haircut. It’s an asymmetrical ‘do that’s shaved on the left, parted on the right, and has inspired a popular parody blog called Girls That Look Like Skrillexfeaturing young emo girls mimicking his signature hairstyle. Skrillex thinks the blog is “hilarious” and says he was simply bored in his hotel room a few years ago and decided to shave the side of his head. “It wasn’t a ‘look’ I was going for,” he says, “It just happened.”

When he wants to observe his fans up close, Skrillex says, he has a little trick he likes to employ at shows: he’ll tuck his hair under his ubiquitous hoodie and remove his glasses—creating a “unabomber” look—and wander about in the crowd.

And the fans, meanwhile, have spoken. In less than two years, Skrillex has gone from playing for hundreds in cramped L.A. clubs to landing headlining slots at major dance festivals—including this past summer’s Electric Daisy Carnival, which attracted an estimated 185,000 people. His recent Mothership Tour saw the DJ dazzle crowds in the tens of thousands using cutting-edge, motion-capture technology featuring gigantic projections of monsters, robots, and skeletons mimicking his movements. He’s been asked to remix several tracks by Gaga, and Kanye Westrecently called his Grammy-nominated remix of Benny Benassi’s “Cinema,” “one of the greatest works of art ever made.”

“Skrillex is a revolutionary, ground-breaking artist who is really good for the electronic-music genre and makes great-sounding music,” said his RE:GENERATION co-star, Ken Jordan, who is one-half of the acclaimed electronic act The Crystal Method.

Thanks to the influence of DJs like Skrillex, America has gone completely gaga for dance music. Once relegated to the nightclub circuit, euro-house acts like David Guetta and Swedish House Mafia are now selling out arenas such as Madison Square Garden. And the line between pop and dance is continually being blurred. Currently, three of the top 10 songs on the Billboard Hot 100are considered dance music—Rihanna’s “We Found Love,” produced by DJ Calvin Harris; “Turn Me On” by David Guetta; and “Sexy and I Know It” by dance-pop group LMFAO. Even tween pop star Justin Bieberis saidto be experimenting with dubstep on his upcoming album.

“My music doesn’t really fit into what people think of as ‘pop music,’ and it’s not made for the radio,” said Skrillex. “It’s made for the shows.”

When the interview ends, Skrillex pops up from his chair, and says his goodbyes. After quickly packing up my things, I look up to see that he’s waiting at the hotel elevator all the way across the hall. He’s got a mini-studio in one of the suites upstairs and he’s eager to lay down some new tracks.

It’s Hard to Find Anything that is Actually Less Popular Than Congress.

There is no question that Americans are frustrated with their elected officials, but the latest Gallup poll shows that frustration has reached a fever pitch, plummeting Congress to its lowestapproval rating in history. Just 10 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, fewer than at any previous point in Gallup’s nearly 40 years of polling.

With an approval rating that low, it is hard to find anything that is actually less popular than Congress.

In the nearly half a century-long history of Gallup polling, the only people or institutions that have been more unpopular than the current Congress are Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and Mark Fuhrman, a detective in the O.J. Simpson murder trial, said Gallup’s Editor in Chief Frank Newport.

Here’s a look at some of the things Americans like more than Congress:

BP During the Oil Spill

At the height of the BP oil spill in 2010, while thousands of barrels of crude oil were streaming into the Gulf of Mexico daily, the BP oil company, which owned the gushing offshore rig, had a higher approval rating than Congress currently has.

A June 2010 Gallup poll shows that 16 percent of respondentsapproved of how BP was handling the spill, which went uncapped for two months.

Socialism

It’s a label than many of Obama’s critics have attempted to plaster on the president’s re-election campaign like the scarlet A on Hester Prynne’s dress. But judging by the latest polls, socialism is actually more popular than Congress.

Three times as many people have a positive view of socialism than have a positive view of Congress. According to a CBS/New York Times poll released last month, 33 percent of Americans view socialism positively.

Waterboarding

More people think waterboarding, where interrogators pour water over a prisoner’s face so they feel like they are drowning, should be used as an interrogation tactic against suspected terrorists than support Congress.

According to a November CNN/ORC poll an even 50 percent of respondents said Waterboarding should be allowed. The same poll found that 31 percent of Americans do not think the practice is torture while 68 percent said it is torture.

Abortion

In a July ABC/Washington Post poll 19 percent of respondents supported abortion being legal “in all cases,” nearly double the percentage of people who support the current Congress.

A slightly smaller percentage were on the opposite end of the spectrum, with 15 percent of respondents saying abortion should be outlawed in every circumstances.

 President Nixon

In the midst of one of the greatest scandals in presidential history, President Richard Nixon had a higher approval rating that Congress currently has. A 1974 Gallup poll shows that 24 percent of Americans supported the president at the height of the Watergate scandal.

Santa Clause Non-Believers

More people in the United States have never believed in Santa Clause than currently put their faith in Congress. An AP/Gfk poll in December showed that 16 percent of Americans did not believe in Old Saint Nick as a child.

Put another way, roughly the same number of people believe or have believed in Santa as currently disapprove of Congress. Cue Congressional Scrooge/Grinch jokes…

Prime Minister of Greece

More than twice as many people approve of the job Greek leader George Papandreou did in 2011, the year his country plummeted into the worst debt crises in the Western world, than support the U.S. Congress.

Even after Papandreou resigned amid Greece’s debt catastrophe, 21 percent of respondents worldwide still supported him, according to a worldwide Gallup poll conducted throughout 2011.

Occupy Wall Street

The groups representing outraged citizens on both ends of the political spectrum – Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party – both have more support than the current Congress.

An NBC/ Wall Street Journal poll in December showed 24 percent of respondents were supportive of the Occupy Wall Street movement and 27 percent said they considered themselves Tea Party supporters.

Paris Hilton

Reality TV star and heiress Paris Hilton is the least popular celebrity, but she is still more popular than Congress. An August Ipsos poll on celebrity popularity found that 60 percent of respondents had an unfavorable view of Hilton, making her comparatively popular compared to the 86 percent of people who said they disapprove of Congress.

Hilton and Charlie Sheen were the only two celebrities in the poll that were view more negatively than positively, falling below the likes of Brittany Spears and Kanye West, who both had a 45 percent favorability rate.

Banks During the Banking Crisis

Even amid the 2008 banking crisis, Americans had more confidence in banks than they do now in Congress. As the federal government poured billions of dollars into the Troubled Assets Relief Fund to bailout out failing banks, 18 percent of Americans said they were still confident in their banking institutions, according to a 2009 Gallup poll. That’s nearly double the percentage of people who say they currently approve of the job Congress is doing.

6 Thoughts About the Tuesday Santorum Sweep.

The Republican presidential race just got a lot more interesting. On Tuesday night, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) scored”stunning” upset wins in the Colorado and Minnesota caucuses, and in Missouri’s nonbinding “beauty pageant” primary. It was a clean sweep nobody saw coming — “probably not even Rick Santorum,” says The New Yorker‘s John Cassidy. As recently as a week ago, Mitt Romney was expected to win all three contests, and political analysts expected him to win Colorado even as the votes were being tallied. Here, six takeaways from Tuesday’s surprising outcome:

1. Santorum scored big bragging rights: After his Jan. 3 win in Iowa. Santorum suffered a string of dispiriting third- and fourth-place finishes. But all of a sudden, Santorum has now won four states, more than any of his GOP rivals. And he’s the only candidate to notch wins in the electorally crucial Midwest. The cash-poor Santorum did it the hard way, too, through foot-pounding retail politics, says Alex Altman at TIME. It paid off: “In a single evening, he punctured the aura of inevitability that had gathered around Romney’s campaign,” and toppled Newt Gingrich as the go-to not-Romney candidate. What he didn’t do was win any delegates: Each of these three states will apportion their delegates later this year.

[SEE MORE: Is Nevada's Tea Party too dysfunctional to trip up Mitt Romney?]

2. Romney’s coronation is now on hold: Santorum’s hat trick is “a stunning rebuke to Mitt Romney and the national media,” says The New Yorker‘s Cassidy. And Romney’s “horrible, horrible night” will have lasting consequences, says Erick Erickson at RedState. In three key swing states, conservative voters “sent a very clear signal”: We do not like Romney. Indeed, the real “story of Missouri, Minnesota, and Colorado is the stunning weakness of Mitt Romney,” says Paul Begala at The Daily Beast. “His super PAC outspent Santorum’s by a 40-to-1 margin,” and Santorum crushed him. That’s “like the New York Yankees losing an exhibition game to a church-league softball team.”

3. But Mitt is still favored to win the nomination: Tuesday was a bad night for the GOP frontrunner, but “barring a spectacular reversal in the months ahead,” he will still “be anointed as the Republican nominee,” says Thomas DeFrank in the New York Daily News. Things should get better for Romney as the contest moves into the friendlier territory of Arizona and Michigan on Feb. 28, and then Super Tuesday on March 6, where “Romney’s money advantage should help him plenty,” says Jonathan Bernstein at A Plain Blog About Politics. For Santorum, “it’s a long, long, way from a very good night to actually becoming a plausible nominee. Much less the actual nominee.”

[SEE MORE: Nominating Mitt Malaprop]

4. Gingrich is toast: Newt “was a footnote in the three contests” Tuesday night, says Maggie Haberman at Politico. With little money and no momentum, “it’s a bit hard to see how Gingrich is going to keep himself relevant in the coming weeks.” He can’t, says Jennifer Rubin at The Washington Post. “Gingrich’s days as the leading not-Romney are just about over.”

5. Republicans still aren’t turning out to vote: ”Are Republicans energized? Not if turnout is an indication,” say Peter Hamby and John Helton at CNN. GOP voters came out in much smaller numbers on Tuesday than they did four years ago. The numbers “are so low as to be laughable,” says John Hinderaker at PowerLine. In Minnesota, for example, fewer than 50,000 people participated in the caucuses; in the 2008 general election, 1,275,409 Minnesotans voted for Republican John McCain.

[SEE MORE: How deep-pocketed super PACs became 'shadow campaigns']

6. Geography is trumping history: The Republican race “appears to be turning into a regionally based contest,” says The New Yorker‘s Cassidy, “with Santorum as the heartland candidate, Gingrich as the Southern candidate, and the Mittster as Mr. Everywhere Else — or so he hopes.” What’s striking is how much that map has changed in four years, says Politico‘s Haberman. In 2008, Romney won Colorado with a stunning 60 percent, but he lost to Santorum by 5 points on Tuesday, with 35 percent. Romney won Minnesota with 40.1 percent in 2008; this year, he came in an embarrassing, distant third, with 17 percent. What changed? In 2008, Romney was “the electable conservative alternative” to McCain. This year, he’s almost become McCain: A centrist RINO.

Republican Voters Bored with Romney and Others

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mitt Romney’s march to a possible Republican presidential nomination just got a lot longer and harder.

Front-runner Romney left Tuesday’s round of three nominating contests with another reminder of his own shortcomings, after a two-state winning streak that had placed him firmly in the driver’s seat in the nomination race.

Bad losses to rival Rick Santorum in Colorado, Missouri andMinnesota raised more questions about whether conservative Republicans are ready to give their hearts to a millionaire former Massachusetts governor who once supported abortion rights and a government requirement that people have health insurance.

Romney may still be the front-runner in the race to pick the Republican candidate to challenge President Barack Obama in the November 6 U.S. election. But nothing is coming easily for him in this most volatile of Republican nominating races.

“This shows Republicans are not ready yet to just automatically pull the lever for Mitt Romney,” Republican strategist Ron Bonjean said. “He still has to seal the deal.”

The next big showdowns will be in Michigan and Arizona on February 28. Romney grew up in Michigan, where his father was a former governor and car executive, and Arizona could be another high-stakes showdown similar to Florida.

“He wanted to run through February and roll into Super Tuesday as the presumptive nominee, and that’s just not going to happen now,” Republican strategist Ford O’Connell said. “This is a wake-up call for Romney, but it’s not the end-all.”

Super Tuesday is March 6, with contests in 10 states.

Romney’s campaign will try to paint Santorum, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, as another old Washington hand who backed big government spending during his time in Congress.

“I think we’ll see differences in approach that will be explored,” Romney senior adviser Stuart Stevens told reporters in Denver. “I just don’t think it’s a time when people are looking to Washington to solve problems with Washington.”

Romney, a former head of a private equity firm, has touted his business experience as the cure for an ailing economy in states like Florida and Nevada, where high unemployment and depressed housing markets made the economy a top concern.

But in Midwestern states like Iowa, Missouri and Minnesota – all won by Santorum – that has not been enough to sell a more rural and conservative electorate.

Romney also could face second-guessing about his post-Florida strategy. He demolished Newt Gingrich there last week with a wave of negative attack ads, but since has largely ignored Gingrich and Santorum to aim his criticism at President Barack Obama.

He also largely skipped campaigning in Missouri and Minnesota to focus instead on Colorado, which he won in 2008 and was expected to win on Tuesday.

“Team Romney might need to tweak its strategy. So far they’ve been successful in going negative on their opponents and touting his business experience,” O’Connell said.

‘HUNGRY FOR MORE’

“But obviously Republican primary voters are hungry for something more. A lot of folks see him as a single-issue candidate right now,” he said.

Santorum has been happy to stay out of the mud-slinging battle between his two rivals and portray himself as the issue-oriented true conservative in the race.

Romney’s campaign began lobbing criticism at Santorum over the past two days, hitting the former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania for backing spending bills and local spending projects known as earmarks when he served in the Senate.

Romney’s campaign still seems confident its financial and organizational muscle will be enough to ultimately win the nomination, even if the conservative base is not enthralled.

Romney has far outpaced his Republican rivals in raising money, with nearly $57 million brought in by his campaign and $30 million raised by the pro-Romney “Super PAC.”

Sensing he was headed for a bad night, the campaign sent reporters a memo on Tuesday outlining why he would win the nomination in August even if he stumbled on Tuesday.

“Governor Romney will be competing across the country and collecting delegates in state after state, even if other candidates pick up some wins,” Romney’s political director Rich Beeson said.

In an interview with conservative radio host Scott Hennen earlier this week, Romney shared his vision of how the campaign would play out, and it did not include a primary campaign that lasts all the way to the convention in August when the nominee formally will be named.

“Most likely, the party regulars will surround one of the people who they think has the best chance of beating Barack Obama, and start raising money for the general election,” Romney said.

But a confident Romney campaign had expected February would be a good month, too, with many of the contests coming in states he won in 2008 – including Minnesota and Colorado.

While Romney had not campaigned in Missouri or Minnesota, the loss in Colorado, where he spent the last two days, was harder to shrug off.

“Losing Colorado is a five-alarm fire for Romney,” Bonjean said.