Of course, his rivals for the Republican nomination wisely ignored the greater context and promptly turned “I like being able to fire people” into a ringtone. Which they are supposed to do, because they’re running for president against this guy.

But Gingrich and Huntsman and Perry are seizing on this “gaffe” in the midst of a campaign against Romney that has grown increasingly (and to an outsider amusingly) class-based, to the horror and disgust of conservative elders.

Rick Perry, in particular, has basically become a communist:

“Now, I have no doubt Mitt Romney was worried about pink slips — whether he was going to have enough of them to hand out because his company, Bain Capital, of all the jobs that they killed,” Mr. Perry said. “I’m sure he was worried that he would run out of pink slips.”

He said that people in nearby Gaffney, S.C., in particular, “would find his comments incredible,” because it is where Mr. Perry said Bain shut down a plant and fired 150 workers.

“That didn’t happen until Mitt Romney’s private equity firm, they looted that company with more than $20 million in management fees.”

This is an attack on successful corporate restructuring! Perry added that “there is something inherently wrong when getting rich off failures and sticking it to someone else is how you do your business,” which is basically a wholesale rejection of the free market system.

(Even the reasonable Jon Huntsman got shrill: “Governor Romney enjoys firing people. I enjoy creating jobs.”)

Sarah Palin is among those attempting to stanch the bleeding by blaming the bad old liberal media for attacking Romney for his success, but everyone can plainly see who’s actually responsible.

National Review’s Jim Geraghty complains that the candidates now all sound like Occupiers. The Club for Growth is pissed at Newt for his anti-Bain Capital attacks. Phil Klein accuses Romney’s rivals of Marxist rhetoric. Avik Roy diagnoses Romney derangement syndrome. (The American Spectator literally calls for Gingrich to be investigated for violating campaign finance law for perhaps coordinating with a Super PAC. What happened to the absolute defense of campaign funding as speech?)

It looks like Republican opinion leaders are beginning to coalesce around Romney due in part to disgust over anti-capitalist attacks being levied against him. Of course, his rivals wouldn’t be pushing this line if they didn’t think it was effective. The irony is that the Republican candidates are shameless enough to embrace the exact arguments conservatives and centrists have successfully shamed liberals out of making.

One frustrating fact of life for a lot of progressives and left-wingers is that full-throated economic populism practically doesn’t exist in the Democratic Party. What passes for “class warfare” nowadays is the the president apologetically suggesting that the top marginal tax rate eventually be restored to a level far below where it stood for the majority of the Reagan administration. (Or even simple defenses of the welfare state, in the case of that radical Elizabeth Warren.)

Republicans have continued to practice the “cultural” populism (or white populism or Southern populism) that has served them well since they absorbed the conservative Dixiecrat vote while Democrats have come to find class-based populism extremely distasteful and counterproductive, as neoliberalism took hold and the eastern Rockefeller Republican class became the effective center of power in the Democratic Party (which admittedly did counter the Reagan-era GOP’s massive fundraising advantage). Ron Paul’s newsletters and Newt Gingrich’s “food stamp president” line and Rick Perry’s massive prayer festival and every candidate’s constant invocation of dastardly “elites” are all the “acceptable” kind of populism: the kind based on amorphous racial and tribal resentments and not economics. But the reason the GOP and rich centrists cry foul when the other kind of populism is hinted at is because it works, really well, because unmitigated capitalism is really destructive and awful for huge segments of the population.

But desperation and shameless vote-grubbing makes it all too tempting to bridge the gap between the two forms of populism, as horrified conservative observers can now see. The “deal” has always been that you offer red meat to the rubes and all’s fair as long as once in power you devote your energies to ensuring that people like the Kochs can operate without scrutiny and perhaps with a bit of extra tax incentives. You’re not supposed to go after the real elites, though — just public school teachers and people who enjoy fresh greens.

I am all in favor of the GOP adopting economic populism, even if it’s for their own evil ends, because it makes it marginally more likely that leftists will be allowed to try it out themselves again, some day.

It’s just one more step toward society’s political margins for the GOP contenders. Perry has already announced his support for the “personhood” movement, which declares that life begins the moment an egg is fertilized, a measure that was rejected by the deep-red state of Mississippi as too extreme. But Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum also back the personhood crusade. That’s your modern Republican Party: It makes Mississippi look liberal. They’d like women to have more rights before they’re born than after.

It’s obvious the Tea Party is pulling the GOP even further to the right. While the movement’s fans used to insist it was about the economy, not social issues, in fact its House caucus has used its year in office working harder to stop all funding for Planned Parenthood than to reduce unemployment. The House even passed a bill that lets health providers “exercise their conscience” and refuse to perform an abortion even in cases where the woman would die without the procedure. (h/t Digby)

But their target is no longer just abortion, but contraception as well. At Tuesday’s “tele-town hall,” Bachmann lied about President Obama’s Plan B stance, insisting the president is “putting abortion pills for young minors, girls as young as 8 years of age or 11 years of age, on [the] bubblegum aisle.” Of course, Obama backed HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ decision to override the FDA and refuse to allow Plan B to be sold on drugstore shelves, specifically citing concerns about young girls. Personhood legislation would make the IUD illegal, as well as any measure that interferes with a fertilized egg attaching itself to the uterine wall, including some fertility treatments.

Resurgent front-runner Mitt Romney stands apart from the far right on some of these issues. He hasn’t supported personhood legislation, for instance (yet). But in some ways Romney’s flip-flopping on abortion is as disturbing as his rivals’ extreme anti-choice fanaticism. Running for Massachusetts governor, Romney told voters he’d become pro-choice after a close family friend died due to a botched illegal abortion. (Salon’s Justin Elliott told the tragic story here.) What happened to his feeling for that friend? How could he flip-flop again, after a supposed moral and political awakening like that? And libertarian Ron Paul opposes full liberty for women: He’s antiabortion (though he’d leave it to each state to decide). The man who wants to deregulate industry wants to regulate women’s bodies. That doesn’t sound like libertarianism to me.

Will the GOP’s continuing shift right on abortion, clearly intended to court the religious-right base during the primaries, hurt the party in the general election? I have to assume so. Ever since Ronald Reagan campaigned with the blessing of the Christian right, there’s been a pronounced difference between men and women when it comes to their attitude toward the Republican Party. Women have been registering and voting increasingly Democratic, not just because of abortion rights or other so-called women’s issues. It’s also because women are more likely to believe in a government safety net, to back programs like Head Start, education funding and other services for poor families as well as Social Security and Medicare. I don’t think that means women are more compassionate than men; I think it reflects their greater economic vulnerability, since poverty rates are higher and median incomes lower for women than men. Clearly the far-right GOP is writing off increasing numbers of women, as well as blacks and Latinos, immigrants, and gay people. Good luck with that, long term.

There are two warring forces at work in the world: One is the empowerment of women, especially in the developing world. There is no magic bullet for global poverty, but the only thing that comes close is expanding education and human rights for girls. Educated girls have children later, and when they do become mothers, their children are healthier and better educated. Their family incomes rise, and so do the living standards of their community. It is clear that promoting the rights and status of women improves the well-being of the entire society; some people, and governments, get that, globally.

But there’s also an intensifying hostility to full freedom for women in all corners of the world. One of Wednesday’s most disturbing stories was the New York Times tale of an 8-year-old Orthodox Jewish Israeli girl spat upon and abused by ultra-Orthodox bullies because even her modest outfits didn’t conform to their stifling dress code for girls and women. Israel, which was once defended as a European enlightenment outpost in the supposedly backward Middle East, is facing a rising tide of far-right religious activism trying to ensure that women are neither seen nor heard outside the home. Literally. These crusaders believe in separate worship for each gender, because men are not supposed to hear a woman’s voice in public, not even singing hymns. On some bus lines serving ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods, women are literally made to sit at the back of the bus.

Meanwhile, the Arab Spring hasn’t ushered in more rights for women. In the “new” post-Mubarak Egypt, men are using sexual assault and violence to suppress female activists. Islamic fundamentalists, like their ultra-Orthodox Jewish brothers, likewise want to make women second-class citizens.

No, I’m not comparing the personhood movement or the GOP contenders to violent misogynist Egyptians or to the religious extremists who want to exclude women from Israeli or Arab public life.  But the increasing extremism on choice that is now seeping into public policy on contraception reflects a related discomfort with full personhood for women. There is no freedom or equality for women without reproductive freedom. Having been raised a Catholic, I understand religious objections to abortion, and my only answer is, by all means, don’t have one. Work to make them less common. A rape victim who doesn’t want an abortion is of course free to make that decision. But a secular society has no business imposing one religion’s values on everyone.  (Lost in all the insanity about abortion is the fact that the incidence of abortion has declined by at least a third since the 1980s.)

Michelle Goldberg and I talked about increasing GOP extremism on abortion on MSNBC’s “Hardball” today:

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The one knock on Perry is that his poor debate performances and periodic campaign trail gaffes will open him to the same vulnerabilities in office as President Bush: an inability to respond to criticism or explain his own policies.

Perry’s poor communication skills are easily overcome:

Second, debating skill takes on outsize importance in the primaries, when candidates have to stand out on a stage crowded with 7 or 8 people who all agree with each other 80-90% of the time. All Rick Perry needs to do is step onstage and everyone will know how he’s different from Barack Obama.

Well, that’s undeniable. (Emphasis mine.)

The “Not Mitt Romney” coalition — remember the internet petition? — is basically out of time. We’ll see, after Iowa, whether they give up or go with Perry, should he eke out a decent finish.

It’s actually within the realm of possibility that Perry could take the nomination, I guess. One poll has him at third place in Iowa again, with Gingrich declining. He has a lot of money.

But Perry is precisely the sort of toxic candidate that the White House would be thrilled to run against. (Most recent polls show Obama barely beating Romney, and handily trouncing Perry.) The two things he’s made headlines for recently have been going well outside the mainstream with desperate anti-gay bigotry and double dipping on his massive government pension.

RedState founder Erick Erickson has previously written a dejected post bemoaning the inevitable nomination of Romney, and wishing he could take back his rejection of Jon Huntsman. But it’s obviously too late for that. Erickson did not jump on the Perry bandwagon and isn’t likely to any time soon.

These guys are just nostalgic for that brief moment when Perry showed up to save the party from nominating that unlikable loser Romney, before the governor ruined it all by opening his mouth. It’s just about that mental image of Barack Obama and Rick Perry on a stage together, and fantasizing that the scales will fall from the eyes of everyone in America, and they’ll all realize that that is what a president is supposed to look like.

They quote a blogger (also highlighted by the great Roy Edroso) making the most intriguing argument for Rick Perry I’ve yet seen:

Until yesterday, I wasn’t completely sure why I liked Rick Perry so much. I have a list of reasons, but none of them really got to the root of why I like him.

Yesterday the reason finally dawned on me. I watched this wonderful 11-minute video from Ben Howe entitled “The Rick Perry I Know”…

… and I had a revelation: Rick Perry is just like my Dad.

And there’s the decision-making process of the conservative base, laid bare. Vote for dumb right-wing dad.

To Perry’s credit, he does manage to get through the entire 30 seconds without once losing his train of thought or laughing like he’s auditioning to be the villain in the next Muppets movie. Sure, he comes off like a man whose barrel is full of bullet-riddled fish when he declares he’s not ashamed to be a Christian. The Republican presidential field is otherwise littered with Muslims, Jews and atheists, I guess.

What Perry can’t do, however, is prove his mind makes logical associations – something that’s a pretty important qualification for our nation’s highest office. Perry’s prickly disdain for men and women who are serving their country would, by itself, be hateful and ignorant. But his assertion that there’s a “war on religion” interfering with Christmas celebrations? If kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas, I hope nobody tells all the tykes waiting to see Santa at the mall. But it’s that combination of those two vastly unrelated ideas that really makes the “Strong” clip pure gold. Is Perry somehow suggesting that if we can just push  homosexuals back into the closet, we can then teach how Jesus fought the dinosaurs in the public schools? OK, you gays openly serving in the military! President Perry is going to mind-wipe everyone you’ve come out to! And then he’s going to put a Nativity scene in every classroom! Because that’s what the Founding Fathers would have wanted.

Excuse me, I have to go wipe these copious tears of derisive laughter off my cheeks.

It didn’t take long for Perry’s video – as brilliantly painful a piece of performance art as any of Katie Roiphe’s recent Slate columns – to become a viral sensation. It’s racked up nearly 3 million YouTube views. And though the campaign has disabled comments – no doubt in anticipation of a more critical response – on Friday the video was heading toward a half-million “dislikes,” a new YouTube record. The newly unseated “dislikes” champion, Rebecca Black, also owes someone an Edible Arrangement today.

Meanwhile, over on Facebook, Perry’s official page has drowned in thousands of comments, mostly expressing disdain. “Sure, I’ll share it,” wrote one woman. “I want EVERYONE to see ‘How to sink a campaign in 30 seconds or less.’” My personal favorite is from the person who congratulates Perry “on making Ron Paul the sane one.”

Elsewhere on the Internet, the Tumblr of Perry’s “unpopular opinions” and a cavalcade of parody videos have sprung up with the inevitability of hairy chests at a bears convention. Second City’s Andy Cobb was quick with a look-alike clip, noting that “The gay and atheist presidents didn’t get us into the war in Iraq, the financial crisis or turn your mortgage into toilet paper. It took some God-fearing vagina penetrators to do that.”

It’s likely we can enjoy the dreadfulness of Perry’s video – even as it disgusts us – because it’s evident his campaign is now as worthless as your 401K. There’s a degree of safety in this gasbag’s harmlessness, kind of like your racist uncle’s Thanksgiving rants. Offensive? Yeah. Effective? Uh, no. Yet even as we point and laugh — repeatedly — it’s sobering to remember that the sentiments Perry awkwardly expresses aren’t just the ramblings of one demented Texan. The guy did manage to get relatively far in American politics with Jesus and homophobia by his side. And though the outpouring of giddy contempt for his incompetence is encouraging, just imagine – had he been a more coherent candidate, that over the top “Strong” ad wouldn’t be funny at all.

That’s where Rick Perry comes in. The guy’s got enough money to be the Not Mitt. He’s never lost an election. Surely he’s got to have more substance than it’s seemed so far – he can’t really be a stoner frat boy let loose in a presidential race. Can he? I think he can redeem a series of horrible debate performances with a good pummeling of Gingrich Tuesday night.

And why not Rick Perry, really? He managed to hire some of the campaign staff who ditched Gingrich in June, after they figured out his campaign was mainly about shilling for Gingrich Productions and the Gingrich Group. And Perry hung on to them, even after some other Newt-ditchers returned once he became the new front-runner.  Perry’s Gingrich veterans have to have insight into how to unsettle him. Gingrich has gotten a free ride so far in the debates because until the last week or so, he’s been an also-ran, the tiresome, has-been uncle everyone smiles at when he makes a clever quip, or when he implores them not to take the media’s bait and turn on one another.

Rick Perry, it’s time to take the media’s bait and turn on Gingrich.

First, a couple of things not to do:

• Don’t mix alcohol and pain medication, or Five Hour Energy drink and pain medication. I’m not saying you’ve done that before, I’m just saying.
• Don’t attack Gingrich for calling child labor laws “truly stupid.” It was an abominable thing to say, but given the nature of these GOP debate crowds, it could be Newt’s biggest applause line of the whole campaign. Let’s face it, crowds who’ve cheered for the death penalty, letting uninsured people die of treatable illness, and an electrified border fence, and who’ve booed a gay soldier as well as your own plan to let the children of undocumented workers pay in-state tuition at Texas universities – well, they’re not going to reject Gingrich for wanting to put children to work. Forget about that one.

So then, what to do?

• Do make clear that Gingrich and Romney are ideological chameleons separated at birth, the brothers Flip and Flop. Gingrich has changed positions almost as much as the Mormon the Tea Party loves to hate, in the course of making millions. He supported the individual mandate and planning for “end of life care” until the Tea Party turned those things into Obamacare and “death panels.” I know this debate is about foreign policy, and that’s not one of your strong suits (you’re still trying to find a strong suit, besides fundraising). But Gingrich’s bald-faced fakery on the question of Libya is a great issue. It’s actually worse than Herman Cain’s long brain-freeze, because nobody expects Cain to know anything. Pretend Gingrich is that coyote who messed with your daughter’s dog. If that really happened. Which it probably didn’t. Pretend whatever works.
• Do pretend Gingrich is President Obama. You’ve treated the president with such practiced, suave contempt. You questioned whether he really loved his country, and you said the discredited, disgraceful birther issue — questioning whether Obama was really born here, after he’d released his long- and short-form birth certificate — is “a good issue to keep alive.” Practice that Obama-contempt in the mirror, and then Tuesday night, in the debate, turn it on Newt Gingrich. He deserves it more than Obama does. The president got 66 million votes, 53 percent of the total, in 2008. Gingrich came from a small Georgia district and squandered the political “mandate” that made him speaker by being an arrogant grifter. Pick a worthy enemy, and have fun. You can’t get to Obama without going through Gingrich, at this point. Why not enjoy it?

I talked about Gingrich’s latest outrages — backing the reversal of child labor laws and telling Occupy Wall Street protesters to “get a job” and “take a bath” Monday night on MSNBC’s “The Ed Show.” With Christmas approaching I realized that Gingrich, who once proposed putting the children of welfare recipients in orphanages, is a real-life Dickensian character who must, every year at this time, root for Scrooge.

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