Your Daily Newt: Romney Would Have Fired Columbus!

Are callous disregard for human life and general ineptitude fireable offenses?<a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CristobalColon2.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>

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As a service to our readers, every day we are delivering a classic moment from the political life of Newt Gingrich—until he either clinches the nomination or bows out.

Newt Gingrich was speaking to supporters in Georgia on Tuesday when he decided to relay to the audience an exchange he’d had just a few hours earlier: “I was describing the other week some ideas and Romney said, you know, boy if someone came in to see him with ideas like that, he’d have fired him!” he said. “And somebody in Chattanooga said to me this morning, they said, you know, ‘Romney was the kind of guy who would have fired Christopher Columbus.'”

It’s a provocative charge. But is it true?

The Facts: In his remarks in Georgia, Gingrich explained that Columbus’ value rested in the power of his ideas. As he put it: “Lincoln had a vision of a transcontinental railroad. The Wright Brothers had a vision that they could fly. Edison had a vision that we could have electric lights…Henry Ford had this idea you could build a low-cost car with mass production.”

Christopher Columbus had a vision that if he sailed southwest from Spain for 3,000 nautical miles, he would reach Asia. Instead, he got lost, landed on a small island approximately one-sixth of the way to Asia, enslaved all of the inhabitants, set about searching for gold, did not find gold, falsely informed his supervisors—then in the act of purging their kingdom of Jews and Muslims—that he had reached Asia, and promptly ruled over his newfound land so poorly he was sent back to Spain in chains.

As a candidate, Romney has expressed zero tolerance for insubordination, firing debate coach Brett O’Donnell after arguably his best debate because Romney felt O’Donnell had taken too much credit. At Bain Capital, Romney likewise demonstrated a knack for stripping new companies of their nonessential parts—a euphemism, really, for firing people.

Our Ruling: Romney’s actions at Bain Capital have drawn from immense scrutiny from the press and his fellow candidates. But there’s no hard evidence that he’s ever illegally seized someone else’s company and enslaved its employees. Given Romney’s quick hook, it’s hard to think he would have tolerated such behavior for very long.

Besides, Mitt Romney likes being able to fire people who provide services to him.

We rate this claim “True.”

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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