With attacks on Mitt Romney's career as a venture capitalist coming fast and furious from his primary opponents, the Republican presidential campaigns have entered strange new territory for the GOP: economic reality, or, more precisely, the economy that most people experience.
Most people, it turns out, are wary of capitalism's creative destruction, at least during times like these, when destruction dwarfs creation.
The reports of companies shuttered or shrunken by Bain Capital when Romney was at the helm and Romney's own Scroogean phraseology — saying "I like being able to fire people" on Monday when, he later clarified, all he meant was that he liked to switch his health insurance — have created an opening for such improbable critics of capitalist churn as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to defend the common worker against predatory bosses. Will wonders never cease?