Interesting that the scientific name for the common newt contains the species designation, “vulgaris”, as newly designated front runner Newt Gingrich has a well deserved reputation as a back-bench bomb thrower prone to overheated and ill-advised partisan rhetoric that often seems to be more of a self-serving attempt to show off his professorial vocabulary and penchant for clever analogies than anything else. Barely concealed contempt for his political enemies and a tendency towards bloviation characterizes much of what Gingrich spews and the rest is a virtual case study in verbal gymnastics intended to obfuscate what he said last week or last month or last year.
Yesterday it was widely publicized that he had essentially been on the payroll of the much reviled and tea party-favored punching bag Freddie Mac for years, earning upwards of 1.5 million dollars in his post-speaker role as a lobbyist or, as he prefers, an historian. Of course this begs the question, why on earth would Freddie Mac need an historian. It is an agency that had grown from a useful and, some would say, necessary part of the government’s attempt to foist the American dream of home ownership on the public, to become an obscenely bloated bureaucracy kneeling at the public trough and acting for all the world as if the banquet was never ending and no one would ever dream of closing the buffet.
No, clearly the recently departed speaker of the house, who ignominiously resigned after 4 long years of spectacularly failed leadership - repeatedly hitting on 17 - was selling access and influence to the highest bidder, small government principles be damned. Still, his attempt at an explanation was revealing in itself; he was advising Freddie Mac on their “strategies” for dealing with congress. This explanation is akin to putting too much mustard on the ham sandwich; the strategies thus offered and accepted only led to one of the largest financial collapses in history and a sucking wound that continues to fester in the body politic unhealed and bleeding money. Nice work, Dr. History.
This is only the most recent in a series of spectacular blunders, position changes and inconsistencies that are glaring to anyone interested in examining the record but which republican sheep…uh, I mean lemmings…er, I mean primary voters apparently are willing to ignore. Or they don’t remember. Or they can’t follow.
For someone who claims to worship the original intent of the founders – as seems to be de rigure for all the candidates sucking up to the tea party – the Newt-ster has some weird notions about the constitution. In trying to prove what a tough little amphibian he is, he has said he would ignore the constitution and the Supreme Court when it came to matters of national security, a particularly chilling glimpse of the barely concealed fascism and the megalomania that underlies much of his public persona.
His insistence on flaunting his academic credentials and demeaning adversaries makes it hard to reconcile the religiosity that he and his wife exhibit in public proclamations and in the book they’ve produced, Rediscovering God in America. His interpretation of the founding fathers’ intentions in the constitution - their insistence on the separation of church and state – flies in the face of the prevailing republican dogma of “original intent”, insisting that, rather than a government functioning outside of religious parameters, the founders wanted us all to gather in the town square and praise god together like one big happy family on bended knees.
Of course, this religiosity seems to have eluded him in the romantic arena; the lord apparently had a hard time directing Newt to that one correct woman so he’s had to work his way through three.
His close relations with god, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson have also failed to staunch the chubby little would be dictator’s good old boy Georgia racism either. He sounds like he’d roll back key provisions of the voting rights act so that people would have to stand on one leg and recite the declaration of independence backwards in order to vote. He was recently heard sniping at Obama for various things using subtly charged language, the meaning of which might elude his dimmer constituents but which was perfectly clear to anyone paying attention.
My guess would be that the desperate republican voters will take a sip of Newt, swish him around for a short while and then spit him out faster than a marijuana brownie. He is a pompous, arrogant pipsqueak with a Napoleon complex who fancies himself the smartest guy in the room, lives high on the hog with his trophy wife and is questionably popular among his own party power brokers. Yeah, they want to win. But they may be thinking twice about this guy being their ticket to the Oval office. John Boner in particular may be sitting up at night drinking at the prospect of the man whose downfall and removal he orchestrated in 1998 being the one calling him in for conferences around the big fireplace at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave; of having to deal on a daily basis with a man obsessed with the infidelity of Clinton only to leave his dying wife in her cancer ward for the woman with whom he had been having an affair. There is an element of repugnant hypocrisy that I think will turn off all but the most willfully ignorant voters so we need to prepare ourselves for the rise of the next in line, be it Rick Santorum or Gary Snider or the improbable Buddy Roemer. It just won’t be Newt’s moment much longer…and really; would we respect ourselves if we elected a guy named Newt?
No comments:
Post a Comment