I heard Newt Gingrich today, at an appearance in Florida, say that he really wanted to see a positive campaign for president and that he didn’t intend to demean the president but just let people” know who he really is”. Of course, this is code, since he is on record calling him a Kenyan anti-colonial socialist, among other things. Newt is always jabbering about “staying positive” because he knows damn well he has so much negative baggage he can’t afford for it to turn into a mud ball fight. He’s like the Peanuts character, Pig Pen, leaving a slime trail and a dirt cloud behind him that’s obvious to all but the most delusional Obama haters. No, instead he slyly insinuates and obfuscates, uses half truths and his particularly slanted view of reality along with some kind of weird southern code to get his point across to the republican primary audiences. “Do we want a president who gorges on watermelon, fatback and collard greens or one who understands how to make American great again?” That’s keeping it real, Newtie.
And yet somehow this man who was forced to resign, essentially, as speaker of the house in the face of open rebellion by party members wounded by his vitriol and ill-advised search for Bill Clinton’s pecker tracks, is trying to sell himself as a Washington outsider and slayer of the “elites” who are the scourge of our country and the evil force behind our current national crisis. Meanwhile, in an example of unprecedented hubris-fueled hypocrisy he was playing kissy-face with his Callista-doll mistress and trying to get his second wife to sign on to a creepy three-way scenario right out of some twisted New York city porn film. And he thinks gay marriage is wrong? He thinks abortion should be illegal on principle because after all this time he finally has access to a woman’s body he enjoys and doesn’t want her to have any control over it.
He tip-toes around the definition of a lobbyist by hiring someone who is a lobbying expert to educate him and his employees on how to avoid the technicality of lobbying while still earning big bucks for consulting clients, who have him on a retainer, on the historical aspects of how to buy a congressman most efficiently. Mitt seems to lack the proper genetic structure to be able to call him out effectively about this but what he said is true and no matter how much Newt spins it – “I loaded the pistol, pulled back the hammer and handed it to the monkey but had no part in the pulling of the trigger itself, therefore I am not a monkey killer” – the reality is clear to anyone who cares. He is on record as saying – as he was getting ridden out of Washington on a rail – that he was going to take some time to think and learn some new things and maybe make a little money so it’s no surprise that he used his flatulent notoriety to play junior grade bag man for Freddie Mac and all manner of other leaches and borderline criminals. He’s a champion bull-shitter and that can make you a lot of money in the right circles.
Luckily for Newt, Mitt’s idea of attacking him sounds a lot like Pee Wee Herman – “That’s what you are; what am I?” He’s the guy walking out of the frat house with his stupid sweater tied around his neck – he has no idea how to mix it up with a stone cold street fighter like Gingrich so he comes off sounding insipid and cloying and lame. It was reported that he had his campaign people sidling up to media types at Gingrich events in Florida and whispering that they should “dig deeper” into Newt’s Freddie Mac dalliances. Brilliant strategy, guys; what else you got? The whole Romney campaign seems completely bereft of ideas and incapable of getting down in the dirt and calling a Newt a Newt. Gingrich knows this and simply resorts to rhetorical bullying and loud and repeated denials and, as always, a significant percentage of people will start to believe you because they can’t remember what happened 6 months ago and don’t really give a shit. As much as the republican establishment wants Mitt to be the nominee, that guy – the guy who’s just pissed about everything - wants Gingrich if for no other reason than he will say the nasty shit the guy would like to say to the people to whom he’d most like to say it. That guy seems to be the driver of Newt’s current surge and momentum.
As to Obama, he seemed pretty confident tonight. He’s got plenty of national security cred while at the same time has done enough to extricate us from Iraq and whittle down the defense budget to calm those on the left who still think sitting in a field and talking about our feelings is the best way to resolve every problem. The economy is moving in the right direction and he has managed to wring some concessions from the big banks who blundered into the housing crisis through a combination of venal greed, institutional stupidity and incompetence. Again, this deal announced today will leave the left unsatisfied but it is still a feather in his cap and allows him to take up the people’s mantle again without embarrassment. His delay of the Keystone Pipeline project was a poke in the eye of republicans everywhere used to giving sleeve jobs to the oil companies in exchange for political support and rallied the environmental base while pissing off John Boner – always a side benefit. And if he faces either of these simpletons in November he’s feeling pretty good about his chances.
Gingrich takes every opportunity to bring up the comparison to Reagan, as if by simply saying his name and evoking that imagery it will make him the wildly popular figure that Reagan was. But Reagan – as much as I thought the guy was nothing but an empty-headed Howdy Doody – had a certain undeniable clunky charm. Newt has all the charm of an empty Pringles tube. It’s why, in the long term, he can’t and won’t unite the factions of the republican party and keep them from spinning away from each other in all directions. Opposites don’t really attract; they repel.
So where was I going with this? Oh yeah; it’s State of the Union night. I heard the republican response and it sounded pretty empty; full of platitudes and campaign buzz words but short on anything that would make a thoughtful citizen jump to their side of the boat. Simple minded accusations and out of context factoids, always returning to the “class warfare” rhetoric, the characterization of Obama as a failure, the almost embarrassing lack of anything positive to say, as if every day under Obama has been torture to test their very souls. They've got nothing. Their only hope is for Romney to stagger into Tampa this summer half mad with exhaustion, throwing the convention into a circus of celebrity politics that produces something sensational and unexpected, that gets the base fired up and proves acceptable to the power brokers – then maybe they can give Obama a run. But watching the Newt & Mitt show is so much fun I’m rooting for them to keep throwing punches right up until the 15th round, and then leave it up to the judges.
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