Gingrich to go down swinging in Florida...

Like a crazed and angry badger with one foot caught in a trap, Newt Gingrich is lashing out in all direction during a frenzied last, desperate tour across Florida and, in doing so, is becoming a grave danger to the republican party he purports to want to lead.   He is sinking in the polls faster than the Costa Concordia as Mitt’s Super PAC avalanche has him buried up to his neck in a host of negative ads mostly consisting of his own words come back to haunt him.  Newt’s smartest-guy-in-the-room debate shtick  has backfired badly and he finds himself in need of an electoral miracle as the polls open today across what may turn out to be his swampy Waterloo.

Newt and his confederacy of dunces – Mike Reagan, Sarah Palin, Herman Cain – are all trying to make the case that a guy who has made a career out of being a corporate bag man in Washington is the avenging outsider who will lance the poisonous boil of Washington corruption.  A more ludicrous argument can scarcely be imagined.  He has unironically wrapped himself in the cheap, made-in-China American flags favored by the tea party and is promising to return to America’s traditional promise of “exceptionalism”, while fomenting World War Three in the Middle East, building a colony on the moon, stripping the government down to an every-man-for-himself minimum and establishing christianity as the American version of the hated Sharia Law he and his supporters so fear.  Wow…

It’s not surprising really – Newt has always been first in line for the circular firing squad and is legendary for being the life of the party for a while but the one guy who will eventually want to strip naked and go set fire to the Dean’s office at three in the morning.  He can’t see where the line is and, moreover, in his over-zealous enthusiasm, doesn’t even want to know where it is.  His accusations against Obama are so over the top they will become his epithets; he’s an anti-Christian socialist elitist Alinsky-ite.  Romney has gone from a Massachusetts moderate to a “pro-abortion, pro-gun control, pro-taxes liberal” .  Typical Newt; he’s a very creative name caller and back row insult shouter.  The problem is, while that may appeal to that thin slice of the electorate that is still enraged and sees red every time Obama’s name is mentioned, at this point the majority of even republican primary voters are rolling their eyes and pulling the lever for Romney – the latest polls put him up by double digits and pulling away.

In Werner Herzog’s masterpiece, “Aguirre, the Wrath of God”, the half-mad main character is on a hopeless quest to find the lost city of El Dorado in the South American jungle and slowly goes completely insane as the expedition dwindles through death and disaster, ruling over a smaller and smaller group of slowly starving and hallucinating men, until only he is left.  Hmmm…catch my meaning there, Newt?   In Vietnam War era political double speak, you’re going to destroy the village in order to try and save it. 

This is, of course, monumentally misguided but Gingrich can’t help himself – this is who he is.  This is why the republican establishment is largely backing Romney.  They may be holding their collective noses while doing so, and they may have abandoned their hope of winning the presidency behind Mitt, but damned if they’re going to have Newt lead them over a cliff and cause a disaster all the way down to mayoral races.   It’s being reported this morning that Newt – in a fresh blast of overwrought hyperbole - has his campaign “robo-calls” claiming Mitt “forced holocaust survivors to eat non-kosher food” , an angle that perhaps could only work in a state like Florida and reminds of nothing so much as a World Weekly News headline, like “Bigfoot stole my wife!!!”. 

Well, go down swinging, Newt.   You gotta be you.  But this summer, while you and your notorious-but-forgiven ex-mistress sit on the porch of your 5,000 square foot mansion in Virginia sipping sweet tea, think about this; if you could have just stifled your looney alter ego for 12 short months, you might well have won the nomination.   We’ll save a seat on the next flight to the moon for a second honeymoon…

John Boehner's empty threat meets Grover Norquist's blustery rhetoric...just another Sunday.

An increasingly desperate John Boner – on “This Week” this morning – called Obama’s State of the Union speech “unAmerican” and accused him of advocating the “politics of division”.  This phrase “politics of division” is another way of emphasizing one of his party’s main taking points, the idea of “class warfare”.  There’s great irony in the leader of the republicans in House of Representatives – the defenders of the ruling class, the wealthy and corporate America – sniveling about class warfare when their entire reason for being is to protect the wealth of those they feel earned it and deserve it and, more importantly, don’t give a shit about anyone else. 

This is the misguided notion at the heart of Elizabeth Warren’s speech – the one that went viral – where she points out that the wealthy didn’t create the wealth they possess by themselves.  They did it using the resources of the entire country and that, by definition, includes all of us.   Boner goes on to lay down an empty threat – that, “If the president won’t work with us to help create jobs, I’m sure the American people will elect someone who will.”  You better hope so, John, because if they don’t you will end up back as a simple member of the House from Ohio.  Or maybe you and John Kasich will end up in some tavern in Cleveland playing cribbage and swilling AleSmith Speedway Stout.   But the idea that you and your do-nothing cronies have lifted a finger to “create jobs” is laughable.  

Sure, you keep repeating the lie that the Keystone Pipeline will create 500 thousand jobs or some ridiculous number, and if the president doesn’t play along you’re gonna stomp your foot and stick the enabling legislation in every single bill that comes up this session until it passes.  Meanwhile progressives are pissed at Obama because he didn’t reject the filthy wasteful mess of a project out of hand.   This is nothing but the usual cloak room sleeve job for the oil companies who pay the freight for you and the rest of the treacherous swine you call colleagues.  

I’m sure your consultants tell you to keep pushing this one button because it’s a convenient symbol; you can cite environmental extremists – always a useful boogie man - and that allows you to justify environmental rape and plunder at the same time you bludgeon Obama regarding jobs.  It’s likely the same consultants who tell you to continually being up Solyndra as a symbol of the same misguided environmental extremism and throw in a little corruption while you’re at it.  But seriously; is this all you’ve got? 

 Face it Johnny – you’re scared shitless that no matter who the presidential candidate is, he’s going to get bitch slapped and sent home in disgrace and you and McConnell, Boy Wonder Eric Cantor, Tea Party pin up Paul Ryan and the rest of your unruly rabble will be looking at a very long second term indeed. 

People aren’t going to put up with the same absurd pre-school behavior for another four years.  They’re going to be pissed.  You and the entire republican machine are going to drown in your own effluent.  The alpha-dog Grover Norquists is going to be exposed as the closet treasonous and power-crazed fascist that he is.  He’s boldly talking now about how the president doesn’t matter and if Obama wins the presidency he’ll face republican majorities in both houses and if he doesn’t behave, Grover will put on his jack boots and lead an insurrection leading to an impeachment.  Good idea, Grover.  How’d that whole impeachment thing work out for Newt?  An emptier threat has rarely been uttered.  You dumb asses have completely over played your hand.  You’re not all wrong and Obama is not all right.  But the party has been so completely disingenuous, spiteful and childish that you’re done.  This primary season is proof of how empty your message is and the two leading candidates are the story writ large.   

You and Norquist both accuse Obama of not being willing to work with congress and pretty much everyone except mouth-breathing knuckle draggers know this isn’t true – not even close.  You’re on record since 2008 as saying that you will not cooperate with Obama on anything and are committed to his failure – do you really think you can get away with this ridiculous fiction that he’s the problem, not you?  Even Chevron executives know that’s not true.   

It’s approximately 48 hours before the results will be in in the Florida primary now and far too late for everyone to decide that Newt is an erratic ego-maniac not fit to be president of the local Moose Lodge and Romney is George HW Bush without the personality.   You can double down on the elaborate fairy tales of Paul Ryan with his “Let them eat cake” economic philosophy and have George Will semantically masturbating in a frenzy of obscure literary allusions and pseudo-intellectual gobble-dee-gook in the National Review till the cows come home.  At the end of the day your party – with the incredible opportunity in front of it to nominate someone who personifies the good parts of conservative political philosophy – gagged and coughed up these two chumps running around Florida in a drooling frenzy heaving rhetorical spitballs at each other and looking like the fools they are.  Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, John.  So go home, have a drink and cry those phony crocodile tears Tuesday night.  And get ready for a long, long year.

Thoughts on that cloud of doom over Florida...

·         Sarah Palin has decided to try once again to make herself politically relevant by spouting off in support of her boy, Newt Gingrich, reeling since he was slapped sideways by the strategically mean Mitt Romney during the last debate prior to the Florida primary. Of course she does so displaying her usual loose grasp of facts, for example in her allusion to Newt’s opponents acting like Stalin – not clear where she’s going with that – and even more so, incorporating Newt’s favorite historically confusing whipping boy, Saul Alinsky.  “What we saw with this ridiculous opposition dump on Newt was nothing short of Stalin-esque rewriting of history. It was Alinsky tactics at their worst."   I’d be willing to bet that she has no fucking idea who Saul Alinsky was – probably thinks he’s the old Jewish guy who runs the deli where she gets her favorite corned beef sandwiches. 

Poor Sarah is having a hard time reconciling the fact that no one is paying any attention to her anymore.  Her only current claim to fame is appearing on Faux News as a guest political commentator for people like notorious pussy Sean Hannity, where she routinely embarrasses herself with full frontal ignorance and an inability to articulate even the simplest thoughts coherently.  But she has inexplicably taken to Newt Gingrich, probably on the assumption that only he would be irrational enough to offer her a high profile role in his administration where she could continue nursing on the teat of whorish notoriety.  But Newt is burning oil pretty badly and she may not have chosen wisely.  We’ll know in a couple of days.

·         Meanwhile, in a stark and shameless example of sunshine state pandering, Mitt Romney blasted Obama for not making NASA a priority during his term.  Oh gee, sorry Mitt; he was kind of busy.  There were two wars to deal with and a global financial crisis.  He saved the auto industry and, like it or not, he saved the banks as well.  He reformed the nation’s health care system. He was attacked constantly and, in spite of a republican party overtly committed to his failure, is still standing.  Imagine if he had proposed increasing the budget for NASA anytime in the last three years; his political opponents would have screamed bloody murder, accused him of misplaced priorities and frivolous expenditures and ridiculed him mercilessly. Yeah, good call, Mitt.  Maybe after the election you and Newt should go on up and spend a few weeks in the space station or something for some quality time together.  

·         Rick Santorum has also apparently decided that he’s not going to win the nomination – big surprise there, Rick – and is now playing nice with Gingrich and Romney, trolling for a Hillary-style, high level appointment.  However his old testament tendencies revealed themselves again yesterday in his bigoted and profoundly ignorant jabber about equality being a singularly christian concept not shared by any other religion.  "It doesn't come from Islam. It doesn't come from the East and Eastern religions. It comes from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."  As you might guess, this pissed a number of people off, not least those who worship according to Islam and other “Eastern” religions.  This is one of the key problems with christians interjecting their faith into national politics; it’s fundamentally intolerant.

 Clearly that’s the danger in the “christian nation” rhetoric so prevalent in the republican party in the last 30 years, a period that coincides with a steep drop off in church attendance.  If the christian fanatics can’t persuade you to attend, they will try to compel you to through force of law, an idea that would be anathema to our founding fathers, in spite of consistent misinformation from republican “historians” like Professor Gingrich, (who should know better).  As Ben Franklin said, “When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and god does not take care to support it so that its professors are obligated to call for help of the civil power, it’s a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.”  I think that pretty much sums it up to any rational person who doesn’t have money invested in the Vatican or own teh parking lot across the street from the Crystal Cathedral. 

·         This need to literally genuflect to the semi-literate and reactionary evangelicals might explain why the filthy rich republican party has trotted out the least attractive group of candidates ever.  Mitt Romney is a man who sprinkles in a few moderate positions with his otherwise by the book conservatism and he’s flogged relentlessly for it by the other candidates.  Newt is a man almost universally loathed by the republican establishment and is so wildly erratic that he goes from blowing Romney’s doors off in South Carolina to self immolation in Florida in the course of two weeks.  Santorum is a delusional religious fanatic endorsed by evangelical leaders and virtually no one else.  And Uncle Ron Paul is deeply committed, well organized and supported by a cadre of true believers but is so far outside the republican mainstream – not to mention the national mainstream – that he's relevant only insofar as he’s able to influence the party platform in Tampa and only then if he wins a lot more delegates than he has so far.  It’s no wonder there’s so much buzz about a none-of-the-above stalemate and a go for broke, wide open convention. 

More thoughts on the state of our union...

I took some time today to carefully read Obama’s state of the union speech, something I normally wouldn’t do because most years I feel the SOTU speech is an exercise in self congratulatory gibberish and hyperbole; an exaggerated list of things the president has done or, having not done them, promises to do in the future.   But since the last 9 months have featured an endless series of tedious debates by republican presidential candidates, an avalanche of empty rhetoric, mindless and reflexive accusations against him and blather of the highest order, Obama’s speech was his chance to answer it all in one systematic way with the eyes of the electorate on him.  I have taken him to task during this time for his well-meaning but ultimately futile attempts to reason with his political opponents.  Most of 2011 was a complete waste of time in that regard; a series of high profile dick-measuring contests and pissing matches that accomplished almost nothing and served only to distract the whole country from the business of actually solving our problems.

Ironically, my long and thoughtful review took place with the most recent “debate” as backdrop.  Last night in Florida the four candidates once again assembled in their suits and power ties and took questions from a hand picked member of the hated media.  This time it was the venerable Wolf Blitzer – a name as incongruous as Rock Hudson.  As the field has grown smaller and the two leaders start to distance themselves, the debates have also become more pointless, cloying and personal and the contrast between the ridiculous name calling slander-fest in Florida and Obama’s focused and mature speech Tuesday night was stark.  The continued spectacle of these “debates” – with all the gravitas of a third grade lunchroom argument over a dodge ball game outcome - has to be humiliating to republicans everywhere on some level. 

From the starry-eyed argument about the relative expense of moon colonies to the full frontal exhibitionism of Cuban pandering, this thing had all the class of a farting contest.  It is almost sad to watch the other two candidates – Saint Santorum and Crazy Uncle Ron Paul – try to remain relevant while the mud-wrestling cage match goes on next to them.  And make no mistake, Florida is looking more and more like a tipping point.  Romney’s inevitability has come into question since Newt body-slammed him in South Carolina and another loss to him here in Florida would damage his credibility severely.  Newt is on the ropes himself – under funded and fighting against the entire republican party – he really has to win Florida to be able to continue because of the way the next round of primaries fall. 

After Florida there is a series of caucuses, which could serve to affect momentum and fund raising but they don’t lock up delegates.  So the candidates have to spend time and money and have much to lose and not really much to gain.  There aren’t real primaries scheduled until the end of February.  It may be a bare knuckles bloody fight until then or Florida may spell the end for one or more of the ravaged and tiring candidates.

Meanwhile their fate is, to some extent, tied up with John Boner, Mitch McConnell and the republican congress and this is what made the SOTU speech so interesting.  Obama laid down a marker on Tuesday.  Say what you want, argue with him about this policy or that policy, but the fact is he made a very compelling case for his presidency while at the same time, laying the inability to get anything done in 2011 squarely at the feet of congress – and specifically, the house.  There was nothing radical, vaguely socialist, Kenyan, Muslim or typically liberal about the path he laid out.  Finally after months of trying in vain to get the people who loathe him to cooperate, he has recognized that there was nothing to be gained anymore by being conciliatory.  He wasn’t asking them anymore; he was telling them.   He was rational and practical and pragmatic but with an edge that was recognizable. 

Meanwhile progressives are in a lather, picking through Obama’s speech and finding fault with him on his handling of the banks and his refusal to either insult or disband the military.  When are we all going to grow up and understand what it means to work together to pull in the same direction?  Apparently, not any time soon.  Because like it or not, the fact is that a large part of the president’s role is as commander in chief.  That doesn’t have to mean he wanders around starting wars for no good reason any more than it means he can unilaterally pull troops out of Japan or close Guantanamo.   He is supposed to lead but others have to choose to follow or not.  If he wants to close Guantanamo and is opposed by 90% of the senate over political concerns, is it then a purely political calculation when he abides by the will of the people as expressed by that 90%?  More unilateral action by a president can quickly morph into a Hugo Chavez-like dictatorship and we certainly don’t want that either. 

The president spoke to the economy in general, tax equity, job creation, energy, education and yes, the deficit.  The republican response was their usual mix of criticisms sprinkled again with thinly veiled accusations of socialism and racial code.  Since the Southern Strategy was implemented in the 1960s, Republican presidential hopefuls  and the party as a whole have carefully embraced racial exclusivity, evangelical fervor and wildly militaristic nationalism while as a practical matter, working mostly to enrich the party’s moneyed establishment.  This cynical approach continues as is embodied in both of the leading candidates as well as in the Congress.

Mitt said – with a straight face and buckets of faux sincerity like only a man with 250 million dollars in assets can – that Obama is “detached from reality”.   Newt’s trying to hide his more terrifying gestapo tendencies – like going door to door in the middle of the night to arrest judges who dare disagree with him -  by trying to convince everyone he’s Ronald Reagan incarnate, offering as dubious proof a 15 year-old clip of Nancy Reagan offering him scant praise at some Elk’s Lodge annual dinner.  Newt, that was 15 years ago when she could still form rational thoughts.   How is that relevant now? 

Somewhere in a clubby, dark-paneled room, the republican version of the smartest guys in the room – their “Masters of the Universe”- are sitting around looking blankly at each other and wondering how, in the name of god, have they let it come to this; “We have two fourteen year-olds running for president – WTF?”   Meanwhile Obama is humming Al Green and deciding who will take Hillary’s place in his second term. 

State of the Union night re-cap plus the Newt & Mitt show highlights

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 15^th round, and then leave it up to the judges. 

South Carolina recap and Gingrich surprise - the road to Florida is paved with Super PAC slime.

The votes have been counted in South Carolina and Newt Gingrich – after 10 days of pandering and slandering – has come from behind and overtaken presumptive nominee Mitt Romney, winning the primary there with about 40% of the vote to Mitt’s 28 and Saint Santorum’s 17.  It’s a dramatic reversal of fortune for a man who dragged his sorry ass to a 4^th place finish in New Hampshire and could barely form complete sentences as he headed out of town.   But a change of a few degrees of latitude has served to fundamentally change the campaign as it heads further south still to the swampy land of blue-haired women, Jewish retirement homes, red-necks and Cubans.  How did Newt manage it?  This dog has a few ideas...

Romney waffling on the release of his tax returns during the last debate may have been what swung the vote to Gingrich.  Exit polls suggest that over 50% of voters made up their minds in the last few days and Mitt was roundly booed for his dissembling during the second South Carolina debate.   The guy is a zillionaire, has more money than god but he's awfully shy about those returns and not very good at making up the reason why.

Also a factor was the fact that over 30% of South Carolina voters had someone in their family lose their jobs and they’re pissed about it.  Gingrich seems pissed when he gets out of bed in the morning and his typical snarling debate “performance” dovetails nicely with that anger.  They want to support someone who has a pulse and who can play the avenging “Everyman” ; someone who will go Washington to smite the Beltway criminals who are fiddling while Rome burns.  Unfortunately for the republican nominee – angry Newt or robot Mitt – the “do nothings” conducting the fiddlers are the republican congressional leadership. 

It’s also starting to seem like maybe the power brokers of the republican party are becoming disenchanted with Mitt Romney, as talk of a brokered convention and a “long, tough slog” is becoming an increasingly prominent narrative.  Mitt’s stumbling performance on stage while under attack by Newt, the angry Pekinese, may be causing some second thoughts in the Presumptive Nominee Lounge.  And it seems that the fewer candidates on stage along with him, the weaker his performances.  He can’t hide in the corner while the who’s craziest contest goes on all around him – he has 20% less cover than he started with; cover that allowed him to skate along, placidly playing the front runner and standing above it all; being presidential.

 At the same time his massively funded Super-PAC dumped tons of toxic waste on the other candidates – Gingrich in particular – in a scorched earth policy that now seems to be blowing back at him.  Pissing Newt off played right to his strengths in a state crawling with pissed off working class voters – voters who made up the audience in the two feisty debates where Newt took off the gloves in an all-in strategy designed primarily as a Romney beat-down and if it happened to help Newt as a peripheral benefit, fine.   I realized I also misinterpreted the Gingrich campaign’s use of the infomercial-like anti-Bain Capital video he bought (from some mad genius who made it on spec). 

Gingrich – already a man well schooled in the use of code words and images – succeeded in taking what should have been a strength for Mitt and turning him into a cartoon of a carpet-bagger in the state where the civil war started.  In retrospect I mistook the amateurishness, wild exaggeration and selective use of facts in the video as a misstep but it played right into the out-of-touch patrician Yankee image that is Mitt’s greatest liability.  Gingrich also came out in the late rounds, swinging wildly at the usual monsters under his bed:  judges intent on making the US into a secular sanctuary for agnostic academics, bureaucrats and the “Hollywood elites”.  And of course Obama.  

Even in a state with 40,000 more jobs than a year ago, Obama is still reliably the enemy.  You can speculate till tomorrow about why that is and I have plenty of ideas.  But the simple fact is, showing contempt and disrespect for Obama is a guaranteed applause line with even employed republicans, who have never forgiven him for being black and getting elected in the first place, fundamentally shattering their world view and giving them the worst and longest lasting case of heartburn in modern medical history. 

So Newt wins a round, guaranteeing the race will continue for months.  Santorum is dead and really never was alive except in his mind and the desperate yearnings of the Family Research Council, et al.  Maybe Newt’s backhand across the chops will get Mitt’s attention and convince him and his genius circle to come clean about his various financial dealings.  They are what they are, Mitt, and you can’t pretend you don’t know what people are talking about.  The angry Pekinese is going to alternate snapping at your ankles and power humping your leg for the foreseeable future and right on into the madness of a wide open convention in Tampa unless you close the deal in the next month. 

He finally messed up your hair, Mitt.  What are you going to do about it?

Gingrich and Romney in a southern-fried Death Match...

Rick "Which state is this again?" Perry, in announcing his withdrawal from the presidential campaign, gave a speech in which he said," what we need in Washington is a government hat's humbler." Then apparently not recognizing the irony, announced that he was endorsing Newton Leroy Gingrich, a man well known for being a humble and self-effacing public servant, along with a world class historian and consultant, but not a lobbyist; a man who can build bridges between the races and who recognizes the value of reasoned and respectful political discourse.   Perry was last seen heading for the airport in the back seat of a limo clutching a half empty bottle of mescal...

By the way, could you ever imagine, in your most hallucinatory delusions, Newt Gingrich as some kind of Hugh Hefner, thong-and-smoking-jacket-wearing swinger?  The idea of Newtie sidling up to his 2^nd wife – the one for whom he left a cancer-stricken first wife in the hospital – and telling her that his devote catholic mistress, Callista, wanted to share his chubby ass and – who knows – maybe have a little ménage action, is so repulsive it makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit every time I stop to ponder it.  Of course now that Newtie has settled in with his fleshy third strike and gone to god for forgiveness, he is outraged and appalled – appalled I tell you - that anyone would bring up something so tawdry as the disturbing tableau just described. His angry rebuke of John King at the debate last night was hilarious for its pandering insincerity.  He looked like a recently neutered Pekinese that someone had left too long in a parked car. 

What may be even more repugnant is how his unsettling mixture of racism, right-wing social engineering, semi-coherent anti-government bombast and Obama hatred is received by the mouth-breathing republican audiences in South Carolina. Angry criticism of the (pick one), liberal, left-wing, anti-American, elitist media is almost guaranteed red meat for the pissed off white crowds Gingrich is courting and he isn’t shy about exploiting that opportunity.  The most recent polls indicate he got the bit between his teeth and is charging for home, wide-eyed and foaming at the mouth, so I’m sure he’s hoping to god his ex-wife goes away for a couple of days so he doesn't break his leg before he gets to the finish line.

Romney, on the other hand, spent the last 24 hours sputtering like C-3PO talking to Jaba the Hut in trying to explain not releasing his tax returns, his off-shore accounts in the Cayman Islands, and his enthusiastic embrace of unadulterated capitalism.  Indeed, anytime he has to go a bit off script he seems to freeze and reflexively sputter gibberish in a way that – sadly for him – doesn’t inspire confidence in him taking the proverbial red phone call at 3:00 AM.  Whether during the debates facing Gingrich, the snarling Pekinese and Saint Santorum or out on the stump trying to handle questions thrown at him wily-nilly from the audience, clearly improvisation isn’t his strong suit.  He certainly doesn’t inspire confidence with stammering and rambling explanations.   

Mitt’s handlers are clearly uneasy heading into the 11^th hour, and with good reason; he can release his tax returns and justify Bain Capital’s particular brand of merciless capitalism and his obfuscation may pass muster.  But stashing money in the Cayman Islands begs the question; what the hell is that all about?  It’s not clever investing or skillful use of the plentifully available IRS loopholes – it’s more like Tony Montana hoarding bags of cash so the cartels can’t find them.  That’s a little bit harder to explain – so far the jury is out whether we’re going to buy it or not.  In the meantime Mitt’s Super-PAC is furiously dumping money into the South Carolina media economy, trying to fend off the resurgent Gingrich juggernaut and continue on as the inevitable nominee. He and his people are now whispering that, of course, he never really expected to win South Carolina and that’s probably true a month ago.  ut a Gingrich win in South Carolina changes the game considerably. A Romney win and Gingrich likely heads home to a winter of Callista softly stroking his fevered brow as he tells her and anyone else who’ll listen that he should have been the nominee. 

While all this has been going on a clearly confident Obama told Boner and McConnell to eat shit and die over the ill-advised Keystone Pipeline project.  He immediately was bombarded with criticism and earnest shouting about jobs and the economic health of the country, to which he replied by going to democratic fundraiser and singing “Let’s Stay Together”.  This is a man who has surveyed the field and come to the conclusion – like the hidden republican hierarchy and propaganda machine – that it really doesn’t matter much which one of these guys wins, he’s looking good. 

I  was just having this discussion with what can only be described as an angry and disillusioned progressive friend of mine who was excoriating Obama for all of his failures and broken promises, fervently promising not to vote for him in the fall.  I asked him what I’ve asked all of my angry and impatient progressive friends; did you really think that Obama could cure all of the ills of eight years of confused and constitutionally questionable presidential leadership in less than four years? You’re not sitting on the couch with a remote in your hand; you can’t just get sick of what’s on one channel and start surfing.  If he’s reelected – particularly if the democrats can gain some seats in the house and keep the senate then I think you’ll see more of his promises kept.  He’s not going to win every fight, nor should he.  But he’s spent the last two years pulling a tired donkey up a pretty steep hill and he’s half way there. 

The primary tomorrow will be interesting but unless Romney wins in a runaway, the show will go on into Florida and the next act.