Gingrich speaks as if he just text-messaged with God. Gingrich would have everyone believe he is the winner of the anti-Romney mantle not merely by default but by hard-won effort and a well-deserved reputation for conservative steadfastness.
And many liberals think that since they hate him so much, he must be really right wing. They made the same mistake with Richard Nixon and George W.
Bush, both of whom were far less ideologically conservative than their press clippings indicated. The reality is more complicated. As House speaker, he cut a deal with President Clinton on the budget. The floor was half-empty, and the campaign barred some of the press from entering, feeding different excuses to different reporters I was told I needed to RSVP; others were told there was no room in the hall.
In the tomblike expanse of the press filing room, you had to pay three bucks for a drink, and all they had was soda. Across town, meanwhile, half of South Carolina appeared to be packed into a Hilton ballroom that began to stink noticeably of sweat and booze long before Newt showed up. Bodies were stacked together like sardines, and the crowd slobbered over visiting dignitaries like Mrs. South Carolina, a busty blond hottie who seemed to symbolize the earnest possibilities of open marriage.
Most ludicrously, Gingrich — virtually his whole adult life a confirmed Beltway parasite, as voracious a consumer of lobbyist money as has ever been seen in modern America, a man who in the past decade took more than 1. This, of course, was the final irony: that South Carolina — a nest of upright country church folk proud of their exacting morals and broad distrust of buggery, stem cells and Hollywood relativism — had chosen as its values champion Newt Gingrich, a man who has been unfaithful not just to two wives but also two religions raised Lutheran, he is currently Catholic by way of Southern Baptist.
Even odder was the fact that this hilarious fraud was being perpetrated on behalf of a man who was consigned to the historical footnotes well over a decade ago. After all this time, it ends up being Newt Gingrich?
How can a guy who was kicked off the B list in the Nineties be the headline act in ? In an era of popular revolts on both the right and left, it is sobering to think that the American power structure is so desperate, so bankrupt of fresh deceptions, that it is now forced to recycle the dregs of the dregs in its attempts to pacify the public.
T he two other contenders in the race each had good reasons to be shocked by the sudden emergence of Gingrich as the standard-bearer for Republican values.
Genuinely religious, with a genuinely working-class background, Santorum nonetheless was beaten senseless in the South Carolina polls, receiving fewer than half as many votes from evangelicals as the philandering Gingrich.
Then there was Ron Paul, whose unaccountable predicament was on display in the Ham House madness. Both actually and metaphorically, the Paul campaign is forever being consigned to the parking lot outside the main event, despite the fact that Paul is the only Republican candidate with consistent, insoluble support across the country.
Polls also show that Paul tends to fare much better against Obama than any candidate besides Romney: A recent CNN poll showed him in a dead heat with Obama in a one-on-one contest. The grown-ups in the party establishment and their lackeys in the press simply refuse to take Paul seriously, which is part of the reason Paul is so extraordinarily attractive to young people in both Iowa and New Hampshire, he scored almost half of the under vote. Gingrich alone offers GOP voters the emotional payoff they want out of an election — an impassioned fight against the conspiracy, played out in thrillingly contrary three-hour debates on health care with the liberal Satan.
Gingrich lives for confrontation: He was born for this sort of insurgent primary politics. If that happens, every Democratic flack from Leon Panetta to Obama himself will have to wear restraints to keep from publicly crying out in joy.
Rather, it is lamentable and, when facilitated by capitalists, reprehensible. For Kennedy, this made sense: Reactionary liberalism holds that whatever is, from Social Security to farm subsidies to the Chrysler Corp. But Gingrich is supposedly our infallible guide to the sunny uplands of a dynamic future. Gingrich has three verbal tics that, taken together — and they usually come in clumps — signal his depth and seriousness.
Romney, while at Bain Capital, performed the essential social function of connecting investment resources with opportunities. Firms like Bain are indispensable for wealth creation, which often involves taking over badly run companies, shedding dead weight and thereby liberating remaining elements that add value.
The process, like surgery, can be lifesaving. And like surgery, society would rather benefit from it than watch it. Romney surely anticipated that such an attack would come — but from Democrats, in the general election, not from a volatile Republican. Two unfair attacks against Romney concern his polish and his past. It shows a young Romney and six Bain colleagues feeling their oats, with paper currency protruding from their dark suits. The latest polls show Romney with a point lead over his nearest rival in New Hampshire and recent polls in South Carolina show him having leapfrogged more conservative opponents into first place there.
He was referring especially to the two thirds of Republican primary voters in the Palmetto State who are evangelical Christians. Some thought his opponents would unleash a torrent of abuse during two televised debates over the weekend in a last-chance effort to force a stumble, but Romney emerged largely unscathed.
In New Hampshire faithful social conservatism counts for less than it does in Iowa or South Carolina. But polls in both New Hampshire and South Carolina suggest that the victory carried little momentum. Next weekend a group of leading Christian Republicans will meet in Texas. The leading contenders for that spot are Gingrich, Santorum and Perry and they have all vowed to contest South Carolina.
But Gingrich and Santorum have close ties, and Perry appears to have no hope of a late surge. Who knows what the potential for a unity candidate might be? The donation went to Winning Our Future, a political action committee that supports Gingrich. Gingrich is unlikely to shrink from the opportunity. A favorite of the conservative anti-Washington Tea Party movement, DeMint has yet to endorse a candidate. For all the antipathy felt for Romney by many conservatives, a majority still believe he has the best chance to beat Obama.
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