I’ve always thought that when the dust started to settle, Newt would be one of the strongest candidates in the Republican field. Even when folks tried to push him out of the clown car and write his obit earlier this year, I thought Newt would stay in the game for two main reasons.
The first is simple: Newt tells the rubes what they want to hear and makes them feel smart, smug and superior when they embrace his con. For decades, Ginrich has been an exceptional liar, grifter and hack–all qualities honored and celebrated by the modern CONsevative movement. Sure, he comes up with batshit crazy and contradictory ideas that would NEVER work, but these delusions are rhetorical crack for the gullible saps who make up the base of the Party. They love to be bamboozled and Newt is very good at giving them what they want.
The second reason is that Newt represents the last CONservative victory in the current rewrite of recent Wingnut history. It turns out the the years when Tom DeLay ran the Congress and George W. Bush controlled the White House produced a series of major fuck-ups that melted down the global economy, squandered a surplus, produced massive deficits and damaged America’s standing in the world from just about any angle. Once they purge the decade (1998 to 2008) of Republican misrule from their collective memory holes, Newt Gignrich is the last CONservative hero left standing. In their fevered imaginations, he is untainted by the Bush/DeLay years.
These twin delusions almost guaranteed that Newt would rise in the polls and always have a very decent chance of becoming the Republican nominee for President. And now with weeks to go until the voting starts, “The Professor” is on the move.
And I can’t think of a candidate who better represents the Modern Republican Party and Conservative movement. Newt is the corruption, idiocy and self-delusions of the Party, base and movement made flesh. I expect that they will embrace Gingrich with gusto and that poor old Mittens will not know what hit him.
Cheers
zmulls
Before the 2008 campaign started up (sometime in mid-2007) my prediction for the nominees was John Edwards vs. Newt Gingrich. Now, obviously I was about as wrong as I could have been. But I thought then that Newt was the guy who would tap into the collective id of the Republican base.
Looks like I may have been four years too early on that one.
Newt has a serious shot because he will be the relentless attacker they crave. They want red meat dripping with blood, and Newt is shameless. And he gives the appearance of someone who can debate Obama “without a teleprompter”….
Linda Featheringill
I’m not a fan of Rubin but this piece is actually worth reading. She is dissing Newt on the basis of his past deeds.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/the-right-begins-to-dissect-gingrich/2011/12/01/gIQA5FpHKO_blog.html
White Trash Liberal
The base of the GOP really doesn’t want another Dole or McCain style “my turn” candidate. They want Tea Party ideology front and center; they want a flame war. Newt provides the latter in abundance… I think he will substitute nonsense for gravitas enough to appear to emulate the former.
However, he has no real campaign structure or presence. His footprint is entirely media driven. He will have to raise cash swiftly and invest in a solid national framework to last.
Then comes the general, where it will be a reverse Mondale. Bwahahaha
bleh
Well, as much as we all HOPE this is the case, I still get the feeling of whistling past the ice-cold, granite-clad office tower that bristles with cameras and has secret vaults of cash and garrisons of private storm troopers in its sub-sub-basement.
Gingrich played the timing on this one extremely well — waiting like a fat spider until his opponents flamed out, and then squeezing from his crack and starting to feast on the remains.
But Mittens has a sophisticated chemical weapons lab and cares not a bit for the collateral damage he’ll wreak on the environment when he sends in the helicopters to spray the giant spider.
Cacti
@zmulls:
The 27 percent adores Newt, which is why I think Romney should be very worried.
The party brass doesn’t think he stands a chance with the remaining 73 percent. The long knives are being sharpened.
I don’t much care who wins the fight, I’m just anxious to see them damage each other as much as possible.
General Stuck
I actually do believe Newt’s actual and largely perceived smarts has trumped the disgust of the faithful, with his seedy pol style and grifting career. After months of Cain’s “uz-beck – beck – beckistan” and suffering the flip flopping smarmy chatterings of Romney and his fawning sociopathy, not to mention Perry, the doofus clown from Texas, the wingers out there have gotten self conscious about the idiot factor of their prospective POTUS candidates. And were primed for Newt’s pompous semi coherent stream of bullshit. Carefully patented and perfected by NEWT for decades as the GOP “ideas” man, making just enough sense to set the hook.
At this stage, the dude could start pontificating on colonizing the moon creating jobs for mining pixie dust, and the rubes would lap it up, and beam with pride that they got Big Brane Newt and smarty pants libtards got nothing on them.
And really, think about it. Could any wingnut be more white than Newt Gingrich?
LGRooney
…lots and lots of flesh.
I still think he is trying to casrept his own campaign and this is just a launching pad to untold grifter wealth.
Nonetheless, I am amazed that the GOP seems all too willing to overlook his past infidelities, and the cruelty inherent in the first one of which we know while burying Cain for apparently the same reasons. Is it a matter of the time elapsed or is it a blackety black thing which would prove the point many of us have been making all along, i.e., the base may be showing up for Cain to prove their non-racist bona fides but in the end they will not elect a black candidate in any current or upcoming cycles for years to come and these allegations are just the excuse they needed to hop off the bandwagon.
I still haven’t figured out why they like Gingrich but don’t like Santorum. I get why they hate the Mormons, especially the plastic prentender. Cain is black. Bachman a woman. They threw out Pawlenty, though, and have not given consideration to Santorum. Paul will make them face their warmonger demons so he’s out and his economic prescriptions, while good to stir up the base, will never fly with the money masters on the right because they understand how absolutely ruinous they would be (this is the economic side of the abortion debate, i.e., they’ll use it to bring in the rubes but never act on it because it would unbait the hook).
OK, enough brain leaking…
Benjamin Franklin
@White Trash Liberal:
“The base of the GOP really doesn’t want another Dole or McCain style “my turn” candidate.”
This is the biggest bug in the list of features for their new clown car. “Thou shalt speak no evil of a Republican’ died with the advent of our first Black POTUS.
This has resulted in a Zombie Buffet of cannibalism the likes of which, has not been seen since the Donner Party.
The last Zombie standing, is the putative heir to all remaining body parts of the GOP.
LGRooney
@General Stuck: He’s white and he knows how to put words down on paper. And, did you see how many footnotes he includes in his writing to make sure the rubes understand just how serious a scholar he really is?
One of the saddest sights in recent memory is when I took my son to visit Mt. Vernon and the shelves were loaded with Gingrich’s intellectual-ish musings on American history.
Cacti
And for all of Newt’s alleged smarts, he managed to take a Dem President who got caught getting blown by intern in the White House, and turn him into a sympathetic figure.
Admiral_Komack
I’ve been to Pragmatic Obots Unite:
Ah, the campaign commercials…
See President Obama and his wife and children.
See Newt and his wife…um, wife #1.
See Newt and wife #1 in a tender moment:
Newt (to his wife when she is in hospital dealing with cancer):
“Look, bitch, just sign the divorce papers; I gotta get laid!”
See Newt with wife #2.
See Newt in his office with constituent:
“No baby, I don’t want to hear nothing about the Clinton impeachment; just slob the knob!”
Waitaminnit, that constituent is now wife #3!
Joseph Nobles
I await Gingrich’s general election launch atop Stone Mountain.
Schlemizel
@Admiral_Komack:
There are not enough fainting coaches on the Atlantic Coast to handle the work load such an ‘uncivil assault’ would generate. While we would love it the Kool Kids Klub in DC & beyond would deplete the national ink supply telling the rubes how awful Obama is for taking this approach.
Donut
Thanks for posting on this Dennis (you haven’t posted enough lately, glad to see you hit the front page again!).
I had not considered that Newt is the complete package more so than Romney might be, because of the corruption angle. Great observation. It hurts him not one bit with the 27 percenters.
Still, I don’t know if that is enough ballast to right the ship for Newt. Romney is far more polished and cautious and Newt has a whole month left here to fvck himself.
Let’s not forget that – he makes his own shit-piles, and inevitably he’s bound to land in one face first.
MBunge
I’d caution people who think Newt will be an easy mark in the general election. If the latest unemployment figure is the start of a trend and not a fluke, Obama will deliver an ass-beating to whomever the GOP throws up. But if Newt can keep his own party from stabbing him in the back (not an easy thing), he’s got exactly the right stuff to rally the GOP demographic base for one last hurrah and the fact that he’s so plainly loathed by our political elites gives him a status as “outsider” that Newt’s more than smart enough to exploit.
Mike
JPL
@MBunge: What a scary thought and I wish I could disagree with your sentiments.
MSM had their chance today to attack his racist comments this morning but if they did, I missed it.
Exurban Mom
IF you haven’t taken the time to read the Esquire takedown of Newt from last year, you must do so. All Obama needs to do is read that, and hire an intern to take some of the juicier nonsense out of his 20+ “books,” and he will have the ability to decimate Newt in any contest.
It’s funny: this election has followed the usual path of “relative unknown gains traction temporarily; media shines white hot light on candidate revealing flaws/batshit craziness/idiocy; party moves on to the next clown in the car.” Newt isn’t a relative unknown, but I would bet most people in the country don’t really know Newt. I await the white hot light of media interest in his three marriages, two divorces under difficult circumstances for his wives, money grubbing ass kissing “consultancy,” ridiculous moneymaking schemes, etc., etc. He’s a grifter of the first order, and I’m kinda hoping that it doesn’t become general knowledge until it’s too late…
...now I try to be amused
Newt might the only one left to represent. Reagan and Nixon are dead.
Yevgraf
Last night’s robocall from the Professor was classic. It consisted of three to five minutes of dogwhistles, spittle-flecked derision of European-style soc!alism, tales of his success at bringing Republicans together against The Other, and a request to hold for his associate to help fund this very important, excitingest moment ever.
I hung through every moment, figuring it costs him money for me to do that. When the eager-voiced, perky-tittied chickie-poo with the cutesy upscale sounding name came on the line, I insulted her and berated her paymasters. Hopefully, I made her night a lot more shitty than it started out as being while wiping her smug phone-smile off her face.
Good times.
Cat Lady
Newt Leroy Gingrich. Even his name is repulsive and mean – it’s a cross between a slimy amphibian and the Grinch. It’s a name out of Harry Potter, from Slitherin House. He’s undisciplined, unlikeable, unattractive and unaware, and in my opinion wholly unelectable. If Newt’s the nominee and it’s looking likely, I like Obama’s chances very very much.
The Dangerman
@Cacti:
This.
Along with the party brass, no way Mitt doesn’t use a flamethrower to charbroil Newt’s ass with all his money…
…which is too bad; Mitt/Newt would have been a fun ticket.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
I think it’s time that every Democrat get behind the Newt Gingrich candidacy. Donate money, switch your primary voting status, phone bank, and just GOTV for ole Newt.
Democrats have to seize this opportunity now because it might not last long. I was hoping Obama would get to run against someone like Palin or Perry because I never thought Newt ever had a chance. Now that he does we should embrace it as a sign that the almighty does exist and he really likes to fuck shit up.
Newt 2012!
huckster
Hear his comments about poor children in “inner city” neighborhoods having no understanding of what it means to have a job? The wingnuts eat this stuff up because they know what Newt is saying. This is what they want. They don’t want the near Obama that they perceive Romney to be, they want someone who they believe is gonna bring it.
And he will, and it will be ugly, and the money boys know this. I think they have figured out already that Romney can’t beat Obama, but he can come close enough to tip the Senate to the GOP, but Newt would a disaster to karl Rove’s carefully laid plans.
And now apparently Roger Ailes is playing mischief by fluffing Newt at Willard’s expense.
Frankensteinbeck
The ‘voters are morons’ theory goes that voters prefer style over substance. Newt’s style is fat, ugly, and bitter. He’s abrasive and uncharismatic. He lacks exactly the trait that made Reagan and Bush jr. viable in the general.
LGRooney
@huckster:
I am going to need so much whiskey tonight to get that image out of my head. I may leave work early. That is just a nasty thing to do when the weekend is just getting started.
Hoodie
Newt may have just enough staying power to take out Romney in NH but will flame out long before the primaries end. Newt is really just another in a line of ideological archetypes that the teatards have been taking out for test drives. They’ve had the religious nut (Bachmann); the cowboy (Perry); the “our black guy” (Cain); and now, “our intellectual.” After Newt, there really isn’t much left to explore, e.g., Santorum is a rerun of Bachmann and Paul is a novelty act.
That means that a dark horse like Huntsman could emerge, especially if he has a decent showing in NH, e.g., he comes in second or third. The scenario could be something like Clinton’s rise 1992. Yeah, the Morman thing is a problem for him, but he doesn’t have Mitt’s additional flip-flopper baggage. If Newt falters, which he will inevitably do because of his ridiculous personality, the Republicans will have run through most of the heavily ideological/true believer candidates and will be ripe for seeking someone they think would have a chance of beating Obama. Right now, Huntsman is the only one who really fits that bill and all the others that could have, like Pawlenty, Christie and Daniels, have already withdrawn or demurred. He could be a real headache for Obama, because his record in Utah is relatively positive but obscure enough that there isn’t a lot of ground for negative oppo research. He also comes across as youthful and relatively hip, for a Republican. His biggest negative, apart from being relatively unknown, is that, although he looks good in a suit, he really isn’t all that charismatic. However, the image-makers will work on that.
handsmile
If by “rubes” you mean the Village media, then yes. Only this “whorehouse with 500 player pianos” (Charles Pierce) could croon that a charlatan and disgraced pol like Gingrich is an intellectual and electoral heavyweight.
If, however, “rubes” is understood to be the low or no-information voter, aka a GOP primary voter or caucus-goer, answering pollsters’ questions, then this “Neutmentum” is nothing more than this month’s anti-Mitt collective hysteria.
Their fickleness, their feebleness is starkly exposed by the abrupt abandonment of the “ultimate Washington outsider”, the grifter Cain, to the embrace of the “ultimate Washington insider”, the grifter Gingrich.
The implacable hatred by the GOP base for the Mormon former governor of Massachusetts, a loathing manifested by their lurching from Bachmann to Perry to Cain now to Gingrich, is the most fascinating and least addressed aspect of this fall’s Republican cavalcade.
Schlemizel
@…now I try to be amused:
No, no, no – please keep up on wingnut memes :) Nixon was a liberal, they named him as such after all the hoopla around his funeral when so many of his personal and Presidential failings became obvious.
They are trying to do that with Boy Blunder right now. I saw just this week a wingnut call W a RINO. Conservatives can never fail, ergo Boy George is the most liberal President in the history of the US.
Trakker
As Paul Krugman reminded us, “Newt Gingrich is a stupid man’s idea of what a smart man sounds like.” Unfortunately Newt is also the MSM’s idea of what a smart man sounds like. Trust me, the press loves Gingrich. He speaks their language: shallow, with big words. The press will pimp him all the way to November.
Linda Featheringill
Huntsman might actually be the one. Hmmmmm.
kimp
What Trakker said.
ET
I always thought News was one of the biggest reasons for the current crop of Republicans in politics today. Many of the either came of age politically in the 1990s or are his peers who wanted to get on board.
The modern GOP is a reflection of Newt so of course they would love him.
Canuckistani Tom
Newt’s middle name is Leroy?
Damn, now every time I see this clip from WoW, I’m gonna replace Jenkins with Gingrich
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkCNJRfSZBU
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leeroy_Jenkins
MBunge
@Frankensteinbeck: “The ‘voters are morons’ theory goes that voters prefer style over substance.”
But what style in particular? Everybody, especially liberals, has been demanding that Obama go off Howard Beale style against Wall Street and the GOP. Well, Obama’s never going to do that because he isn’t that kind of rabble-rouser. But when has Newt ever declined to rouse the rabble?
Yes, it seems ridiculous for Gingrich to present himself as the champion of the little man against the powerful interests that have screwed us all, but he could talk the talk pretty well.
Mike
dww44
@LGRooney: Oh, my God!! Who put them there? This is worse than the plethora of Glenn Beck books at my local library branch. At least his have gone out of site these days, along with those by Sarah Palin.
Jill Perry
The idea that Huntsman could be the true dark horse scares me. He definitely would have a chance to beat Obama. Newt is his own worse enemy, in that he can’t help himself and will say something so outrageous that he will fall to the bottom where he belongs. I believe the last time he ran for rep in Georgia he was so soundly beaten that I thought we’d heard the last of him. I had no idea what a grifter and con he was with his numerous books and lobbying — it makes me ill that this dreadful man has done so well and done so much damage.
LGRooney
@dww44: Whoever manages the book/gift store is a “true believer” apparently.
cthulhu
I have to think that T-Paw kicks himself each and every day since he dropped out.
...now I try to be amused
@Schlemizel:
Only one thing they can do then: run the corpse of Reagan in every presidential election.
Newtonian Laxative
Newt’s aspirations are indistinguishable from megalomania, but his power has always come from destruction. When he proposes a “new idea” that will be impossible to execute and that will rapidly implode, it will damage the entire infrastructure that it has infested. Think about education and health care, social security, welfare, environmental and consumer protection. If you design competing efforts to fail as they raise frustration and deplete funds, the consequences are delightful to someone of Newt’s poisonous nature: Not only do you disrespect and hurt the beneficiaries of these programs (instant gratification plus deniability!), but you also destroy the inadequate programs that they were ostensibly designed to save (historic transformation!).
Redshift
@The Dangerman:
Don’t count it out. Remember, Reagan and Bush took some pretty good shots at each other in the primaries, and that didn’t stop Bush from getting the VP nom.
Gus
Seriously? I just kind of figured his campaign was a money making angle, like Cain’s. Wouldn’t it be something if he grifted himself right into the nomination?
Schlemizel
@Trakker:
Why did you take the time to type a redundancy? If Noot is a stupid persons idea of what a smart person sounds like then OF COURSE he is the media’s idea of what a smart guy sounds like. :)
@…now I try to be amused:
They would if they could, every debate is about who can wear the old fools dead skin more beautifully.
Ruckus
I expect that they will embrace Gingrich with gusto
I suspect you are correct. Many of us old enough, or older still, to remember newt in his “glory” years are old enough to have huge gaps in our memory streams. If one were a conservatard as well…
And of course one would have to have huge gaps in the history area to think that newt is anything but a gigantic asshole.
Or to actually like electing gigantic assholes. Oh wait, I think I see a problem.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
@MBunge:
the fact that he’s so plainly loathed by our political elites gives him a status as “outsider” that Newt’s more than smart enough to exploit.
Fuck me rigid – the guy was SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE>?!?!?!?!
Even given the monemental stupidity of the Rerpublican base, do you really think they’ll swallow an “I’m an outsider” schtick?
Phoenician in a time of Romans
@Cat Lady:
Newt Leroy Gingrich. Even his name is repulsive and mean – it’s a cross between a slimy amphibian and the Grinch. It’s a name out of Harry Potter, from Slitherin House.
Oh my. If Gingrich is nominated, you may have just created a meme with legs on it.
Imagine a picture of Obama. Underneath it, you have the words:
“Gryffindor? Hufflepuff? Ravenclaw?”
Next to it, a picture of Newt, backgrounded on a dark colour, with the simple legend:
“Slytherin.”
El Cid
@Phoenician in a time of Romans:
He doesn’t have to be an “outsider” from all Washington power; he’s not an Obama / Pelosi insider, so, it’s all good.
steve
You wouldn’t purge something from a memory hole. You’d purge it from memory, or put it down the memory hole.
ochon
gingrich always worried me. in 2012, with unemployment of around 8-9% etc etc, anyone can win. but particularly gingrich of the current crop. the memories of the self-evident imbecile bush are still too fresh for the middle ground, so someone at least superficially intelligent is required.
as for his baggage in the general? problem is the media environment is asymmetric. if dems do what republicans would do, hone in on his personal life, they will be at least as hurt by the reaction as gingrich is hurt by the attack.
and i think we shouldn’t rely on him flaming out in the primaries. scary times. but at least if he won, he would be less dangerous than romney or huntsman. they like gingrich would govern from the far right, but they would get away with more than him, because of their bullshit moderate brand.