Folks wonder how Newt plans to build a base for his run for the White House. After all, he has a thirty-plus year record as a complete fuck-up to deal with–but to be fair that record has been sold with word strings clever enough to fool the pundit class into thinking they are rooted in ideas. Still, support from his Beltway pals would never put Newt over the top.
What might help is catering to White anxiety and fear over a changing world–this is especially true for white males. Racism has a role to play in this, but one can make blatant appeals to this fear without being personally racist. Gingrich is building his campaign on making these appeals to fear–and in doing so he will come to the line of racist rhetoric. And from time to time he will cross over it. But that will be OK for Newt because he is a Republican.
Take his statement in the opening days of his campaign. In a speech back down in Georgia, he expressed his Republican Confederate Party credentials by telling a White Southern audience that:
I believe the gap between where the people in this room and the vast majority of the people of Georgia would take America and where President Obama would take America is so enormous that this will be the most consequential election since 1860.
Newt is bonding with his audience by letting them know that he agrees that the threat posed by Barack Obama is just as bad as the threat posed by that Black Republican, Abraham Lincoln 150 years ago. And there may be some truth to this fear if your concern is to preserve White Supremacy. Exploiting that fear is what Newt’s code talking campaign is all about.