‘Out of the … Dust of Tweets and Trivia Emerged Gingrich’(Newt losing it?)

National Review ^ | 05/18/2011 | Katrina Trinko

[princeofdarkness]

Newt is a man who once had fire in his belly. Now the only things coming from his belly are pathetic small burps disguised as conservatism.

[newzjunkey]

Tyler must’ve escaped from an asylum.

[BillyBoy]

ACTUAL NEWT GINGRICH PRESS RELEASE:

"The literati sent out their minions to do their bidding. Washington cannot tolerate threats from outsiders who might disrupt their comfortable world. The firefight started when the cowardly sensed weakness. They fired timidly at first, then the sheep not wanting to be dropped from the establishment’s cocktail party invite list unloaded their entire clip, firing without taking aim their distortions and falsehoods. Now they are left exposed by their bylines and handles. But surely they had killed him off. This is the way it always worked. A lesser person could not have survived the first few minutes of the onslaught. But out of the billowing smoke and dust of tweets and trivia emerged Gingrich, once again ready to lead those who won’t be intimated by the political elite and are ready to take on the challenges America faces. "

Ohhhhhhhhh! Newt really threw down the gaunlet here. I used to think the honorable Dr. William M. Escoffery III, M.D. would annihilate all competition in 2012 and win the GOP nomination for POTUS in a walk, but Newt's lookin' really invincible now! American Solutions to Elect Dede Scozzfava & Stop Global Warming vs. GOOOOOOOOOOH! Could this be the clash of the titans? ;-)

[Impy]

Good call, Newt does sound like one of those fringe candidates in that press release.

Will Newt pull a George Romney right out of this race?

[grey_whiskers]

Did you ever get the feeling that Newt would get soundly eviscerated within about 24 - 48 hours of arriving on FR? :-)

Cheers!

[woofie]

I dont think it is so much that he is a Rino . Newt just looks pathetically capable of doing or saying anything to try to get himself elected. He also looks like he hasnt a clue as to how to go about it

[nathanbedford]

No, quite the contrary, I expected Gingrich to prevail, if he were to succeed at all, as the last man standing who survived despite 1000 cuts. I certainly did not anticipate a mortal Seppuku thrust before the battle began.

I had no way of predicting that Gingrich was destined to be the nominee, but I thought he would perform well in debates and at least render us a service of sharpening the issues. I did not anticipate he would flame out like a rookie.

As previously posted, it seems to me that Gingrich was simply too arrogant to recognize the depth of the conservative resistance to him. I heard his phone call to Rush Limbaugh and his vaguely self righteous recital of his conservative bona fides going back to the days even before Ronald Reagan. I think he thought that conservatives, who were not even at the age of majority when Newt was standing alone before the cameras assailing the Democrats during special orders, would see him as he saw himself, the fire tempered veteran of conservatism. Gingrich simply did not recognize that he was placed on a very short probation which he promptly violated.

He was too arrogant to see this because Gingrich believes that he could draw the world of conservatism to himself and lead it into a postmodern age of new conservatism. This ceaseless intellectual probing to find the new technological way to govern is very Churchillian and, although he lacks Churchill's gifts, caused Gingrich to suffer the same reaction by people who find this kind of innovative thinking bumptious. The age desperately needs new ideas to apply verities of conservatism but the age is looking for orthodoxy. McCain gave us our fill of Mavericks last cycle.

Just as the British could never fully accept or fully dispense with Churchill because his candle burned too bright and too hot, so Gingrich has pissed people off. Churchill was able to cross and re-cross the aisle and came back from exile thrice, but Gingrich is no Churchill. He simply is not a team player and he violated a visceral sense among conservatives that we must have unity because to lose this election is to risk the Republic and to squander our legacy.

In the end, we might find ourselves nominating someone with counterfeit conservative credentials such as Mitt Romney. Will we wonder what we have cast away.

[Cyropaedia]

Newt was actually dumb enough to believe he could triangulate his way to the White House; - just as his old nemesis, Bill Clinton, was able to do.

Foolish. Very foolish.

[RichInOC]

Rick, save the drama for ya mama.

[grey_whiskers]

As previously posted, it seems to me that Gingrich was simply too arrogant to recognize the depth of the conservative resistance to him. I heard his phone call to Rush Limbaugh and his vaguely self righteous recital of his conservative bona fides going back to the days even before Ronald Reagan.

He doesn't get that intellectual circle-jerks with the policy wonks in the back room aren't what get votes in Peoria.

Particularly in a time of economic crisis.

People either want bread and circuses, or freedom; the conservative's job is to explain how freedom can be used to secure things even better than the bread and circuses.

But to do that, they have to cut off the gravy train of excessive benefits, so that recipients won't have to jump STRAIGHT from government dependence to upper-middle-class status in order to do better than their benefits.

And they have to stop devouring the middle class, which via the Hidden Hand of the Market, really is the goose that lays the Golden Eggs.

The leftist drivers of the Dem party know this, of course; they plan on becoming themselves the Party Faithful who retain the few luxury goods once the Glorious Socialist Revolution comes.

Little do they know they will be the FIRST against the wall.

Gingrich was overrated as an intellect, anyway: I heard some of his speeches in the past, and his interview with Rush, and he subscribed to the adage "never use a two-cent word when a sixty-four cent word will do." Thus violating Strunk and White...and paying the price.

Laugh at Palin, Newt, as they laughed at Reagan. She, like Renaldus Magnus, will gladly trade the approval of the critics for box-office (electoral) success.

Cheers!

[nathanbedford]

Foolish indeed.

But I would not necessarily join you in an assumption that the foolishness was generated by a cynical and calculated triangulation to advance his chances. I think Newt simply thought he had a better plan.

He has been working on this health care matter as he points out with Heritage for over 20 years. He has formed a think tank to come up with a health care plan. I don't think he thought about disparaging Ryan's plan, I think he was simply expecting the world to acknowledge the value of the Gingrich plan.

So I see the thoughtlessness as coming out of arrogance but not calculation. I'm not sure it matters because I believe his campaign is wrecked, although he could conceivably come back, Richard Nixon style.

His chances of survival are remote but if we get no Gov. Perry or Paul Ryan he just might survive.

[nathanbedford]

As usual I agree with virtually everything you say but I will indulge the all too human tendency to comment on the small fraction with which I disagree:

It is Newt above every politician today, except perhaps Obama, who understands the need to popularize policy, yes, to render it down to a bumper sticker if necessary. Let us not forget That the Contract with America which put the Republicans in power in the house after decades was exactly a concise expression of policy directed toward the people in Peoria and it was Gingrich's conception.

Actually, Gingrich has carefully polled many of the issues and urged the Republican Party to adopt the ones that pull in excess of 80 to 90%, such as making English the official language, but the congressional Republicans simply cannot get out of their Beltway mindsets. It is Gingrich who recognizes the indispensability of articulating the issues properly. No one can accuse John Boehner or Mitch McConnell of that sin. Trump knew how to do it but does Pawlenty?

I second Charles Krauthammer's motion to send a posse after Paul Ryan and drag him into the race.

[grey_whiskers]

His chances of survival are remote but if we get no Gov. Perry or Paul Ryan he just might survive.

Not if he runs into the Palin buzzsaw.

Remember that he has (according to ANY reasonable definition, either morally or politically) any number of skeletons in her closet.

According to the rabid left, Sarah Palin is both the skeleton AND the closet; and the members of the left are all (to borrow the fine picture painted by Dave Barry) like a bunch of toasters out in the wild, rattling their alarms in horror to signal the rest of the herd!

...but to the right, and most normal people?

"She's one of US, she gets it."

It's VERY odd, btw, but NOBODY has tried the race card on Sarah in any way, shape, or form; as that is usually the first thing tried by the left when they are in trouble, I am genuinely at a loss to account for why.

And I predict that they will try to paint Sarah as an out-of-touch elitist poseur along with being a racist, when they are in extremis; however, given that the meme for years is that she is "trailer trash, Caribou barbie" I don't think it will fly.

(Everyone in their heart knows she dropped out of the governorship to avoid bankruptcy; everyone knows she wrote Going Rogue either to tell her side of the story, or after a fashion as a cry for help; everyone knows if they had left her alone, the book wouldn't have had any sales.)

Under ordinary circumstances, I'd advance Newt for a high cabinet post; but given his Tiffany revelations and his sitting on the couch with Nancy -- and in particular, his disingenuous explanation which contradicts the literal text of the advertisement -- he looks like one more can't-let-go-of-power, give-me-my-share-of-the-pig-trough DC insider.

Sorry to say it, but screw him. HARD.

And as I said, there are dozens of FReepers far more intelligent than him; not to mention other conservative power centers. :-)

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

Pawlenty is toast. They don't even have to resort to scandal and character assassination. Did you happen to see Jay Leno last night?

They've affixed to him (and it will stick, ha, ha) with the most damning of labels:

Square.

Dull.

Midwestern.

Boring.

Sarah may be a rabid creationist barefoot-and-in-the-kitchen type (which is why she wants to be the President?? -- cognitive dissonance on steroids); but she can hold a crowd, and has enthusiasm and personal charisma.

Pawlenty is like the narrator of Tristram Shandy who reminded himself to fulfill his marital obligations to his wife by when he re-wound the great grandfather clock on the landing of the staircase every month or two.

If the national mood needed a steady Eddie, he'd win in a landslide; but Obama, in an attempt to follow the destablize-seize power-reign Marxist/Gramscian playbook, have people on a different kind of edge: we are hungry for someone who is on call, not golfing or voting 'PRESENT'; and who is either full of gravitas ...OR... is absolutely resolute and will NOT get knocked back or stopped by anything.

Romney represents (supposedly) gravitas, inasmuch as a slime mold can possess such; Sarah's life is PROOF of the other.

Look for Romney vs. Sarah, with the beltway crowd pushing him on the grounds of supposed fiscal responsibility.

I'm looking forward to schools of little 'cudas ripping chunks out of his political hide.

Cheers!