These words describe almost perfectly the intellectual and rhetorical bearing and style of Newt Gingrich. Only they weren't written about Gingrich. They are Barack Obama's words -- from The Audacity of Hope -- about former Ambassador Alan Keyes, Obama's Republican opponent in the 2004 election for Illinois' open Senate seat.
I was struck by two things as I recently watched old footage of the 2004 Obama-Keyes debates. First, Keyes comes across as a better debater than Obama. He seems more polished, smarter, and more confident than Obama. Keyes' verbal fluency makes Obama's use of verbal fillers and stutters, his repeated words and incomplete and restarted sentences, all the more noticeable.
The second thing I noticed were the striking similarities between Keyes and Gingrich. Keyes is more theatrical than Gingrich, while Gingrich is more overtly egoistic and self-reverential. (He has at various moments called himself "the most serious, systematic revolutionary of modern times" and a "definer of civilization.")
But the two share many characteristics. For one thing, they both hold Ph.D.s (Keyes in government, Gingrich in history). Perhaps this helps explain why both Keyes and Gingrich have a tendency to talk down to opponents and debate moderators. Keyes was antagonistic toward the Illinois journalists who moderated the Senate debates, cutting off questioners and reacting harshly when moderators told him his time was up.”…..
Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech, confirmed in an e-mail interview that she had been asked to write a chapter on climate change for the former House speaker’s book. She said she was approached by former Palm Beach Zoo CEO Terry Maple, Gingrich’s coeditor, at an annual meeting of Republicans for Environmental Protection. Asked to confirm her chapter was dropped, she replied, “I had not heard that.”
The climate-change issue arose on Thursday night at a Gingrich campaign stop in Carroll, when a woman expressed concern about the chapter. She said she had heard about it on Rush Limbaugh’s radio program. As she began to tell Gingrich who the author of the piece would be, Gingrich interrupted. “That’s not going to be in the book,” he told her. “We didn’t know that they were doing that, and we told them to kill it.”
Hayhoe, whose husband [Andrew Farley] is an evangelical pastor, recently wrote a book about climate change from an evangelical perspective. In an interview with Christian writer Jonathan Merritt, she left no doubt as to where she stands on the existence or the cause of the phenomenon.
“Among climate scientists—people who spend their lives researching our world—there is no debate regarding the reality of climate change and the fact that humans are the primary cause,” Hayhoe said in the interview. “It is primarily laypeople, such as talk-show hosts, or those with vested interests in maintaining the status quo, who are perpetuating the idea that there is no scientific consensus.
_________________________________________________________
Katharine Hayhoe is the Texas Tech professor that Rush was talking about on his show - the one writing the climate chapter in a book Newt Gingrich is putting together for 2013 (?). Ways to answer skeptics on climate change...."A great place to start is to check out our Creation Care Book Store and pick up a few books like Ed Brown's Our Father's World, Katharine Hayhoe's A Climate for Change¸ Jim Ball's Global Warming & The Risen Lord, Ben Lowe's Green Revolution, Jonathan Merritt's God's Plan for the World¸ and/or Cal Dewitt's Earth Wise. All of these book layout a basic biblical frame and narrative for a Christian view on creation."....
_____________________________________________
That first LINK write up made me think of "Creation Care" and low and behold Newt's choice to write his Climate Change chapter is tied to it -- AS IS NASA global warming "scientist," James Hansen who is an adviser to "Creation Care.
James Hansen believes that CEOs should be put on trial for crimes against humanity and that "contrarians" should be silenced. Audio
Sigh. You know, it would be helpful if we had context and specifics on what was in the bill he rejected, before leaping to judgment about it, “oh Newt supported environmental legislation, how dare him!”
Ok, so you are a Perry backer, you don’t have to keep this crap up. Stop it.