(Pic of Newt as Megamind courtesy of DonkeyHotey, via Flickr)
Do you hear that shrill whistling sound? That is the Republican establishment freaking out about the prospect of a Newt Gingrich nomination. It is a little early yet to say that the disgraced and disgraceful former Speaker of the House will clench the nomination, but it is not too early for the cold sweat to break out on the brow of the folks who see the Party of Lincoln as their own to run.
In the Washington Post today there is not one, but two Op-Ed’s excoriating Speaker Gingrich. George Will goes after him for being mean and a hypocrite about Mitt Romney’s wealth and the way that he got it.
This is kind of weak tea, but Will has his own problems in that his wife Mari is an adviser to dim-witted Texas Gov. Rick Perry. For someone who prides himself as an intellectual it has to gall Will no end that his wife picked the dumbest GOP politician to enter this race to work for.
The other is Ruth Marcus, who brings up the whole reason why Gingrich is mostly referred to as “the disgraced former Speaker”, namely his ethics admonishment and 300,000 dollar fine, which lest we forget happened during a Republican controlled House (else he would not have been Speaker in the first place) and was voted on 395 to 28 in that same body.
Then there is Michael Savage (nee Wiener) who is offering Speaker Gingrich 1,000,000 to drop out of the race. It is a sign of desperation on the part of the Republican establishment that Mr. Savage would do this, but c’mon Michael, a million dollars? That won’t even cover his tab at Tiffany’s, do you really think it will move him?
The Republican Party has had a checkered past with nominating far Right candidates that can energize the base but completely turn off the general electorate come election day. Now with unemployment hovering around 9% and millions of people out of work for a year or more, the Republican establishment is facing the prospect that they will nominate someone so radical, so callus about the truth and so hypocritical in his personal and professional dealings that he might have trouble wining if he ran unopposed.
What is more than a little bit ironic is that they have done this to themselves. It was, in fact, this very candidate they fear that accelerated the war on expertise and started the idea of political purity as a virtue in the Republican Party.
27 years down the pike the GOP finds itself in the grips of a question that it has answered incorrectly time and again; namely is it more important to nominate someone who is a “good conservative” (whatever that moving target really is this week) or someone who actually has a chance to win the White House?
The dislike of and disdain for Mitt Romney has led to series of candidates that conservatives have tried on and discarded like a chubby man trying to find a bathing suit that does not make him look fat. Bachmann was too crazy, Perry too dumb, Cain too philandering.
While Newt suffers from two of the three of these (I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine exactly which two) he has the experience to hide them better (all except the philandering) than the others.
There is also the matter of time. Peaking at the right time is always a key factor in politics and it looks as though old Newton has managed to peak right before the Iowa caucuses. While he is getting a bit of a run for his money from the Mad Elf of the Republican Party, Rep. Ron Paul, he is the likely winner in the early event.
If he carries Iowa and makes a good showing in New Hampshire, he will be positioned to run the table, up to Super Tuesday. He could very well become the Republican nominee. And that has the establishment shitting gold bricks.
So they are lining up to try to, once again, replace the front running non-Mitt candidate with someone who, if the electoral gods are not kind, can at least make a credible run. But it does not look good for them.
This is the problem with telling your base time after time to distrust the experts. At some point you will want to be able to say “Trust me, I know best” and have them do it. But a habit of rejecting anyone who has studied up on an issue and has an opinion you don’t like is a hard thing to break.
The base of the Republican Party has decided that it has the power. In a totally objective, small d democratic way this is a great thing, but for the folks riding this tiger at the RNC it is a real problem.
They are right, Newt Gingrich would be a horrible general election candidate, old versus President Obama’s relative youth. A three time serial husband, versus a long and apparently loving and strong single marriage; a history of making things up versus a fact packed record. It is an ugly, ugly hill to climb and it one that would take a freaking quantum shift of reality to overcome and win the presidency.
But the GOP base does not want to hear about it. They have decided, again, that principle is more important than facts.
It could change, perhaps enough people saying the Gingrich is unelectable will percolate into the minds of the Republican voters and they will, with no enthusiasm and with much regret embrace the original anointed candidate, Mitt Romney.
This is not a whole lot better for the Republicans. One of the factors that kept them out of the White House last cycle was the same kind of “Last Man Standing” nomination of John McCain.
He did not have the favor of the Religious Right, was moderately disliked by the money folks and was not very exciting in terms of look or oration. It was not the only factor but it did hurt them by comparison, and so will Mitt if he becomes the nominee.
In the end if Gingrich is nominated it may be a death blow to the Republican establishment as we have known it. If they are unable to reign in their radically base, they have no power at all and there is no reason for the money folks to follow their lead, instead of trying to ride the crazy base tiger directly.
All in all it could not be a better gift for the New Year and the nation to have the self-immolation of the Republican Party continue under the direction of the Bomb Thrower in Chief, disgraced former Speaker Newt Gingrich.
The floor is yours.