GEORGE WILL …A MUST READ on Newt Gingrich as Bull who Brings His Own China Shop With Him
Dec 6th, 2011 | 9 responses
Look for Newt in coming days to bring up his old ideas in borrowed sequins:
WIDEspread orphanages for children, work/labor programs for poor children, “Newt’s plan for the improvement of poor people” to the tune of huge amounts of money in the Federal and State budgets that are already overwhelmed… and others of his oddly stentorian-gleeful workhouse-like throwbacks to a Dickensian’ culture no one wanted to live in…
so much so, many many left 19th century England to come here to the US where there was something called ‘freedom.’ If Gingrich were in charge, I think we’d have the largest mass immigration/migration from the US, back to modern England, which nowadays is head and shoulders above what Newt envisions for America. Newt’s America, is not going to be “our America” that’s for certain, rather a “dour, sour,” and of course very Catholic-Civil War glossed version of America with child labor and child storage til age of majority.
Enough of my opinions. There are others who are far more articulate about Newt….
George F. Will is one of the few who has dared to analyze the frontrunners thus far in the GOP. He is an Opinion Writer for Washington Post.
Mr. Will, is an articulate writer with a streak of educated and ultra dry humor a horizonline-wide. In the article below, he coulda been a contendah for premiere analytic psychologist as he writes sharply dissecting another seeming manic set of ideas that seem to surge through Newt Gingrich. Here are excerpts: read Will’s entire column here:
Romney and Gingrich, from bad to worse
By George F. Will, Published: December 2, 2011
Republicans are more conservative than at any time since their 1980 d… They anticipated choosing between Mitt Romney, a conservative of convenience, and a conviction politician to his right. The choice, however, could be between Romney and the least conservative candidate, Newt Gingrich.
…Gingrich, however, embodies the vanity and rapacity that make modern Washington repulsive. And there is his anti-conservative confidence that he has a comprehensive explanation of, and plan to perfect, everything.
Granted, his grandiose rhetoric celebrating his “transformative” self is entertaining: Recently he compared his revival of his campaign to Sam Walton’s and Ray Kroc’s creations of Wal-Mart and McDonald’s, two of America’s largest private-sector employers.
There is almost artistic vulgarity in Gingrich’s unrepented role as a hired larynx for interests profiting from such government follies as ethanol and cheap mortgages.
His Olympian sense of exemption from standards and logic allowed him, fresh from pocketing $1.6 million from Freddie Mac (for services as a “historian”), to say, “If you want to put people in jail,” look at “the politicians who profited from” Washington’s environment.
His temperament — intellectual hubris distilled — makes him blown about by gusts of enthusiasm for intellectual fads,… On Election Eve 1994, he said a disturbed South Carolina mother drowning her children “vividly reminds” Americans “how sick the society is getting, and how much we need to change things. .?.?. The only way you get change is to vote Republican.” Compare this grotesque opportunism — tarted up as sociology — with his devious recasting of it in a letter to the Nov. 18, 1994, Wall Street Journal…
Gingrich, who would have made a marvelous Marxist, believes everything is related to everything else and only he understands how. … Conservatism inoculates against the hubristic volatility that Gingrich exemplifies and Genesis deplores: “Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.”
…Gingrich might stop being (as Churchill said of John Foster Dulles) a bull who carries his own china shop around with him. But both are too risky to anoint today.
georgewill@washpost.com
9 Responses to “GEORGE WILL …A MUST READ on Newt Gingrich as Bull who Brings His Own China Shop With Him”
Do I loath Gingrich more than I loath Will? About the same I would guess. Will represents the power brokers who know that the Newster can’t win.
I wont be listening to newt blathering in the next months. Or Trump. I may wait a long time, but I’m waiting for a true statesman instead of barker. I’ve already heard Newt and heard him and seen his massive failures…Big ideas: Bigger flops of his ideas. Will’s hit is accurate, I think, when he inferred ‘Grandiosity R Newt.’ There’s something wrong with all that posturing (viz Cain, Newt etc) I believe they know they cannot win but want so desperately to be in the slimelight, to be thought ‘important’ when both are fading men. Maybe thats what does it, faded importance. Reminds me of, was it Jane or Rosalind Russell in “Picnic” when she, the brassy old washed-up woman who wants to be thought a tantalizing tart, desperately tries to grab William Holden and dance with him. He rejects her in disgust, for he has his eye on a feminine young thing. Painful to watch how out of touch the grasping ego is in the film, and in faded politicians who desperately want to try to be the favored one, when they havent a very good chance.
I’m sure there was a time in America, that when the times got tough people came closer together, like our ancients huddling in a cave from the sharp toothed predators that hunted them. We no longer do this. Rather we retreat away from danger with our booty though we do so hearing the screams of the dieing weak behind us. Most likely grandma.
George Will is reaping his own crop of internal demons. He, and, those like him, are responsible for the Newts that have girded themselves in ambition. Newt has never been so close to the prize. You can almost hear his heavy breathing.
George Will suggests that more ‘free trade’ and lower taxes will do the trick. I notice that he does not seem to advocate free enterprise in the highly educated fields (through immigration or simply allowing Mexican doctors to set up shop and thus lower the cost of health care). He seems to love the idea of ‘not taxing twice’ as in eliminating the capital gains and dividend taxes. If eliminating the ‘double tax’ is so important then why not eliminate all income taxes on corporations? That would probably bring lots of corporations back to the US. Meanwhile, the lost revenue could be made up by putting the capital gains and dividend tax rates back where they were before (i.e. at the personal tax rate) and by raising rates a little.
As for Newt Gingrich, he was so out of touch that he alienated his own party members. Then, once they found ethics violations they booted his ass out of Congress (and the Speakership). I love his statement about Gingrich wanting to put politicians in jail who benefited from the housing bubble. I really would like to do THAT.
Hey kids… the Dr. can write
How sweet to see the GOP imploding.
For many possible definitions of “the trick,” I think he’d say it’s not within government’s capabilities, so the more cheaply we can fail at it, the better.
Dr.E-
More than anything, I think it unwise to underestimate one’s opponent. Look at Herman Cain. Nobody believed he would ever do anything and suddenly he took off like a rocket. Should that happen one week before election, we’ll have a new president and the earth will be destroyed because we didn’t stand our watch with proper diligence.
A citizen of a democracy has dutiful responsibilities.
Allen, I think you are right. And I’d add perhaps, it aint over til it’s over. Newt doesnt look healthy physically, so dont know the future, but we all have a ringside seat. Pass the pizza, er popcorn… Man we’ve had peanuts, then pizza, come on man, it is TIME for some serious popcorn!