Newt’s Resurrection
Paul Krugman writes that to win the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, “there are only two ways to make the cut: to be totally cynical or to be totally clueless.” Mitt Romney is the cynical candidate:
Romney embodies the first option. He’s not a stupid man; he knows perfectly well, to take a not incidental example, that the Obama health reform is identical in all important respects to the reform he himself introduced in Massachusetts — but that doesn’t stop him from denouncing the Obama plan as a vast government takeover that is nothing like what he did. He presumably knows how to read a budget, which means that he must know that defense spending has continued to rise under the current administration, but this doesn’t stop him from pledging to reverse Mr. Obama’s “massive defense cuts.”
All the others are clueless — except Newt Gingrich. He’s not clueless. But he’s no towering intellect, either:
He is by no means the deep thinker he imagines himself to be, but he’s a glib speaker, even when he has no idea what he’s talking about. And my sense is that he’s also very good at doublethink — that even when he knows what he’s saying isn’t true, he manages to believe it while he’s saying it. So he may not implode like his predecessors.
More importantly, he is a deeply flawed candidate, who is the incarnation of what the Republican Party says it despises. He has effectively turned government to his personal advantage. But it would appear that Republican loathing for Romney and Obama could make Newt king.
Newt’s resurrection says even more about the Republican Party than it does about Gingrich.
Owen Gray grew up in Montreal, where he received a B. A. from Concordia University. After crossing the border and completing a Master’s degree at the University of North Carolina, he returned to Canada, married, raised a family and taught high school for 32 years. Now retired, he lives — with his wife and youngest son — on the northern shores of Lake Ontario. This post is cross posted from his blog.
17 Responses to “Newt’s Resurrection”
And on the right we have Newt, who has demonstrated over many years that he is not the most qualifed to be president and on the left we have Obama who has demonstrated over the past 3 years he is not the most qualified to be president.
But it is what it is. A country where Hillary Clinton was much more qualified, but was not the chosen one for the far left and now the far right is going to choose Newt.
And guess what, the moderates get to hold their noses once again and pick the lessor of two evils.
Hillary was a serial liar and had a large piece of baggage, called Bill.
Hold your nose and vote for a “religious nut”, maybe Tom Coburn.
Lol, Newt hasn’t been resurrected so much as his political corpse is being propped up to take the hits for whats coming in the next election. I might be wrong, but I don’t think Obama has done such a bad job that he is going to lose a general election against a man that was forced out of office 13 years ago for ethics violations. Obama is a pretty serious campaigner and I don’t think Newt will be able to get the votes. The GOP knows they don’t have anyone currently that is going to beat Obama, so they’ll bide their time and wait until 2016
Slam, I sort of agree with you, but I am not sure four more of Obama will be the best thing.
Still, hoping for a good Rep candidate, that can win.
Clarifications-repost
Allen believes that of course the Bush tax cuts must be, in essence, repealed. Herman Cain’s ideas were fun but folly. Newt Gingrich is an SOB and must be made to realize his own inferiority. That Honor is superior to Business of any kind. That race can never be a consideration for conservative or liberal support or denial of any support. That sex is irrelevant in politics as well as life. That religion is used by some to justify their greed for power politically, but not by all religious people by a long shot, not even most.
Allen is an humanitarian who’s very educated hero still abides in the darkest regions of Africa where he found him more than two decades ago risking all to save the simplest of people, and, that, it is that person whom should be our president, but Allen understands that improbability. However Allen has continuously looked for that golden leader but realizes that, more than ever after his Osawatomie speech today, that leader is Barrack Hussein Obama.
I have never been more proud of you Mr. President or of ANY President! Your leadership is inspiring beyond bounds.
“Still, hoping for a good Rep candidate, that can win.”
Hope springs eternal X infinity dd.
Barring some unforeseen calamity (which could include massive Citizens United spending perversion) I expect Obama, who is in fact a MODERATE, will have another 4 years. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not, but thus far any viable alternatives appear worse.
Newt’s resurrection? Wasn’t there a line from the Stephen King novel “Pet Semetary”, something like “better if the dead stay dead”?
Yeah, that was one creepy cat Barky. A cautionary tale to be sure..
JS, I agree with you except your calling Obama a moderate. He seems more like a person who would like to redistribute incomes and have the federal government cover everyone from cradle to grave. What do you call that?
Exactly what has Obama done to give that impression? Ideological cliches don’t count. BTW, exactly how could a new Republican candidate arise? Deadlines are past to file for many of the early caucuses and primaries.
msnbc just did a hit piece on Gingrich bringing up all of those unfortunate little memories of his tenure in Washington as Speaker of the House. Some of Newt’s GOP colleagues discuss how undisciplined he was, how he shut the government down on a whim because Clinton wouldn’t let him sit up front on AF1, and how they basically had to force him to resign after his ethics violations. It was priceless!
JSat, good point, just hopin for a smoke filled room nomination.
“He seems more like a person who would like to redistribute incomes and have the federal government cover everyone from cradle to grave. What do you call that?”
It’s actually an extremely moderate position. Using the words you use is an interesting way to make him seem super leftist, but that doesn’t mean his policies are actually that.
“Redistribute income”? You mean like taxes? A progressive tax code with different marginal rates has been around for a long, long time, and most on both sides of the aisle still think it should be there (sorry, everyone knows the flat tax would be a disaster). Bush’s tax cuts were a clear pander to the far right. Going back to where we were before them at a time when we really need revenue doesn’t make Obama a leftist nut.
As for coverage from cradle to grave — not letting people die for a lack of health care has been considered pretty standard American stuff for many decades now, minus perhaps the last one. There are of course some specific things in the last decade or two that made the math change (hello insurance privitization), so something was going to have to be done sooner or later anyway. That the “if you’re going to die you’d best get to it” attitude on the right has grown as a corrolary to the every-increasingly popular “screw you, I got mine” belief system is all a big far-right thing too. Thinking that maybe the richest country in the world shouldn’t have millions dying due to lack of health care is not particularly leftist either. It’s long been considered something that most people think is pretty basic. My granny was a dyed in the wool Republican til the day she died, but she thought kids and the elderly shouldn’t be allowed to just die because they couldn’t afford to go to the doctor.
Eh, it should also be noted, as has been the a-bazillion times that people come on this site complaining that “this post isn’t moderate” or “why is this site called ‘the moderate voice’???”, that being “moderate” doesn’t necessarily mean that a person or the blog or a group is always right in the middle on every issue. I think there are plenty of issues where Obama is definitely to the right of the middle of the road that would certainly balance small tax increases for the rich and keeping medicare in place, if you want to argue the radical left-wingedness of such things…
Ok, thanks for your answer to the question.
roro80 says:
“Eh, it should also be noted … that being “moderate” doesn’t necessarily mean that a person or the blog or a group is always right in the middle on every issue…”
Just want to add that moderate also means “avoiding extremes; temperate in conduct or expression…”
And, especially when compated to so many other sites, TMV’s posts and comments are certainly “moderate” in this respect,thanks to the time and effort by the editors and moderator, respectively.
To whit: Obama is not suggesting that all money be collected and then evenly distributed. That would be the ‘far left’. He has shown a willingness to look at other points of view (tax cuts made up a significant part of the stimulus bill) which can in no way be considered extreme. He adopted a Republican idea for health care (not just Romney in Massachusetts with a veto-proof Democratic legislature) that had been proposed in the 1990′s by Republicans when they feared a ‘government take over’ of health care under Clinton. Yes, that’s right, the Republican idea was to have the individual mandate.
I am currently supporting the Democratic Party’s candidates because I do not want to see a repeat of the 1870′s and 1880′s. Those times were horrific for many (most?) Americans. Those times are what the Republican Party’s platform would lead us into.