Eric Alterman: Newt Gingrich Is Crazier Than You Think

[babylonsister]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-08-10/liberals-should-root-for-newt-gingrich-in-2012/?cid=hp:beastoriginalsC2


Newt Gingrich Is Crazier Than You Think

by Eric Alterman


He’s fired up the ground zero mosque debate, stirred buzz by visiting Iowa, and is Meet the Press’ favorite guest. Eric Alterman on why liberals should root for Gingrich in 2012.

Most of my liberal friends are rooting for Sarah Palin to win the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, believing that, when forced to face up to the oddity of beliefs she’s expressed on Facebook, Twitter, and the like, coupled with her strange, albeit brief history as Alaska’s governor, and throwing in the weirdness of the whole Levi/Bristol soap opera, what you end up with is an Obama landslide.

They may be right.

Sure Sarah and Bristol and Levi would be a lot of fun on a campaign trail. But if we liberal elitists have any sense, we will immediately refudiate that idea and jump on the Newt bandwagon.

But if what you’re looking for in a Republican presidential nominee is someone who holds views no less odd, and yet whose twisted personal history puts Sarah Palin’s silly saga to shame, the great Republican hope of the left can be none other than Newt Gingrich. One day before John H. Richardson’s boffo 8,300-word Gingrich profile, in which his ex-wife, Marianne, spills all for the first time, CNN was reporting that Gingrich was enjoying “plenty of presidential buzz,” what with his sixth recent visit to Iowa, his headlining of two fundraisers, on his way to having out-raised Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Sarah Palin, and Mike Huckabee combined. He was doing so while at the same time posing as the leader of America’s forces of religious intolerance, long ago having left Palin in the dust in that category. Finding role models where few American politicians have gone before him, Gingrich thinks the Saudis apparently have things right when it comes to tolerance. “There should be no mosque near ground zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia,” he pronounces.

In any halfway normal country, such xenophobic sentiments might disqualify the speaker from being spoken of as a future president, at least by its political class. Not here, however. After all, Newt has been saying this kind of thing for his entire political career. And though he has not held any elective position since 1998, and has never been elected anywhere outside his deeply conservative district in suburban Georgia, somehow Meet the Press chose Newt as its single most frequently invited guest in 2009. Pundits and politicians alike treat the man as a serious contender for 2012; a more moderate, seasoned version of what Palin offers, if you will.

But one wonders: Are Americans really ready to elect as president a man who believes that the country is threatened by “a gay and secular fascism” that, he explained, “is prepared to use the government if it can get control of it?” What about one who felt it necessary to tweet—from Auschwitz no less, that Justice Sonia Sotomayor was a “racist,” whose views revealed “a betrayal of a fundamental principle of the American system—that everyone is equal before the law.”

more...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-08-10/liberals-should-root-for-newt-gingrich-in-2012/?cid=hp:beastoriginalsC2

[geckosfeet]

1. gingrich is just pAt buchanan with different color hair and a hokier accent

[unblock]

3. i'll take buchanan over gingrich any day

understanding that we're talking about shades of evil, but buchanan's views are eclectic enough so that every once in a blue moon he says something halfway good. whereas gingrich is very disciplined about sticking to evil.

[supernova]

2. Only thing Newtie has

is ego, in giant technicolor.

He's another carnival sideshow in our political culture.

[eppur_se_muova]

4. He's not any stupider than I think.

Simply not possible.

[The Second Stone]

5. Gingrich is a man who thinks the end justifies the means

yet the end, the goal, is something as little as his own personal ambition and he will do and say anything to get there. Cheney is dying, but Gingrich has the potential to put Cheney and Nixon to shame for the scope of evil he will leave in the wake of his lust for power.

[Enthusiast]

6. Gingrich is the worst. nt

[Mopar151]

7. What a shitheel.....

Why does the media love this turd? I would somewhat disagree with the premise of the OP - part of the reason Noot is so dangerous is that he can make psychotic insanity sound somewhat reasonable - and the Republican field is such a bunch of political weaklings that they could make Nootie look good in a debate or forum. Jesus wept....

[Douglas Carpenter]

8. that is a great article that should be read in full

But believe it or not, it is in his personal life where Gingrich truly outdoes himself in the category of un-presidential behavior. This was true, or should have been before Esquire convinced Marianne Gingrich to talk, as it was all a matter of the public record for over a decade. (Why so many in the MSM preferred to ignore the evidence before them is the topic for another column.) In any case, this would-be moral leader’s past includes:

• ditching his first wife, who had put him through college, by announcing their separation in the hospital room where she was recovering from ovarian cancer surgery, and telling a friend, “She’s not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of the president. And besides, she has cancer”;

• leaving said woman to depend, literally, on church alms to survive, as he refused to provide child support. (In a campaign leaflet, he argued that his opponent for the seat he eventually won would have to separate from her family to move to Washington and would have to hire a nanny to fulfill her maternal obligations.);

• marrying a much younger woman with whom he had been having an affair —and to whom he had long ago proposed—six months later;

• leaving this woman by calling her at her mother’s home on her mother’s birthday following her diagnosis with multiple sclerosis and announcing their impending divorce.

....

Gingrich considers himself, according to his 1992 doodling, to be an "advocate of civilization, definer of civilization, teacher of the rules of civilization and leader (possibly) of the civilizing forces." Maybe so, but I’m guessing it is a civilization with which most Americans remain unfamiliar and would likely prefer that way.

Sure, Sarah and Bristol and Levi would be a lot of fun on a campaign trail. But if we liberal elitists have any sense, they will immediately refudiate that idea and jump on the Newt bandwagon. After all, people, we control everything. We can make this happen.


http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-08-10/liberals-should-root-for-newt-gingrich-in-2012/2/

[caraher]

9. I hate this kind of strategizing

It's very short-sighted even when it works tactically. What I mean is, when we hope the looniest candidate gets a nomination, it might win that election if the electorate is properly repulsed. But the problem is, every time a psychopath runs on a Republican ticket it normalizes their diseased thinking. It moves what the media can sell as "the center" even further off-kilter in the direction of the loony right.

If we were just talking about someone who's clearly in over his head and says crazy things for that reason (like the guy who won the Democratic Senate primary in South Carolina) that would be one thing. But a Gingrich knows what he's doing and has an agenda to sell.