The Republican Race, And The Implosion Of Newt Gingrich

Huckabee and Trump dropped out within the last few days. So here are the ones that are left, and I'll start with the five that were at the South Carolina debate: Ron Paul, Herman Cain, Tim Pawlenty, Gary Johnson (former governor of New Mexico), and Rick Santorum. People are taking Pawlenty seriously; Cain and Santorum, semi-seriously. If Cain, who is black, does well, he has a long-shot chance to be picked as a VP running mate. The Republicans would love to run a black guy to counteract charges that they're racist. But president? Not a chance in hell.

Newt Gingrich has declared.  Mitt Romney hasn't yet, but he will.

There are a couple of perennial wingnuts who have officially declared whose names I can't remember and I'll fill in later. I think one of them is Jimmy McMillan, from The Rent Is Too Damn High Party. Another is a gay activist.

That leaves John Bolton, Rudy Giuliani, Buddy Roemer (former governor of Louisiana), Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Jon Huntsman, and Mitch Daniels. None of them has yet declared -- and I don't think Palin will, or she'd have cut her ties with Fox. Daniels and Huntsman are widely perceived as being among the "adults", with a genuine shot, if they choose to run. Roemer has no chance. Bolton, Giuliani, and Bachmann are idiots -- as, of course, is Palin.

Fun with Gingrich, after the jump.


Okay. The big news in the last few days has been --

Gingrich! Implosion. He was interviewed on Sunday, 15 May, by David Gregory on Meet The Press. Gregory asked him about the controversial Medicare aspect of Paul Ryan's recent budget plan.  Newt's reply:

"I don't think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering," Gingrich said. "I don't think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate." 

That was a huge blunder. It's an article of absolute conservative faith that a Repblican must in all circumstances be ferociously opposed to the individual mandate. Even though many prominent Republicans have proposed or supported variations of the individual mandate in the past, the party has moved so far to the right that now such an idea borders on treason.

Gingrich paid the price. He was flayed in articles in The Wall Street Journal (headline: “Gingrich to House GOP: Drop Dead”) and National Review, the two most prominent conservative publications, and of course on Drudge, Red State, The Blaze, and other low-rent sites of that ilk. He was attacked by Rush Limbaugh, as well as plenty of right-wingers: Charles Krauthammer ("He's done"), George Will, Alex Castellanos, and South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, among many others. Paul Ryan himself said, "With friends like that, who needs the left?"

Gingrich's efforts at damage control didn't seem to be too successful. He complained he was the victim of "gotcha" questions by David Gregory -- but, as Gregory said during the introductions, it was Newt's 35th appearance on Meet The Press! Stewart or Colbert, I forget which, said Gingrich had appeared on the show more times than Gregory.

But the nadir had to be his appearance on Fox News with Greta Van Susteren, where he said: "Any ad which quotes what I said on Sunday is a falsehood, because I have said publicly those words were inaccurate." (In other words, if you quote verbatim what I said on national TV two days ago, you're a liar -- not the strongest defense, I don't think.) That's desperation for you.

Various sources are alleging that Gingrich's funding -- which has been considered one of his major strengths -- is drying up; some are saying his campaign is already over. 

Newt also faces questions about a charge account he held at Tiffany's in 2005 and 2006 with a balance that ranged from $250,000 to $500,000. He's refused to comment on whether he's paid off the bill and why he was running up such hefty charges at the famous jewellery store to begin with.

Here's some astonishing purple prose from Gingrich press secretary Rick Tyler in response to a query from HuffPo:

The literati sent out their minions to do their bidding. Washington cannot tolerate threats from outsiders who might disrupt their comfortable world. The firefight started when the cowardly sensed weakness. They fired timidly at first, then the sheep not wanting to be dropped from the establishment's cocktail party invite list unloaded their entire clip, firing without taking aim their distortions and falsehoods. Now they are left exposed by their bylines and handles. But surely they had killed him off. This is the way it always worked. A lesser person could not have survived the first few minutes of the onslaught. But out of the billowing smoke and dust of tweets and trivia emerged Gingrich, once again ready to lead those who won't be intimated (sic) by the political elite and are ready to take on the challenges America faces.

What kind of "World of Warcraft" stuff is that from a presidential campaign spokesman? What kind of strange world do these people live in?

And he only announced his candidacy a week ago!

UPDATE: Today, Thursday, a contrite Gingrich goes on Limbaugh's radio problem to grovel and lie:

GINGRICH: By the way, it was not a reference to Paul Ryan. There was no reference to Paul Ryan in that answer.

LIMBAUGH: Well, then, what did you apologize to him about?

GINGRICH: Because it was interpreted in a way which was causing trouble, which he doesn’t need or deserve.

True enough: There was no reference to Paul Ryan in the answer, just in the question. From the transcript of Meet the Press:

MR. GREGORY: But not what Paul Ryan is suggesting, which is completely changing Medicare.

REP. GINGRICH: I -- I think that -- I think -- I think that that is too big a jump. I think what you want to have is a system where people voluntarily migrate to better outcomes, better solutions, better options, not one where you suddenly impose upon the -- I don't want to -- I'm against Obamacare, which is imposing radical change, and I would be against a conservative imposing radical change.

 And Sarah Palin weighs in, in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News:

“It sounded pretty clear to me that Newt Gingrich’s position, because he articulated this, was that Paul Ryan’s plan would be social engineering, and he didn’t like it. I believe he made the apology because the media dinged him on it. Would he have made the apology otherwise? I don’t know.”

Thursday afternoon, and they're continuing to beat up on Newt something fierce. Here's a link to an article by Steve Kornacki, news editor at Salon, entitled What the GOP is really trying to tell Newt. In a nutshell: Your time has come and gone, Newt. Pack it in. Gingrich flamed out in 1998, leaving Congress under an ethical cloud. After a period of exile, he was welcomed back into the political world -- but as a pundit, not as a candidate. The party establishment tolerated his presence until he tried to regain an elected position.

The last three days have shown that the ex-speaker's political "rehabilitation" was always a myth.

The backlash has been staggering. Has a mainstream politician ever announced his presidential candidacy and been greeted by such widespread intraparty condemnation? It's possible to argue that this is primarily the result of Newt's Ryan plan faux pas -- that if hadn't attacked a plan that Republican opinion-shapers and voters passionately support, he wouldn't be on the receiving end of all of this grief. There's surely plenty to this.

But it also feels like something bigger is going on here -- that Republican leaders and activists are using Newt's flub as an opportunity to say something that's been on their minds for a lot longer: Get lost!

One of his detractors, 39-year-old Nikki Haley, governor of South Carolina, was barely out of Clemson when Newt was elected speaker.

Summary by Kevin Drum at Mother Jones:

On Sunday he called Ryan’s plan “right-wing social engineering” and said he was opposed to it. Within hours he was getting hammered by just about every conservative luminary in the country and watching his presidential campaign go up in smoke. So first he tried to pretend that host David Gregory had somehow tricked him, even though Gregory’s question was a pretty straightforward softball and Gingrich’s answer was obviously a considered one. Then he explained that his language had probably been a wee bit “too strong.” Then he blamed the liberal media for taking his comments “out of context.” Then he suggested that his views were “evolving” and the press really needed to keep up. Then he “clarified” that what he really supported was a voluntary version of the Ryan plan that could be implemented right now, instead of ten years from now. Then he called Paul Ryan to apologize. Finally, tonight, having apparently convinced himself that 48 hours of abject abasement had literally erased what he said on Sunday, he declared that anyone who accurately quotes his Sunday statement in the future is a liar.