It has been a long thought for me to write this overall assessment of one Newton LeRoy Gingrich. That in fact he is not necessarily the strong conservative that he makes himself out to be.
There was another American president that tried that shtick.
His name.
Richard Milhous Nixon.
Any regular reader of this blog knows that I believe that while he destroyed his own presidency, he almost single-handily destroyed the Republican party as well. Of course we all know that it took one Ronald Reagan to reform and renew the party.
But what Mr. Nixon did was talk a conservative game. Yet it was Mr. Nixon that believed in socialist medicine. Oh, he would argue that it was not, but in the end it would have created the bureaucracy that all of Europe sees.
Mr. Nixon never actually did anything to scale back the so-called Great Society of his predecessor, Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson. In fact, to fight inflation, Mr. Nixon not once but twice imposed wage and price controls.
In other words, Mr. Nixon essentially conceded domestic policy to the other team.
And Mr. Nixon was always a brooding figure. Seemingly not all that much of a happy man. Yet, he always had a fighter's view of politics.
And that is Mr. Gingrich.
A fighter. In last night's CNN Republican debate, Mr. Gingrich got conservatives excited because he slammed CNN's moderator, John King, for bringing up ABC's interview with the former Mrs. Gingrich number two, Marianne.
Well, sorry but this is relevant.
This is Mr. Gingrich's third marriage. And he left his previous two wives while cavorting with the future wife. Wife number three, Calista, was who he wanted to share with wife number two.
Get all of that?
And Mr. Gingrich was carrying on that affair while pushing to impeach then President Bill Clinton.
An aside.
The impeachment was not about sex.
It was about the president of the United States lying under oath in a civil case. And he was caught. The fact that the lie was about a short-term affair is not what is important. What he lied about on that was in regards to a sexual-harassment suit brought against him by Paula Jones.
But knowing that Mr. Gingrich was shtooping Calista at the same time, what did that do the proceedings?
And if that does not bother you, how about this devastating piece in The American Spectator by Quin Hillyer? And Rick Santorum pointed out the grandiosity of Mr. Gingrich that Mr. Hillyer does in the piece. But this is the critical line of the piece:
Gingrich was great at rabble rousing. He was awful at actually managing things
I would alter it this way:
Gingrich is great at rabble rousing. He is awful at actually managing things.
And he has the Nixonian view of any disagreement as being an enemy.
We lived that before and it was a traumatic era in the United States.
This is the most critical election in my life. And to blow it because we like when Mr. Gingrich goes gonzo on the Leftywhore media. Or when he slams Mitt Romney for. . .making money. For once being a strong believer in Globaloney Warming to weaseling worse than anyone on stage. For once backing the individual mandate in national health care and now weaseling on that.
And yet Mitt Romney is called a flip-flopper.
And while it is not something that is good, optics and attitude matter.
A thrice-married, kind of short, a little chubby, white-haired White guy next to the youngish, handsome mixed-race success story with a very nice family. The first mentioned guy pretty mercurial a lot of the time. The latter guy with a smile.
Like it or not, people vote for someone who exudes a positive quality. Look at Mr. Reagan, both Mr. Bush's, Mr. Clinton.
At the end of the day, a vote for Newt Gingrich is a vote for Richard Nixon from the grave. And that is not a good vote for the United States.
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