I already miss Newt Gingrich. Things were really starting to be a lot of good old-fashioned political fun there for a while. But now Santorum and Romney are just acting like a couple of over-sped Jesus freaks. One self-admitted, one closeted. I mean, they say and do all of the same stupid stuff, but it doesn't have as much panache as when Newt does it, or says it. Or, when he grins and grimaces it, tilting at sawmills, rippling his mighty jowls at poverty.
He gives us a beady-eyed glimpse into the future, with one soft rounded fang clamped onto the grizzled leg of the past. He is a true student of the modern political form. So pulpy and muddled and round-headed that it's almost hard to believe that he descended from even larger mistakes.
Santorum would propose colonizing the moon too, if he thought it might help his chances. But then you just know at some tent rally he'd screech that, "Once in office we'll colonize the moon with all of the jobless homosexuals..." Then, suddenly it just wouldn't be fun any more. He's that guy. He sucks all the fun out of the room if you let him talk for too long. Poor Romney probably thinks that we already have colonized the moon. I'm sure it ties into Joseph Smith's legacy somehow. Yep, I just looked it up. Smith claimed that the moon was inhabited, the same as earth, and that he would one day preach his gospel there too. Amazing.
Very soon John Kerry and Mitt Romney will have lots to nod silently together about, and then buy up the future together, with Nancy Pelosi as their realtor, à la Annette Bening in "American Beauty." I will sell this country today... They're not done, they're just all done with us. Who knows for sure.... I only know that I was laughing a lot more when Newt was still visible in the political spectrum. It was like watching an albino lunar eclipse every night on tv... It was really special when synchronized with Pink Floyd's, Dark Side of the Newt. You'd see it coming, the moon would turn red, then it would pass, return to normal, and only a few people would talk about it the next day. Crazy, I know. But I saw it with my own eyes. He's a werewolf that only returns to human form once a month.
When Newt refused to recant his statements about "black people" on welfare... even after it had been pointed out to him that the majority of the welfare recipients that he was assessing were not "black" but were white, on Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, on national television, to a "black" moderator, during a republican debate for the upcoming nomination of presidency... I mean, where have all the good times gone?
Once you got past the initial audacity and shock of it, it was really funny to watch. He's like the Michael Jordan of politics. He's changed the way the game is played, he's made himself noticeable and memorable, he has massive sponsorships, he talks more shit than any other player in the game, he intimidates other players even when he is weak, perhaps then most of all, and..... he implicitly understands that, "republicans buy shoes too."*
Newt is the new Nike. Just say it.
Reagan never forgets...
Reagan never forgets...
I realize that he has no chance at all in this race, and he must have known or suspected this all along. He's just further peddling the idea of his proximity-of-power, nothing more. He has a sweatshop built into his pituitary gland. He is clearly a man of industry. Callista and Newt envision a world of deep honesty about race, and the subsequent denouncement of races. If he could just let his truth about minorities run free then minorities might one day understand. If they can only learn to speak the right language. If, my constituents, if....
His biography should be called The Audacity of Choke (A genuine understanding of Americans, and history, as seen though the asphyxiated politics of others). America, Newt is ready...
I mean, it didn't matter what subject came up he would find a way of being the very model of an ignorant ass. I keep hearing conservatives jabber about how informed he is about "history," and how much they really respect him for that. One aspect of history that he doesn't seem to have studied very well is failed political campaigns. When you're discussing child labor perhaps it's a bad idea to suggest that poor under-aged students should get paid to clean up their own schools, underneath the loving tutelage of a "master janitor"....
Or, that your infidelities were the by-product of a deep-seated patriotism and dedication to your country. Santorum doesn't know how to cheat, Romney probably doesn't even have to. Is there a Brigham-Barby-Doll that comes, or politely doesn't, with unsoiled temple garments and apologetic missing mystery genitals?
"Latter Day Saints", think about that phrase.
Bill Clinton was not one of my favorite presidents but I happened to really enjoy my life during his presidency. This perhaps gives a false sense of credence and accomplishment to his presidency. But they were basically eight warless years, just like Reagan's term. It turns out that people really do like peace and prosperity.
But it must be a riot to sit and watch Newt's recent public disasters unfolding in slow motion with old Bubba Clinton. He thinks on his feet, he has an easy and quick wit, and seems to have a much better grasp on political maneuvering than Newt has ever had, or will ever have. It'd be like watching Wayne Gretzky beat the hell out of Elmer Fudd at air-hockey, or Mario Andretti in a winner-takes-all go-kart death derby with Wile E. Coyote. Ok, Repubs, it'd be like watching Reagan beat Gorbachev at both Monopoly and Battleship at the same time.
Keep in mind that Newt was spearheading a movement to oust Bubba for infidelities while he was actually cheating on his own wife. His own dying wife, I meant. See, the laughs just never stop with the Newtron-onominator.
Holy Crap. I just did a search on Newt, trying to find some news to wrap this post up with, and a YouTube clip came up in which Chris Matthews sums it up best, "He's got that crazy Mephistophelean grin of his. He looks like he loves torturing."
Done.
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Some Newt highlights:
"The problem isn’t too little money in political campaigns, but not enough."
"The idea that a Congressman would be tainted by accepting money from private industry or private sources is essentially a socialist argument."
"I have enormous personal ambition. I want to shift the entire planet. And I'm doing it. I am now a famous person. I represent real power."
"I'm not a natural leader. I'm too intellectual; I'm too abstract; I think too much."
"We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto."
* - An apocryphal quote attributed to Michael Jordan when he refused to speak out in opposition to Jesse Helm's re-election campaign for a North Carolina Senate seat in 1990.
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