Iron Pyrite, AKA "Fool's Gold"
Conservative icon George Will has been pounding the daylights out of Newt Gingrich in his syndicated column lately. And for good reason. Will has been writing about Mr. Gingrich for years. He knows him. He knows that Mr. Gingrich is a megalomaniac first, an opportunist second, and a conservative third — at best, and that only when it suits him. If Mr. Gingrich has been a consistent anything over the years, it is a consistent self-promoter.
Yet the former Georgia congressman is now widely considered “the conservative” in the GOP primary field. That’s a bad joke. Mr. Gingrich is the consummate Washington insider. He has made his fortune from taxpayer money, talking out of one side of his mouth and then the other — whichever suits him best at the time — to remain atop the Washington money train.
Conservatives rightly lambasted President Clinton for parsing language while in the Oval Office (“depends what the meaning of ‘is’ is…”) But Mr. Clinton had nothing on Mr. Gingrich. They are two peas in a pod. Just ask the former House Speaker about his lobbying activities. He’ll tell you he’s no lobbyist, but a “futurist”, historian,” and “thought-leader.”
Get real. Former House speakers who set up shop making introductions to the very people in Washington with whom they once served — for tens of millions of dollars — are lobbyists. Mr. Gingrich insults our intelligence by suggesting otherwise.
Mr. Will is far less dismissive of Mitt Romey in his column today, but he does ping him for being a late conservative convert. I don’t think that’s fair. It’s easy for conservative purists to forget that Mr. Romney had to run as a Republican for Governor of Massachusetts. Yes, he, too, probably sold out a little to get elected, but he deserves enormous credit for waving a fiscally-conservative flag — as best he could — in the most liberal of liberal New England states. Had Mr. Gingrich hailed from Massachusetts, he probably would have run to the left of Barney Frank (George Will’s line of the day: “Gingrich, who would have made a marvelous Marxist, believes everything is related to everything else and only he understands how.” )
Which brings us to Mr. Will’s plea for conservatives to reconsider Texas Governor Rick Perry and former Utah Governor John Huntsman. Darned straight. If Newt Gingrich is the answer, we better start asking new questions like:
Who can beat President Obama without unseating every Republican state legislature north of the Mason-Dixon?;
Who is the candidate least likely to implode in the general election campaign?;
Which candidate has undergone the most scrutiny and survived?, and
Which Republican could one bear to listen to for the next four years?
I continue to think that person is Mitt Romney (whom I did not support in 2008). But Messrs. Perry and Huntsman might be fine as well.
Anybody but Gingrich. The nation cannot endure another false prophet.
Been meaning to include this tidbit as a follow up to a couple of rants about San Francisco/California politics. While the Golden State sinks deeper and deeper into economic abyss, its legislators focus on things like banning circumcision, fining parents for truant children, and prohibiting “Happy Meals” at McDonalds. The problem with the latter is the free toy, the omniscient legislators say. It, not parents, encourages children to eat poorly they argue.
