See Newt Run

I can’t believe he really did it. Game on.

Is He? Newt

”This is an article you need to read. And on the day Newt announces he’s running for President, you need to come back and read it again. I’ll remind you. Trust me.”

I’ll save you the trouble, you don’t even have to go back. Here’s the Esquire article again (with some different quotes.)

Newt Gingrich: The Indispensable Republican

”And he did the same thing to her eighteen years later, with Callista Bisek, the young congressional aide who became his third wife. "I know. I asked him. He'd already asked her to marry him before he asked me for a divorce. Before he even asked."”

Let me guess, Newt Gingrich is going to walk the “redemption” path -- like every Southern politician before him that couldn’t stay on the straight and narrow. “Hallelujah, sweet Jesus, I’ve turned from my wicked ways and I’ve been saved!”

”He's the first person you've ever met who speaks in bullet points. In fact, he sometimes more resembles a collection of studied gestures than a mere mortal, so much so that he gives the impression that everything about him is calculated, including the impression that everything about him is calculated. Which can make him seem like a Big Thinker but also like a complete phony — an unsettling combination.”

I vote for “complete phony”.

”After the election of 1982, he recruited twelve disciples and named them the Conservative Opportunity Society. Then he took control of a much larger group called GOPAC and turned it into a giant recruitment-and-training operation, sending out a stream of audiotapes and videotapes to promote his slogans and strategies. He began comparing himself to Churchill, FDR, and Benjamin Franklin.

He became a master of wedge issues, calling Democrats unpatriotic, accusing them of sympathizing with communists, even blaming them for Woody Allen's affair with Soon-Yi and Susan Smith's murder of her children in South Carolina. To badger the moderates in his own party, he called Bob Dole the "tax collector for the welfare state" and threatened House Minority Leader Bob Michel of Illinois with extinction.”

If you don’t understand this about Newt, you don’t understand Newt. He thinks he has a date with destiny. He thinks he is going to be a “great man”. He’s not interested in anything but himself and his destiny. Trying to destroy Democrats isn’t what makes him dangerous. Destroying moderate Republicans is what made him dangerous. By destroying them, he destroyed political compromise.

Do you think the country is hopelessly divided? Well, meet the Divider. Read the article.

Don Brown
May 13, 2011