Newt Gingrich won't be president. He represents the worst in every other GOP candidate.
Mitt Romney must be getting dizzy. The number of Republican primary candidates whose suns have risen above him only to crash and burn later just keeps growing and growing. Each time one sun rises, a slew of new information and new scandals arrive just in time to sink it.
Donald Trump, Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain - and now Newt Gingrich, in spite of early-campaign foibles, have all risen to bask in their fifteen minutes of infamy. (Perhaps, indeed, this is Jon Huntsman's strategy. If the moderate from Utah can just wait long enough, surely it will be his turn.)
But as Michael Brendan Dougherty notes, Newt Gingrich is the worst possible candidate for conservatives looking to replace Mitt Romney as front-runner. Too angry, too petulant, too prone to react at small perceived slights, Gingrich is hardly even the conservative that many Republicans think he is, let alone the intellectual.
But he is a lot of other things.
The Elitist.
If you don't like Romney because he's an elitist, Newt is no better. On top of the Tiffany's kerfuffle early on in Newt's campaign, now we learn that the candidate has made millions from pseudo-private mortgage giant, Freddie Mac.
And I'm a little surprised the Tiffany's issue hasn't come back up in more places. Here's a man with over half a million dollars owed to a jewelry store! So much for middle America.
The Crony Capitalist.
One reason Texas governor Rick Perry fell from the spotlight - aside from his dopey debate performances - were revelations that the career politician had made big bucks off of trading political favors for campaign contributions.
But Newt started consulting for Freddie Mac five months after his ouster from congress. It's going to be hard to wash charges of lobbying and cronyism off of this one.
The Cheater.
Compare Newt's three marriages to the Obama's happy marriage. As Dougherty notes, "Newt Gingrich cheated on his first wife with the woman who would become his second, and then cheated on her with the woman who became his third wife. He was leading the impeachment of Clinton, while diddling his Congressional aide. And now he makes little documentaries about God. In these films he wears tailored suits, not sackcloth and ashes."
Obama beats him on family values hands down, and even the most partisan Republican is going to see through two affairs and three marriages pretty quickly. If Herman Cain's sun set over a few allegations of sexual abuse, how can Newt hope to take the moralist's stance in the upcoming election?
The Loudmouth.
Linda Killian calls Gingrich "the grandfather of negativity, partisan attack and governmental gridlock." Gingrich is often described as an ideas guy, but he's mostly just loud and blustering.
If Michelle Bachmann is too screetchy for the general electorate, why should they go for Gingrich whose oft-repeated "secular-socialist administration line" hardly jibes with his own moderate right-of-center past. And his relationship with the press is hardly going to help him. Every time he "gets a question he doesn't like," writes Dougherty, "he starts whining petulantly. He practically faints as if his corset has been pulled too tight."
The Chameleon.
Many conservatives express dismay over Romney's flip-flops, but Gingrich is just as bad. After slamming Paul Ryan's budget plan as too extreme, calling it "right-wing social engineering" Gingrich fled into full retreat mode when it became clear he'd taken an unpopular political stance.
On numerous past issues, Gingrich has taken a far more moderate stance than he does today. Dougherty lists several:
- He promoted the return of the Fairness Doctrine.
- He was for a federal individual health-care mandate, the lynchpin of ObamaCare.
- He was practically spooning Nancy Pelosi in commercials about the need for government action on global warming.
- He supports green energy projects [Solyndras] and farm-subsidies.
- Even as late as this year he was pitching for more government intervention in the health-care system at the progressive Brookings Institution.
When it all comes down, Gingrich is every bit as disingenuous as Rick Santorum, every bit as likely to flip as Romney, and every bit as popular as Jon Huntsman.
What we have is a candidate who represents the worst qualities of all the other candidates. Newt Gingrich is beyond mediocre, he's downright awful.
He's the perfect candidate, in other words, if you're a Democrat.
Update: After Newt's latest debate I revise my opinion of him somewhat, discovering that at his best Gingrich can be a decent sort of moderate Republican. The problem is you can't believe a thing he says and he's too quick to couple his reasonable ideas with absurd, over-the-top rhetoric. Read the post here.
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