Nasty Newt

The Republican base really doesn’t like Mitt Romney. The man has been campaigning for president for about 5 years now. Remember last election’s GOP primaries when Mike Huckabee, John McCain and Romney were wrestling for the nomination?

Romney got knocked down, but he got up again. Nothing’s going to keep him down. Not even the party whose nomination he is vying for. Since the whole circus of the GOP primary began, it has been clear that Romney is the most likely contender.
 
He ironed out the awkwardness that handicapped him in the last election, he brushed up on his debating skills, he came prepared to defend Romneycare, which he knew would be the main target of attack from fellow Republicans, and he mastered the much-revered art of many a politician: the flip-flop.

In most GOP primary polls, he consistently comes in at 25 percent, but the other 75 percent seems intent on making him fight every step of the way to the nomination. There is an ever-rotating flavor-of-the-week candidate who temporarily threatens Romney’s status.

First we had Rick Perry, who gaffed his way out of consideration. Then came Herman Cain, who sexually harassed his chance at the nomination back to where it belongs. And now we have the constant curmudgeon, faux-intellectual Newt Gingrich. The 68-year-old former speaker of the House has the face of a gluttonous 11-year-old, angry at the world because he has no more Halloween candy.

If Gingrich is a serious candidate, the GOP base must really hate Romney. If you are looking for someone to blame the current, insurmountable polarization of politics, pointing a finger at Gingrich would be a good start. Two examples of his polarizing, harmful rhetoric: He once encouraged Republicans to fight Democrats “with the scale and duration and savagery that is only true of civil wars.”

In one of his many books, he wrote, “The secular-socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did.” In Gingrich’s mind, the rise of secular-socialism in America will lead to horrors equivalent to the systematic murdering of millions of people. Can we trust this man to be president?

To put it simply, Gingrich is a nasty man. And he is good at fooling people into thinking he is smart — or, at least, that he is smarter than you. John McWhorter wrote a great article for the New Republic, detailing how Gingrich’s academic background (he has a Ph.D. in history) affords him the privilege of a certain verbal acuteness, giving off the impression of intelligence, but his linguistic mastery is void of any real substance. He is full of hot air.

If we are lucky, Gingrich will take his turn in the spotlight, then, like Perry, Bachmann and Cain before him, fall out of favor. If we are really lucky, someone of substance will take his place in the anyone-but-Romney role and stay. Wherefore art thou, Ron Paul or Jon Hunstman?

­— sdance@indiana.edu