Watching the rise and now seemingly the implosion of Former Republican Speaker of the House and current GOP Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has been like observing a living breathing Merriam-Webster's definition example. Whether it was Newt letting his sci-fi geekiness come out by pandering to the Space Coast about building his moon colony, lecturing his fellow candidates that they have to be "realistic in their indignation," or getting manhandled by Mittens Romney, the last debate in Florida marked just another bad moment for a campaign that got hit with a lot of them this past week.My god...Newt has been reduced to having Sarah Palin take up for him. Yes...thin-skinned-so-much-she-could-not-finish-a-single-term-as-Governor Sarah Palin. This is the woman that sunk McCain's chances in 2008, what microscopic chances McCain had. It's apropos that Newt would wind up relying on Palin in his quest for the White House, given his entire campaign strategy appears to be embracing McCain's similar "pent-up, white man's rage" strategy. How'd that work out for McCain?
But, it's what Newt does best, so he's doubling-down on it. This presents the Republican establishment (especialy all non-Tea Partiers) with an inconvenient truth: it could work in their primary. Why? Hell...it might be able to work during any given year, but certainly when they're running a hollow-suit, robot candidate that they know their electorate have already refused once. Mitt Romney is just a better looking and richer Al Gore/John Kerry. Mittster is not the type of guy to get the base excited and that's got the establishment scared.
And so the long-knives have been drawn and the blood-letting has commenced. None other than Bob Dole came out this week wielding a blade and looking for his chance to carve a pound or two of flesh off the pudgy former Speaker. We're not interested in repeating those attacks, we don't really care about them outside of the comedy in it. BUT...we did enjoy an interesting story about the two that came out in a likewise interesting post by Mark Shields on Newt's attempts to Rewrite his Reagan Connection. (Here's a hint...Newt wasn't so much of a Ronnie supporter as he'd lead you to believe).
Anyway, here's the story Shields passes on:
Barely two years later, after having been chosen Time magazine's Man of the Year, Gingrich had plummeted in public esteem to where, in a CBS-New York Times poll, just 14 percent of voters had favorable personal feelings toward the speaker.
This prompted an apocryphal Washington exchange between a perplexed Gingrich and Dole. "Why do people take such an instant dislike to me?" asked a perplexed Gingrich, to whom Dole bluntly explained: "Because it saves them time."
As Sullivan noted, that's a quote too good to check...
