One term Governor and former vulture capitalist Mitt Romney won a convincing victory in Florida last night. It really should be the end of the road for the Republican nominating process, but we’ll still have a few weeks of wrangling going on until Super Tuesday puts the nails in the coffin of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum.
Ron Paul might stick around but he was never seriously running for the nomination, he is trying to jump start the faux Libertarian revolution so his son can be President (god’s greater and lesser forbid).
One of the reasons that Newt is not really a factor in this, for all that he won South Carolina and came in second in the Sunshine State, is exemplified in his speech last night. If you didn’t see it you can watch the whole thing (it is 15 minutes of your life you won’t get back but it is instructive, so treat it as continuing education) below:
For those who can’t watch video or just can’t stand to watch the disgraced former Speaker let me give you an overview.
It all comes down the fact that Newt has a ton of ambition but exactly no discipline, and his speech last night showed that in spades. He rambled, he quoted Lincoln, he lied, he lost track of where he was by getting off on a tangent mocking the president, and he blew a lot of smoke at the Republican base.
In short it was the kind of thing that you might hear from a beered up PoliSci major late at night.
Gingrich started out with the idea of 46 States to go. It is true that there are 46 more state (and some territories but no one seems to care about those) nominating contests to come, but Newt has failed to get on the ballot in some significant ones, Virginia and Missouri, in particular.
What makes these two states such a big problem for him is that they count as Southern States and the South is supposed to be Newton’s big playground.
He also asserted that his ascension to front runner status in Iowa (as fleeting as that was) was entirely due to his “ideas”. This, of course, completely ignores the fact that all of the more favored conservative candidates had had their chance at frontrunner and had all self-immolated. Given that Herman Cain was once a front runner the claim that Newt got there by ideas is spurious at best.
There is a verbal tick that Republicans adopt from time to time of talking about themselves in the third person. Newt has started to do that, but he also has added the royal “we” to his speech. I am sure that it is supposed to sound inclusive, but like so much of what this man does, it just comes off as arrogant.
Gingrich is trying to run a change campaign. He kept saying that there needed to be fundamental change in Washington. He even said that he’d impose is on both parties. This is just another in a long list of examples that shows that the former Speaker either completely fails to understand how our system of government works, or he is just flatly lying to the Republican voters. I am pretty sure it is the latter.
This fundamental change is supposed to change the direction of our nation, and not, as Gingrich says “manage the decay”. He wants to be sure that our children and grandchildren have a safe and prosperous nation, but lets look at those ideas.
He presented two “promises” to the crowd last night. The first is predicated on a larger House Majority and a Senate Majority that is big enough to overcome the inevitable Democratic filibuster. So basically none of it is going to happen.
What does he want those for? Well, to repeal the ACA, Sarbanes-Oxely and Dodd Frank. So basically Newt thinks that if we make sure that people with pre-existing conditions can’t get insurance, that old folks pay more for their prescriptions and millions of young adults between 21 and 26 can’t be on their parents insurance things will be better in the future.
He also thinks that abuses like World Com and Enron should be able to happen, regardless of the fact that the lack of reporting requirements and accountability lead to abuses and massive economic pain for millions of Americans, and the economy as a whole.
Finally he thinks that there is value in having less regulation of the very banks whose unregulated bets and frankly fraudulent actions nearly collapsed the world wide economy. This is his vision for more prosperous America.
He wants all of these repeal bills on his desk on the day he takes office, if he gets to take office.
Then he really went off the deep end. He started talking about the Executive Orders he’d sign day one. He said he’d order the approval of the KeystoneXL pipeline, even though there probably will not be an active application by then.
He said he’d abolish all the Czars. Now this is might be a nice Republican talking point but it is fucking stupid. Those so-called Czars are folks who head up all kinds of organizations in the government. They include the head of Drug Policy, Food policy, Aids policy, Afghanistan and Pakistan policy, Iran policy, Manufacturing policy and the list goes on and on. He can abolish those positions if he likes but it is going to leave a Gingrich Administration (I get freaking chills just typing that) crippled from the minute he signs that order.
Other fun things that he’d do with the stroke of a pen is allow religions to avoid paying for birth control pill though their insurance and discriminate in the work place; put Reagan’s anti-abortion foreign policy back in play and move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
This last would be a thumb in the eye of every Muslim nation in the Middle East and give those who think the US is not a fair broker something concrete to point out for decades.
He ended by pledging his “Life, Fortune and Sacred Honor” to the country if elected. It is a great phrase, but from Newt it comes off not as grandiose but pompous. The whole thing was pompous from start to finish last night.
It is this kind of rambling pompous bullshit that will prevent Newt from ever clenching a nomination, let alone wining the White House. While he might be able to throw out red meat, he can’t stay on topic and has ideas that are either unconstitutional, unworkable or flatly damaging to the nation he claims to want to save.
Still, as long as he is in this thing, he is going to be distracting Mitt Romney and keeping him hard right, so I am a happy guy. The longer Mitt has to contend with Newt the less likely it is that he can reach the White House either.
The floor is yours.