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Everyone seems to be of the opinion that Newt Gingrich did poorly in this latest debate. Apparently "everyone" includes Newt and his staffers: Their excuse for his lackluster performance
this time around, was that the auditorium was
packed with Romney supporters:
"They definitely packed the room," Kevin Kellems, one of Gingrich's senior advisers, told The Huffington Post early Friday morning.
Got that? So when CNN kept people from applauding, that was unfair to Newt. When CNN let people applaud, but they applauded for Mitt Romney, that also was unfair to Newt. Apparently the only way Newt will be satisfied is if CNN instructs the next debate audience that they are only allowed to applaud for Newt Gingrich. Come to think of it, I'd be surprised if the Gingrich campaign isn't drafting that demand right now.
Meanwhile, the Gingrich campaign is attempting to recover by releasing a new negative ad. Or more accurately, releasing the mere transcript for their new ad. (Is that a thing now? Like the ever-increasing numbers of running-for-office announcements candidates announce, now we're going to get pre-announcements and pre-pre-announcements of every individual ad? Oh dear.)
From the transcript, which attacks Mitt Romney for lying about his votes for Democrats and his blind trust:
Narrator: What kind of man would mislead, distort, and deceive just to win an election?
This man would be Mitt Romney. Romney said he has always voted Republican when he had the opportunity.
But in the 1992 Presidential Primary Romney had the chance to vote for George H.W. Bush or Pat Buchanan but he voted for a liberal Democrat instead.
Two things, here. One, "What kind of man would mislead, distort, and deceive just to win an election?" Um, I'm gonna have to say "all of them." Prove me wrong, PolitiFact, prove me wrong. But second, it's good to see that the name "Bush" hasn't been entirely purged from the Republican lexicon. What's that? It's the wrong Bush? Ah.
Newt himself is going with the same attack: He was just so floored by Mitt Romney's lack of ethics that he hardly knew how to fight back:
“I think it’s the most blatantly dishonest performance by a presidential candidate I’ve ever seen,” Gingrich said in a telephone interview. At several moments during the debate, Gingrich simply leaned away from his lectern and looked down at his feet because he was so stunned by some of Romney’s statements, he said. He didn’t engage Romney at the time, he said, because “I wanted to fact check. I wanted to make sure he was as totally dishonest as I thought he was.”
Newt Gingrich, at a loss for words?
Last in Newt Gingrich news, the political world's most famous serial adulterer has been pushing hard in his attempt to pander to the religious right. If it actually works, it will be because the religious right is really not very bright at all, or perhaps because the only thing worse than being an adulterer is being a Mormon, but hey—Newt's making decent ground, it seems.
From last Wednesday's conference call with absolutely batshit-crazy person Don Wildmon of the American Family Association:
“It’s pretty simple: marriage is between a man and a woman,” Gingrich told the group. “This is a historic doctrine driven deep into the Bible, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, and it’s a perfect example of what I mean by the rise of paganism. The effort to create alternatives to marriage between a man and a woman are perfectly natural pagan behaviors, but they are a fundamental violation of our civilization.”
(This is at a meeting where Wildmon vouched that Obama's reelection would end the United States "as we know her," and that voting against Obama means "voting for the continuation of Western Civilization." So yes, that batshit crazy. And top-level Republicans are falling all over themselves to pander to this guy, because their whole modern party is predicated on Being Insane.)
Now, I can understand why serial adulterer Newt Gingrich would be perfectly willing to cite the Bible in order to defend his idea of marriage as being between a woman, a man, and the man's French Horn-playing mistress(es). It's all part of that bit where you "mislead, distort, and deceive just to win an election." I have great confidence that Newt Gingrich has no particular patience for Biblical doctrine on what marriage should be like, but is perfectly willing to pretend he might be for the sake of sucking up to the religious right.
What's less clear to me is by what authority the American government, according to that other great book written by God, the Constitution, should take on "the rise of paganism." For the sake of dismal argument let's just say Newt was right (he's not), and gay marriage (Shudder! How frightening!) somehow amounts to scary "paganism." Quick question to the world's most highly paid historian: Why should the government care? Is there a war on paganism, now? Really? And how ought our American government go about winning the battle against paganism, Newt? I wonder if, as historian, Newt can enlighten us with What The Founders Intended, as far as the government promoting or prejudicing itself against specific religions.
Disclaimer: I don't care if people want to worship the Wall Street bull, a tree, or build an entire religion around the miracle of a bag of Doritos arriving at their house with nary a broken chip in the bag. Don't care. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg, as some important-sounding dead guy once said. Even Newt Gingrich, though, seems to cede that the only arguments against gay marriage are religiously premised ones, and in particular ones based on explicitly religious bigotries.
So apparently we know that Newt Gingrich cares just as little about the Constitution as he does about the Bible, which at least is consistent with what we already knew about the pompous, egocentric jackass. This will probably serve him well among the base. Not as well as demanding debate audiences applaud only for him, mind you, but candidates must take what they can get.