Defying Conventional Wisdom

To me, there isn’t much point in writing a column about politics if I’m just agreeing with what the other pundits are writing.  So, I try to be different.  There are two ways of doing this.  I can seek out, and write about, things that other opinion columnists aren’t covering.  That’s the hard way,

He may be a hypocritical scumbag, but he is a master politician

but probably the more rewarding, when I come up with a good one.  The other is to look at what everybody is saying on a given topic and take the exact opposite viewpoint.  That’s the easy way since I believe that most people who aren’t me are usually wrong about almost everything.  Tonight, I’m taking the easy route.

There are two points that the pundits seem to have reached a consensus on:  Weiner is cooked and Newt Gingrich has no chance of winning the Republican nomination.

First, let me talk about Weiner.  Of course, I’ve been wrong about him before, as I believed the twitterhack story.  But every day that he doesn’t resign is a day that he will be under less pressure to resign.  Soon there will be another scandal, some development in one of the many wars happening around the world, or extreme weather conditions somewhere.  In any event, it will be a new news cycle and news has to be new.  If congressman Weiner can hang in there for a week, he can hang in there forever.  His constituents are behind him and Nancy Pelosi doesn’t have anything to do with it, so little miss impeachment is off the table can just STFU.

Newt Gingrich isn’t finished, either.  First, there was his criticism of the Ryan budget.  The pundits should note that the Ryan budget WAS, in fact, a nutcase attempt at right wing social engineering.  If Newt is trying to carve out a niche in a crowded field, he has done so.  He is now the man for Republicans who don’t want to drive off the right hand shoulder but still can’t quite bring themselves to vote for Romney.

Secondly, the Greek Vacation and the Tiffany expense account.  Piffle.  Republicans may scream “Elitist!” at Barack Obama for eating Dijon mustard or at John Kerry for windsurfing, but it’s just screaming.  They gleefully voted for two Bushes and Ronald Reagan and even Donald Trump garnered some support among the local inhabitants of crazy land.  No, Republicans don’t hate rich people and they don’t mind rich people spending money on rich people things.  Not a bit.

Third, there is the thing about all his campaign staff quitting.  How is that supposed to hurt him?  He’ll just get a new campaign staff, crazier than the last, and have a great story to tell.

Lastly, they say he is not spending enough time in Iowa.  Seriously, guys, the Iowa caucuses aren’t until February and, contrary to conventional wisdom, people in Iowa have TV sets, too.  A couple of good speeches between now and next February and Newt could do very well in Iowa, and go on to win the Republican nomination.

He would be crushed in the general election, of course, but that’s true of all of them.  On that, I think I agree with the majority.