Tag Archives: Newt Gingrich

January 11, 2012 · 9:37 pm

After New Hampshire

I have just been defriended by an Australian lady on facebook, for making disparaging remarks about their national cuisine.  I’m sure Australia’s a lovely country.  Great beaches.  Cute little Koala Bears.  Kangaroos.

But Vegemite really does suck.  Sorry.

Anyway, that’s not my blog topic for this evening.  There seem to be two main schools of thought

You all know what Mitt Romney looks like. Here's a picture of New Hampshire.

in analyzing the results of the New Hampshire primary.  First, it’s a big Romney win.  He won in Iowa and New Hampshire, he’s pretty much got a lock on the nomination.  He’s got the momentum, he’s got the money, the ABR* crowd is splintered, that’s it, it’s all over but the shouting.

The other view is that Romney is toast.  He only won Iowa by  8 votes (that’s 0 percentage points) and he didn’t get over 40% in New Hampshire, where they supposedly love the guy.  This is despite spending massive amounts of money.

I tend toward the second view, but I’m not so sure as I was a couple of weeks ago.  39 percent is not 40%, but it’s still 17 points more than Ron Paul got, and Rick Santorum really didn’t do very well at all.  If Romney wins in South Carolina and Florida, he might very well win the nomination.

But here’s the rub:  a Republican candidate needs 1144 delegates to get the nomination.  37 have been chosen. (not exactly, because Iowa is complicated and the delegates elected at the precinct caucuses go to a county convention where they choose the delegates to the state convention where they choose the delegates to the national convention, but still, we have indications)  Of those, Romney has 20, Santorum 12, Paul 3 and Huntsman 2.  Four out of the 6 people still in the running have delegates.  Gingrich and Perry may  well pick up a few as the race moves south.  Southerners vote for Southerners.  Perhaps it’s local pride.  Perhaps it’s just that they feel comfortable with someone who has the same accent.  Perhaps it’s because they are stupid.

In any event, if Romney can’t get over 50% in any state (which is likely, since he couldn’t top 40% in New Hampshire), and nobody drops out and leaves him their delegates, then he goes to the convention without the required 1144 votes, and then we will see some desperate politicking, you betcha.

Romney might try to buy off Gingrich or Santorum with the vice-presidency.  Paul might try to make alliances, too, although he’s not generally very good at it.

We could get one of those really interesting conventions, which last for days and lead to massive verbal abuse and occasionally physical violence.  That would be fun to watch.

 

*anybody but Romney

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June 15, 2011 · 2:16 pm

This Week’s Winner: Chris Christie

Today is Wednesday, so it is time once again for the Evil Republican of the Week Award.  There are several nominees for the (apparently) highly coveted award this week.

First, Iowa state representative Shawn Hammerlinck who told a visiting group of University students who were protesting budget cuts that they should just go home, and leave the job of

NJ Governor Christie: His program is all about trimming the fat.

governing to the big boys.  When it was pointed out to him that this was sort of a tacky way for a public servant to relate to his constituents, he said in his defense  “I  hate being lobbied by students.”  He really did.

Next, we have Californian Dana Rohrabacher, who said that the Iraqis should pay us back for the cost of invading their country, the ungrateful little punks.  Reminded me very much of the accusations that Saddam Hussein forced the families of executed prisoners to pay for the bullets used in the execution.  Truly, deeply heartless but Rohrabacher has already won this award once, and I do want to spread the love a bit.

Newt Gingrich earns a nomination (Newt Gingrich is probably just about due for a lifetime achievement award) for the revelation that his “charity,” whose purpose is to encourage people to love freedom, Jesus and America, buys all its books from Newt Gingrich.  So, all of the real Americans who have donated money to that charity basically just paid Newt Gingrich to continue being Newt Gingrich.  Creative marketing, to be sure, but not particularly ethical.

But this week’s winner is New Jersey governor Chris Christie.  Not because he took a government helicopter to his son’s football game.  That was pretty sleazy and unnecessary, because New Jersey is really not that large a state.  Not just because I want to use this grossly unflattering, although not at all unrealistic, photo of him at the beach in Florida.  No, Chris Christie actually wants to privatize New Jersey’s public schools.   At any rate, the bad ones, where the poor kids go.

And there are lots of Republicans who think he’d be a good candidate for President.

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June 13, 2011 · 8:00 pm

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.

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