Newtered

Last week, Thruppence left a comment on my post Let Gingrich be Gingrich:

Do you think that Gingrich "honestly" thought he had a chance at the Republican nomination? Or is he just jockeying for his position on the right wing gravy train? Speaker's fees, well paid think tank sinecures, Regnery book deals, shell foundations and maybe a sweet sweet Faux News TV show ...

That pretty well sums up Newt Gingrich’s MO since he was run out of the Speaker’s chair in disgrace way back when.  Actually, it pretty well sums up his MO since he first appeared on the national political scene.   Newt has been a con artist, snake oil salesman, and mountebank from the get-go and it’s been maddening to watch how the Washington DC elite journalists and pundits have played along with him over the years.  Since he left the House he has done nothing---not one blessed thing---that has made him anybody whose views should be consulted or taken seriously and yet it’s hard to think of anyone who has shown up more often on the TV bobblehead circuit having his views consulted and being taken seriously.  John McCain?  Joe Lieberman?

But I honestly have no idea what Newt honestly thinks.  Specifically.  It’s a good bet that whatever he’s thinking generally it has to do with how to advance the fortunes of Newt Gingrich.  If he is making a serious run for the nomination, it’s almost certainly because he sees money in it.

The question is, if he really doesn’t expect that he can be nominated, let alone be elected President, why the groveling before whatever powers-that-be in the Republican Party who have decreed that there shall be no dissing of the Paul Ryan plan to end Medicare and bankrupt the nation?  If he’s running just for the money and the attention, then why bother kowtowing?  The money’s flowing, the attention’s focused.  Why can’t Newt just let himself be Newt?

Here’s my guess.

Newt’s place on the gravy train and perpetual guest spot on the bobblehead circuit has been based on the pretense that he’s going to do something soon.

If he really was going to do something, he should have done it by now.  He should have gotten back into political office at some level, as a Senator or a Governor, he should have accomplished things in that office---or at least have appeared to---and then he should have run for President long before now.  In 2000 or 2008.  Instead, he’s been happy to talk and make gestures like someone who seriously intends to do something and Beltway Insiders have pretended to believe he was serious about following up.

Or maybe they fooled themselves into believing he was.

But the act is getting old and stale.  Newt himself is getting old.  Young stars are on the rise.  For a long time there were no other conservative blowhards as telegenic and as quotable as Newt.  That’s changed.  I’m not predicting it, but I won’t be surprised if in the not too distant future Paul Ryan takes Newt’s place as the go-to Republican bobblehead.   We may never see a President Ryan or a Governor Ryan or a Senator Ryan.  We may see an former Congressman Ryan.  I don’t know.  But I expect that whatever else we see, we’re going to see a lot of Ryan.

While most of the rest of the country is learning to hate him, Ryan is still a hero and a saint to an influential segment of the Beltway elite, and they will make sure he gets on the air and in the op-ed pages and all over the internet, just like Newt now, and the Insider Media will play right along, just as they’ve been doing with Newt.

And if it’s not Ryan, it’ll be someone else.  Marco Rubio.  Nikki Haley.  There are plenty of contenders.   The Right Wing bench is pretty deep at the moment.  Whoever it is, it won’t be Newt anymore.

So here’s my guess.  I’m guessing that Newt has decided he has to do something finally, in order to make it last, to keep the money flowing and the attention focused. 

But it’s not enough for him to just run.  He has to make a credible run.  The whole charade has depended on people “believing” that Newt matters.  It’s all up with him if his campaign disappears in a puff of smoke before a single ballot’s been cast.  He has to last at least through Iowa and he needs make a showing there that can be spun as “respectable.”  He can’t risk being this election season’s Fred Thompson or even a Republican Mike Gravel.

That’s why the instant drop to the knees after his “disatrous” appearance on Meet the Press.  Somebody made it clear to him that if he didn’t come to Republican Jesus, it was all over before the shouting.  It might not have worked.

There’s no reason for voters or the political movers and shakers on the state and local levels who still have a lot of say in who gets nominated to play along.  They aren’t interested in ratings.  They want to win elections.  Unlike Newt, they want to do things.  I’m not saying they want to do good things.  But in their own eyes the things they want to do are good and worthy and important and they’re not going to tolerate any candidate they don’t believe will work to get those things done.

But that’s my guess.  Like I said, I don’t know.  I have no way of knowing.  I’d think that if Newt was running for the “fun” of it, part of the fun would be saying what he thinks or what he wants the Media to think he thinks.  But I don’t think he’s running just for the fun of it.  That’s why I think he’s desperate to keep the candidacy alive.  It’s hard to believe he believes he has any sort of real shot at the nomination.  But again, who knows.  Maybe his vanity and ego have finally gotten the better of him.  Maybe what being President has been what he’s really wanted all along and he knows that this is his one and only shot. 

Whatever he’s “honestly” thinking, though, there’s a delicious irony at work.

The point I was making last week is that it’s deplorable that the Republican Party has become so Right Wing and ideologically rigid that one of the Movement’s supposed heroes has to debase himself by cravenly promising he supports at economic agenda he knows to be pure lunacy, the product of a true believing dunderhead who can’t add or subtract.

But it’s impossible to sympathize with Newt.  He’s being rejected and humiliated by the monster he created.

The modern Republican Party is to a great extent, Gingrich’s party.  Not because of the man himself, but rather because of “Gingrichism” — his philosophy of how to conduct politics.

The essential nature of Gingrich’s insurgency in the House and his conduct as Speaker was the destruction of the informal institutions of American governance.  By “informal institutions,” I mean those habits and customs outside of formal, written law that make democracy work.  Some things are simply not done; everyone agrees to resist the temptation for political advantage in order to make the system work.

Gingrichism is the philosophy that all means short of illegality are fair game in the struggle for political power.  He came to the fore in the House minority by personal attacks on other members’ patriotism; he stirred up the Republican base with the argument that the Democrats were not merely wrong, but evil and a threat to the Republic.  As Speaker, he destroyed the existing committee structure and bill mark-ups, did away with Congressional institutions to educate members (such as the Office of Technology Assessment or the Administrative Conference of the United States), and centralized power in the leadership.  When he did not get his way with Clinton, he cavalierly shut down the government.  Not cowed by the political disaster that ensued, he used the House’s impeachment power for political purposes and put the House Oversight Committee in the hands of Dan Burton with the express mandate to harass and cripple political opponents.  Gingrich broke institutions not by accident, but on purpose.

And if we examine the most malignant trends of the Republican Party over the last 15 years, many (although not all) of them represent this pattern of destroying institutions — and, importantly, any sense of impartiality, good faith, or nonpartisanship — for the purpose of achieving political power.

That’s Jonathan Zasloff  responding to the Atlantic’s James Fallows’ argument that the Media should just ignore Newt.  Zasloff goes on to say:

And that is why, in my view, we cannot ignore Gingrich even if his campaign is doomed to fail.  His campaign, with all of its narcissism, mendacity, intellectual incoherence, and duplicity is the Republican Party in its purest, least adulterated form. By looking at Gingrich we are not avoiding how the Republicans will choose their issues, or even their candidate: we are looking at their methods, ideology, goals, and tactics in their ultimate nature.

Republicans are busily distancing themselves from Gingrich now, but they cannot.  He is them.  They are him.  They see him every time they look in the mirror.

Read the whole post, Why Gingrich Matters, at The Reality-Based Community.

Hat tip to David Roberts.

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