Slog

News & Arts

Line Out

Music & the City
at Night

« Harassed Former Student Wins Settle… | Chuck Klosterman Pisses Off tUnE-yA… »

Thursday, January 26, 2012

2012 Nobody Likes Newt Gingrich

Posted by Paul Constant on Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 10:31 AM

Even though Newt Gingrich is promising all sorts of cool things like a permanent moon base and trips to Mars during a Gingrich presidency, nobody seems to like him. Politico is noticing that within the last 24 hours, what seems to be a mainstream conservative push against Gingrich has 'spontaneously' launched. Drudge, Ann Coulter, National Review, and other outlets are going no-holds-barred in their anti-Gingrich coverage. They quote an anonymous "top conservative media figure" as saying about the prospect of a Gingrich candidacy:

"It could happen, and it would be a disaster,” said the conservative, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect private conversations. “All of us who were around and saw how he operated as speaker — there’s no one who’s not appalled by the prospect of what could happen. He thinks he embodies conservatism and if he wakes up one day and has a grandiose thought, he is going to expect all of us to fall in line behind him.

“There’s just so much risk on so many levels,” the official continued. “Everyone’s thinking, ‘It could really happen.’ He could win the presidency if there’s a way to win with 45 percent — a second recession or a third-party candidate. The immediate worry is him winning the nomination and losing the election, tanking candidates down-ballot. In a worst-case scenario, you could see unified Democratic governance, and we’d be back where we were in ’09 and ’10. It’s insane.”

In other Gingrich-y news, Team Newt has admitted that Gingrich's finger-wagging lecture at John King—the one that basically reinvigorated his campaign—was centered around a lie: "his campaign did not offer ABC News witnesses to rebut his ex-wife’s ‘open marriage’ claim," as Gingrich said they did.

And, lastly, as always, The Onion nails it.

Comments (19) RSS

Oldest First Unregistered On Registered On Add a comment

Republicans have only themselves to blame. They hate Obama so much, they want an attack dog and not somebody who'd make a good president.

Posted by Vince on January 26, 2012 at 10:52 AM

You lie.....this female featured appears to like either him, or his Tiffany's account???

http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/afp.co…">http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/m9KTWJl…

Posted by sgt_doom on January 26, 2012 at 10:54 AM

i think this newt surge is just a big conspiracy to make romney seem like a good option. newt is so fucking crazy that when people realize it and ditch him it will make the republicans seem more rational than they really are.
i mean it. this is a conspiracy.
bc they can't POSSIBLY be so nuts that they are seriously considering newt..they just can't be.

Posted by onion on January 26, 2012 at 10:54 AM

OK, some smart alecky ad intercepted by link and overwrote it....

http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/afp.com/TRWas6163751.jpg">http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/m9KTWJl…

Posted by sgt_doom on January 26, 2012 at 10:58 AM

sgt_doom cannot into space.

Posted by venomlash on January 26, 2012 at 11:01 AM

So the grass roots folks don't really like Romney, and the Establishment don't really like Gingrich. Hmmm.

Posted by geoz on January 26, 2012 at 11:06 AM

Gingrich's moon colony promises are the most vaporous bits of hot air I've seen come out of a politician since Bush said we'd go back to the moon.

Posted by dwightmoodyforgetsthings on January 26, 2012 at 11:09 AM

Sonofabitch was a deadbeat dad, too. His first wife had to get a court order to get the bastard to pay child support. Family values, my lily-white ass.

Posted by Geni on January 26, 2012 at 11:11 AM

Kind of surprising, actually, that someone with such an ugly mind and personality as Coulter doesn't like someone with such similarly ugly mind and personality as Gingrich--it makes sense to me, for instance, that Palin and Gingrich seem to be giving each other blowjobs.

Posted by seatackled on January 26, 2012 at 11:12 AM

As Canadian journalist Dan Gardiner recently tweeted, if people who worked for Gingrich say Gingrich is an out-of-control jerk, that's not news, just as 'dog bites man' isn't news. The 'man bites dog' equivalent -- what would REALLY be news -- is finding someone who had worked for Gingrich and thought he was a good guy.

Posted by 365steve on January 26, 2012 at 11:28 AM

So, has he suggested how he'd pay for all this moon stuff? Taxing those making less than $10,000 a year?

Posted by g on January 26, 2012 at 11:48 AM

The GOP has broken down this way for a long time: On the one hand, there's the Republican establishment, which consists of extremely wealthy people enacting policy that favors their financial interests; On the other hand there is the TV version of the Republican Party, a publicity exercise designed to trick working class chumps into voting for tax breaks for the tax bracket they wish they were in (and a swift kick in the pants for the tax bracket they actually are in.)

The rank-and-file can go to their Tea Party rallies and draft their resolutions and issue their angry demands all they want, but when it comes down to it the people in charge will tell them who they get to vote for and they'll do it obediently and pretend it was their idea all along.

Posted by Proteus on January 26, 2012 at 11:51 AM

SgtDoom: never change.

Posted by Doctor Memory

on January 26, 2012 at 12:14 PM

@12... yeah.

Posted by NotSean on January 26, 2012 at 12:18 PM

Newt was on CNN on Sunday claiming that he was exonerated of ethics charges. That messenger from the past would have done a much better job of reputing that lie.

Posted by biffp on January 26, 2012 at 12:34 PM

This isn't really about Gingrich's personality, so much as it's about the fact that he doesn't hold a snowball's chance of beating Obama come November, and what few realists are left at the upper echelons of the GOP know it. They also know (as the anonymous commenter notes in the article) that IF he gets the nomination, it's going to have a negative ripple-effect all the way down the ticket.

Posted by COMTE