While the MSM Promote Gingrich, Everyone to the Right of Stalin is Kicking Him

 

   
The new McCain?                          No, not this McCain!

 

 

                     

Nor even this McCain!                         This McCain!

 

 

Mark Steyn is beating up on Newt Gingrich, as are many other observers, such as Larry Auster and friends. Actually, Steyn is recycling a 1998 beatdown, as nothing has since changed about Newt, except maybe he's gotten even fatter in the meantime—hey, fat boy! (I have to exploit finding someone fatter than me).

 

Since Ramesh, Mona, Yuval & Co have got out the tire irons, I figured I might as well pile on. But then a reader from the Cayman Islands reminded me that I'd said pretty much everything I have to say about Newt in November 1998 – in the London Spectator, upon his resignation as Speaker. For those Newtroids who huff that I must be in the tank for Mitt (that's some tank), November 1998 is 13 years ago, when I'm not sure I'd even heard of Mitt Romney.

Anyway, back then, after a brisk trot through his collected Brainstorms-of-the-Week – "The Triangle of American Progress", "The Four Great Truths", "The Four Pillars of American Civilization", "The Five Pillars of the 21st Century", "The Nine Zones of Creativity", "The Fourteen Steps to Renewing American Civilization", The Thirty-Nine Steps to the Five Year Plan of the Six Flags of the Seven Brides for Seven Brothers of the Nine-Inch Nails of Renewing Civilizational Progress for 21st Century America, etc, I concluded:

 

The Democrats demonised Newt as an extreme right-wing crazy. They were right – apart from the 'extreme' and 'right-wing', that is. Most of the above seem more like the burblings of a frustrated self-help guru than blueprints for conservative government. For example, Pillar No. 5 of the 'Five Pillars of American Civilisation' is: 'Total quality management'. Unfortunately for Newt, the person who most needed a self-help manual was him – How to Win Friends and Influence People for a start. After last week's election, Republicans have now embarked on the time-honoured ritual, well known to British Tories and Labour before them, of bickering over whether they did badly because they were too extreme or because they were too moderate. In Newt's case, the answer is both. He spent the last year pre-emptively surrendering on anything of legislative consequence, but then, feeling bad at having abandoned another two or three of his 'Fourteen Steps to Renewing American Civilisation', he'd go on television and snarl at everybody in sight… For Republicans it was the worst of all worlds: a lily-livered ninny whom everyone thinks is a ferocious right-wing bastard.

 

This reminds me of a joke from Mark Russell, a leftwing comic who is occasionally funny:

 

Reagan finds himself stranded on a desert island with Brezhnev, Arafat, and Newt Gingrich, but his gun only has two bullets left. What does he do? He shoots Newt in the head—twice!