Well, would you look at that? That was quick. After a couple weeks of demented political darlingship, everyone’s favorite bloviating Hutt may have smirked his way into the background yet again.
Newt Gingrich isn’t polling well in the battleground state of Iowa.
Could part of it be because of recent statements he’s made about the court system? Maybe. During a half-hour phone call on Saturday to reporters he pledged to abolish courts and eliminate activist judges. Fantastic. He probably has a plan that involves bringing back dueling in the streets, or some such spectacular thing as that. Trial by shark! “I know! The fastest person to eat fifteen hotdogs in one minute wins their court case!” Yes, exactly.
If that weren’t enough, Sunday, the King of Nutbag Crazy Shit, told CBS’s “Face the Nation” that he would go so far as sending U.S. Marshals to arrest judges he deemed outside the mainstream or infringing too deeply on the commander in chief’s authority. HA! Yeah, a whole batch of Republicans collectively winced and let out small farts of agony once that news spread.
You see, many Republicans don’t like old Newt. In fact, they’re afraid a Newt nomination could derail all their plans and basically injure the party’s future, depleting them of funds, and just sucking away any goodwill they had with Independents. Not just that Obama will win once the true vetting of Gingrich’s time as Speaker of the House and subsequent years comes to light, but that whatever is found will be such a disaster that it will literally be a horrible stain on the GOP.
The New York Times reports that top Republicans such as Representative Peter T. King, a New York Republican who served in the House when Mr. Gingrich was speaker, has this to say:
“I’ve had any number of members of Congress come over to me and thank me for what I’m saying,” he said. “They say, ‘This guy is going to kill us if he gets the nomination.’ ”
Mr. Gingrich was “a disaster” as speaker and most likely would be as a nominee given his “compulsion to exaggerate,” his erratically changing ideas, intellectual arrogance and the grandiosity of his self-comparisons to the likes of Winston Churchill and others.
Other Republicans are saying things like, “The fact that he has no infrastructure scares me to death,” and “How do we make sure this train wreck doesn’t happen?” Yes, well, that’s patently hilarious. “How do you solve a problem like Newt?” Possibly with Ron Paul?
Yep, old curmudgeon, rational thinker, Ron Paul has risen in the polls and taken the lead in the Iowa caucus race, while Gingrich’s support is fading, and his favorability rating is dipping into Jon Huntsman territory. I’d like to cue the Price is Right‘s You’ve just Lost the Winnebago and Trip to Mexico Showcase Showdown music. Can we call the GOP Darling thing a curse yet?
It’s pretty telling that Iowans aren’t enamored by Gingrich’s self-proclaimed excellence and all around fantastic thoughts on just about everything, which is not in any way the strangest, scariest stuff to ever be uttered by someone not named Bachmann, Santorum, or Perry. Yeah, right. He’s probably totally baffled that they don’t see him as some sort of intellectual, yet ostensibly moral, messiah. Actually one of the poll questions asked if voters believe Newt Gingrich has strong principles, and by strong principles we probably mean using the Constitution as a lobster bib. Only 36 percent said that he does. Ron Paul got 73 percent of that vote. So some of that reasonable talk Paul is now famous for has resonated with voters.
Even if it’s too early to say that Newt Is Over, Mitt Romney is trying to drive a nail right into Gingrich’s diamond encrusted Tiffany’s pine coffin. His latest attack ad may have prompted seniors, the exact demographic who believed Gingrich was a good fit for the presidency, to assess the amount of baggage the former speaker has — and that’s probably because Romney’s ad put the idea out there.
“Newt has a ton of baggage, like the fact that Gingrich was fined $350,000 for ethics violations, or that he took at least $1.6 million from Freddie Mac just before it helped cause the economic meltdown,” says the ad.
Well played, Mr. Roboto.
So, the newtmentum may be coming to a halt, and no one is happier about it than all the Republicans. The Democrats are making Holiday pies, and plan on sending Gingrich a gift card to TGIFridays for all the hard work he’s done this year.
