One Trick Pony

You know, starting your presidential campaign off with a sullen excuse laden concession speech isn’t a good sign.

I’m just saying.

“If you are a conservative, you have to start with an assumption that you’re not going to get an even break from the elite media”

So said Newt Gingrich on Fox News’ Sean Hannity last night (Personally, the highlight of the interview for me was the unchallenged and explicit implication that Hannity and Fox are not part of the media’s elite, heh heh, but I digress).  Gingrich then petulantly explained how President Obama,

“can’t afford to run a fair election, if he was on an equal playing field, he’d lose.” 

According to Newt, Obama has the home court advantage of the presidency, support from the “left-wing media,” the labor unions love him, and so do billionaires like George Soros.  Jobs are coming back, the economy is recovering, Obama’s popularity is on the rise and there is no longer any doubt that the black man in the White House is as American as General Motors – a company which, you know, is profitable again for the first time in decades, and that’s two million jobs directly saved by the Obama administration just in case you need help with the math (Yes, yes, you got me, if you cut at your own flesh and feast upon your own excrement while waiting for the comet people to arrive on the mother ship, there’s still some nagging doubt about Obama’s citizenship. But for actual not crazy-stupid people, we’re good, thanks).

Left loudly unspoken, of course, was that fact that President Obama also has the “unfair” advantage of having command when Osama Bin Laden was brought to ground. 

Newt just doesn’t think that’s fair at all.

According to Newt, the game is rigged.

The message being: Obama will win reelection. But only because he cheats.

Newt didn’t actually use the term affirmative action, but then he didn’t actually have to, did he?

“I know how to get the whole country to resemble Texas, President Obama knows how to get the whole country to resemble Detroit.”

No, he didn’t actually have to say it at all.  His meaning – spoken and implied – is quite clear. And so is the target Newt was directing his comments at.

Newt Gingrich is the first Republican to formally declare a 2012 bid for the White House and it’s a pretty good bet that he’s setting the tone for what comes next.

What? Newt’s not the first? Who? Oh, him, the buffoon. Right. Look, I don’t count Trump.  Trump never actually declared, he’s still “exploring” his options (sort of how he does marriage too, apparently).  Besides he’s only a sort-of conservative and not a Republican per se.  He’s clearly engaged in an elaborate publicity stunt and not an actual presidential campaign.  Any day now, I expect Trump to don a red, white, and blue spandex suit complete with star-spangled cape and knee-high white vinyl boots and attempt a rocket-powered leap over the Trump Towers on a motorcycle trailing a banner promoting “The Apprentice in its new time slot!” The guy is not serious and never has been. How do I know this? Easy. He’d have to give up controlling interest in Trump Enterprises, start watching his big fat mouth, and make his private records public.  Think about that, really think about what that means.   Trump crowed about “forcing Obama to produce his birth certificate,” so he clearly understands exactly what he would have to make public if he were to actually declare for office. You really think he wants the public looking at, oh say, his construction development and casino dealings? His taxes? I mean, really? With Birther-like intensity? Yeah, there’s a reason why business leaders generally don’t run for the White House, hell, even Lee Iacocca didn’t do it and he actually had a pretty good chance of winning.   Trump is simply engaged in his usual bombastic chicanery, if people vote for him he sure won’t mind but he’s not serious about the White House (which is not to say that his ego won’t eventually force him into announcing a show campaign, just so he doesn’t have to admit that people like me are right. And just like the birth certificate “triumph,” he’ll declare that a victory when if he loses).

So, anyway, Newt Gingrich kicked off the first official challenge to Obama by laying the groundwork for failure.  

Not really what you’d call an auspicious start.  You’d think The Newt, of all people, would have better handlers.

Newt set up camp deep in the same hostile territory scouted by the likes of Sarah Palin and Joe Miller and Sharon Angle and Christine O’Donnell. Funny isn’t it, how when a Democrat wins office it’s only because voters were tricked by the liberal media, the unions, and George Soros, but when a Republican wins it has nothing to do with Fox News, Wall Street executives, and the Koch Bothers? (The lesson being that conservative billionaires are good and liberal billionaires are bad – bad, of course, because according to conservative doctrine and all the those bumper-stickers there aren’t supposed to be any liberal billionaires)

Gingrich deftly dodged questions about his personal life and instead focused on his Clinton Era victories like some aging florid-faced paunchy combover trotting out, yet again, those dusty fading pictures of himself back when he was the high school football squad captain.  What Newt fails to mention is that his political victories, like his shutdown of the US Government in 1995 and 1996, cost Americans billions – because when Newt wins, the rest of us get handed the tab for his victory celebration. And the really funny, and rather sad, part is that Newt’s big victory ended with Bill Clinton winning a second term, Newt’s team getting voted off the island, and old Newton himself quitting in dejection.  But, just like that old has-been jock, Newt can’t stop talking about that one time he threw the perfect long pass at homecoming, sure they lost the game and he never played again and he lost his scholarship and his sweetheart left him to date the entire chess club, but man wasn’t that something?

Now, it would be disingenuous to call Gingrich an idiot. He’s anything but – and there’s a fine bit of irony for a millionaire history professor and author with a doctorate from Tulane to be accusing other people of elitism, but again I digress.  He certainly knows his way around Washington, he’s the consummate Washington insider – note that he’s still in the middle of power more than a full decade after he resigned from office.  Conservatives deplore Obama’s supposed arrogance, but flock to a guy like Newt who has yet to take personal responsibility for his own actions – note that he blames his repeated inability to keep his pants zipped on the fact that he just loved America too much.  Personally I don’t care if Newt and the babysitter are playing senior division rodeo clown with the baloney pony, but I heard this exact same bullshit during the Clinton Administration.  And if the stress of office back then couldn’t keep him off the Hypocrisy Express what makes anybody think that the job of President is going to straighten him out? 

It’s a pattern, a well worn groove Newt is well set in, and if he loses this latest bid for power it sure won’t be his fault – he’s got his excuses all lined up and ready to go. 

If American conservatives are truly afraid of “change,” then Newt is their opportunity to get a great big second helping of the 1990’s – and the recently threatened government deadlock and shutdown is something every American better get used to in a Gingrich administration because it’s the only trick this pony knows.

If Newt does win the presidency, maybe he can get John Fogerty to perform Déjà Vu (All Over Again) at the inaugural ball.

But frankly, it sure sounds to me like he thinks he’s already lost.