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...and I'd love to see what's on his “DMD”
From Esquire's “The Politics Blog”
Opinions that are on the fringe everywhere else are in the mainstream here. Issues long since settled are reopened regularly with the prybars of ancient prejudices. (Ron Paul, of all people, comes down here and blames Roe vs. Wade on the 1960's, and quotes John Adams on why the Beatles sent the country to hell in a bucket. Willard Romney, that old smoothie, yells at a heckler while appearing to be channelling Joe McCarthy.) There is no scar tissue down here, only scabs that open, over and over again.Emphasis is mine.
Continuing directly from the same piece.
Willard never really understood this. He never measured the depth of resentment down here and, inevitably, he found it turned against him and he drowned in it. He never saw the diamond-hard identity of the place as an actual opponent. They all came down here talking about the greatness of "America," but they were doing so in the historical home office of national division. In 1780, Tories in this part of the state handed the state back to the British. Fifty-odd years later, John C. Calhoun concocted a theory of American government that nearly came to guns over the tariff, and one that eventually did come to guns over the issue of owning human beings as property. South Carolina didn't ratify the constitutional amendment allowing women's suffrage until 1969. The state's sad history on racial desegregation need not be rehearsed here again, but it was a group of South Carolinians — most notably Harry Dent and, later, Lee Atwater — who invented the method of turning that resistance to racial integration into an anti-government paradigm that made the Republican party a dominant force for over 40 years. Willard Romney was remarkably blind to all of this. He never saw South Carolina as a singular place that is itself alone. He never saw it as anything more than another media market. Goddamn, was he ever wrong.
Romney has a problem: People don't like him. Not only that, but the more people see him, the more they dislike him. The panel on MSNBC was particularly keen on pointing out, as the results came in, that Newt Gingrich's unfavorability ratings in this country at large are whopping, and indeed they are. But Willard's unlikability is of a different sort. It is chronic and general. Gingrich, at least, for the several moments when he goes into highest dudgeon and starts raving about "elites" and Saul Alinsky, can give you a few seconds of pure entertainment for which you might briefly wish to thank him.
Now that the carnival of charlatanism and demagoguery has moved onto Florida, and we are in the middle of another detonation of punditry on the topic of N. Leroy Gingrich, staff-banging former Speaker of the House, Definer of Civilization's Rules and Leader (Perhaps) of the Civilizing Forces, there are a couple of jagged lumps of cold reality out there for you to throw really hard at the hot-air balloons that are going to rise from your television screens over the next two weeks. Newt is going to be credited with "revving up the base" with his "debating skills." Politico today called him "The Master of Disguise," perhaps because "Towering Bullshit Artist" didn't fit the headline space.
To paraphrase Dorothy Parker, that make one want to fwow up... projectilishly.
After all, every single one of the Republican candidates is in favor of right-to-work laws, including Ron Paul, the last hope for progressive politics. And Mitch Daniels is at the very toppermost of the poppermost of all those holy-Christ-these-guys-are-such-a-sack-of-hair lists of people who might save the Republican brand, if only they'd run. David Brooks, for one, has been spurned and regularly is seen weeping over a picture of Mitch in a heart-shaped frame.
The only issues worth discussing are how severely we should rein in this destructive culture, and how to break the power that exaltation of vampires has on our political system. We simply cannot have unregulated laissez-faire capitalism and a functioning self-governing political commonwealth. The two are incompatible. Everything other issue in this campaign is a mere tributary of that torrent of obvious sludge. So that should be the whole debate.
Mr. Romney, please explain in detail how $56 million diverted from safety measures to incentive bonuses really is a victory for all Americans in pursuing their American dream in this, the greatest country on earth and the shining city on the hill.
Mr. Gingrich, please explain in detail why a culture of dependency and moral laxity is inculcated among the poor by $200 a month in food stamps, but why it is not inculcated by millions of dollars of "diverted" funds among the executives of the Pacific Gas and Electric Company.
Mr. Santorum, please explain in detail why two happy gay people who get married is an existential threat to the moral foundation of this country, but sucking up money you gouged out of the ratepayers, allegedly to protect them, is not.
Dr. Paul, please explain in detail why markets work better for all of us when they're unregulated, and why the real solution to an exploding pipeline that kills eight people and wrecks 38 homes is the fact that, because its pipeline killed eight people and wrecked 38 homes, PG&E will suffer a public-relations problem in the marketplace.
I would have preferred "adulterous grifter," but "influence peddler" ain't bad. It's the cleanest, hardest punch you've landed on N. Leroy Gingrich, Definer of Civilization's Rules and Leader (Perhaps) of the Civilizing Forces. And you rocked him just a little there. His rhetoric went fuzzy and his eyes spun just a bit. In the ancient argot of the fight game, I'd say you had him on Queer Street, if I didn't think that would set off another eruption from Rick Santorum.
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