Amusing story about the Gingrich campaign from Jake Tapper:
ABC News has learned that one of the major issues between former Speaker Newt Gingrich and his (now former) senior campaign staff revolves around the myriad projects he and his wife Callista work on, which staffers describe as a constant distraction from the campaign.
Senior staffers demanded that Gingrich focus on pressing the flesh and fundraising and stop touring the country promoting film projects with his wife. At one point Gingrich was so focused on film premiers and book signings, one senior staffer emailed the team: “We didn’t sign up to be hucksters for products for sale.”
Was it really not obvious to everyone that Gingrich knows he will never be President and was just milking this for money? I thought everyone understood this. I understood what was going on the moment he launched the website in March.
Cermet
Repug-a-thugs are the biggest welfare queens sucking off the government tits than any other political class, race, ethic or religious group bar none. Also, they are the least moral – no surprise there, of course.
piratedan
OMG! the cruelty of political players being played by a political player, my gawd, doesn’t Newt realize that peoples lives and careers are tied into these noble efforts? To think, being treated as if they were common citizens like they didn’t matter in the bigger picture.
scav
They’ve established what they are, they’re merely negotiating price. News at 11:00.
Fred
You may have understood Gingrich was just grifting but do you understand Palin is doing the same thing? Did you understand that Chump was doing it as well?
BTW, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed was killed today apparently. Why no blog post about it re-iterating your demand the US get out of all wars now forever because nothing is accomplished and that the US should stop killing terrorists and all that other naive stuff you like to spew.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/11/death-of-al-qaida-activist-fazul-abdullah-mohammed
John Cole
He was killed at a checkpoint in Somalia by Somali troops. What the fuck does this have to do with American military actions in Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq, you simpleton?
atlliberal
Funny, I was just thinking yesterday how much Calista looks like Cindy McCain. Maybe they’re twins?
Yutsano
@atlliberal: Or the same plastic surgeon. It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
JonF
This was funnier:
Valdivia
@JonF:
I saw that one and could not stop laughing.
Yutsano
@Valdivia: Words fail. This idiot led the fucking House at one point. I want off this carnival ride like yesterday.
JGabriel
John Cole:
Republican true-believers are not as cynical as we are about their candidates and other self-chosen ones.
.
Cliff
At one point Gingrich was so focused on film premiers and book signings, one senior staffer emailed the team: “We didn’t sign up to be hucksters for products for sale.”
I love that Mr. Senior Staffer missed an entire decade of Gingrich turning himself into a talking, breathing, shit-ass product to be foisted on the American people through a constant grift campaign.
Here’s your gold star, you dumb fuck, thanks for playing.
Fred
@John Cole: And the other terrorist killing you ignored last week killed by a predator missile. I suppose you will say that one does not count either?
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/12161/us-missile-likely-kills-top-pakistani-al-qaeda-cadre
But if some illiterate villager sympathetic to Al Qaeda was quoted as saying innocent civilians were killed in this latest apparent killing at a checkpoint I’m SURE you would have been all over this story blaming US policy wouldn’t you.
Liberty60
@atlliberal:
What you have noticed is that Callista and Cindy McCain are the “arm candy/ trophy wife” model.
Out here in Hollywood, all “personal assistants”, second/ third wives, “spokesmodels”, “Public Relations” people, etc. are all ordered from Central Casting:
1. Thin
2. Blonde
3. Thin
4. Outfitted with Little black dress
5. Thin
6. Did I mention thin?
Violet
It was amusing to watch Gingrich implode so spectacularly. It’s been so long since he’s run a campaign, it seems he completely forgot he had to, you know, campaign.
Even if you just want to be on the grifty gravy train, you at least have to fake it a bit. Gingrich seemed to think he could jump into the race and then go on vacation for a month and the money would just roll in. Even in GOP Grifterville, that doesn’t work too well.
John Cole
@Fred: I didn’t ignore it, you clown, I just din’t post about it, because as the article you just linked to points out, there is no confirmation, it is “likely” he was killed, and the bodies were burned beyond recognition and then buried.
What a fascinating post that would have been- “US Maybe Kinda Possibly Kills Some Al Qaeda Guy None of You Have Ever Heard Of.”
What is wrong with you? Are you mentally unbalanced? Is it your viewpoint that the political establishment on both sides of the aisl of the United States is insufficiently pro-war? Have you signed up to serve yet?
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
i think the actual lack of support for gingrich outside the media professional political hack and punditry communities actually was a bit stunning to them.
its easy for them to imagine, that gingrich is still a hero, or at least an idea guy, but everything else on the gop side has changed so much in the last 10 years, they are having trouble recalibrating.
JPL
@atlliberal: They certainly look like they use the same drugs. Maybe they visit the same doctor.
Rosali
The aides were not true believers in Gingrich. They also knew that he could not win. They were just collecting paychecks and biding time, padding their resumes, until they could move on to the next campaign.
Violet
@Rosali:
Why would they all resign en masse, though? It draws attention to both Newt’s failing campaign and themselves. If you really want to be a good operative, don’t you quietly take another job and then say things like, “excellent opportunity” and “allows me to be closer to my family” and so forth? Why the mass exodus?
Amir_Khalid
Before anyone wonders too loudly how Newt Gingrich’s senior campaign staff could have been deceived, do remember that it was one of them who put out that fabulously mental press release a few weeks back — you know, the one with the sheep commando-raiding DC cocktail parties and Newt emerging triumphantly from the wreckage?
Now that I think back on it, I suspect it might be a hint as to the emotional state of the campaign staff: a state of extreme denial about Newt’s presidential prospects, as a prelude to final realization of the horrible truth that Newt had conned them about making a serious bid for the presidency.
Suffern ACE
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal: It would be nice if the media people who keep inviting him on the TV would notice his popularity and stop inviting him on to give opinions on issues of the day that he knows nothing about.
Eric U.
I always wondered how people like gingrich could even get staffers. But the real mystery is how Santorum gets staffers. I bet that’s a fun campaign hq to play “evil or stupid?”
Mike in NC
Hey, running multiple con games is damn hard work.
Linda Featheringill
@JonF:
As many as 10,000 Chinese-Americans in Iowa:
Maybe.
http://www.statelibraryofiowa.org/datacenter/Publications/api2011.pdf
JonF
@Valdivia: I’m imagining Newt dreaming what Cartman was dreaming in the episode “The China Probrem”…and I’m dying laughing at it.
Luthe
John, I think you’re forgetting what it’s like being a true believer. Back in the bad old days, would you have doubted Dubya and Cheney’s sincerity? The Gingrich staffers were like that. They honestly thought he was running, not grifting.
They got played.
MikeJ
@Luthe: Iḿ not convinced. Most professional operatives are the last to be true believers. I think they don’t really mind working for a grifter. As people mention upthread though, grifting is hard work. If the front man in your grift isn’t pulling his weight, you replace him. If you can damage him in the process it will help remind other potential front men that you can’t run a grift by yourself.
SRW1
@Violet:
Well, Giuliani 2008 and Thompson 2008 might have induced the misapprehension in Newt that even the faking it needed to be only of the cursory kind.
Rosali
@Violet:
Resigning en masse allows them all to say, “It’s wasn’t me, it was Newt.”. Hanging on til they could get their next gig might mean that they would be tainted with Newt’s failures. Better to get out while the getting is good and blame the failed campaign squarely on Newt and Callista and not on whatever the aides did. Also, I think they were genuinely concerned about whether Newt could keep paying them.
grandpajohn
@Violet: @Violet:
There don’t sem to be much evidence he ever did know how to campaign. Remember he never won a statewide office and the congressional district he represented was heavily conservative so other than perhaps being contested in a primary he never had a real challenge.
grandpajohn
@Violet: @Violet:
There don’t seem to be much evidence he ever did know how to campaign. Remember he never won a statewide office and the congressional district he represented was heavily conservative so other than perhaps being contested in a primary he never had a real challenge.
PhoenixRising
I think the obvious answer is: Anyone dumb enough to think that Newt! might raise enough money to meet payroll in October is dumb enough to work there in June…and send that email.
If you have not worked on a campaign, it’s hard to believe that the combination of dumb and hopeful and greedy can exist in the wild.
Fred
@John Cole: The whole point is that I think YOU are mentally unbalanced. The most dangerous kind. One who does not realize it.
The other part is that you cherry pick stories in order to suit your agenda.
Xof
@Fred: Yeah, I was upset he didn’t run an 8,000 word piece on the San Francisco Municipal Railway labor disputes.
Or something nice about bears. Would it kill him to write something nice about bears once in a while?
Gromitt Gunn (formerly JMC_in_the_ATL)
Maybe it is because I work in Austin, and follow the antics regularly, but it seems obvious to me that they’ll all be working on Perry’s campaign by the end of summer.
El Cid
@Fred: FWIW, this is an odd little blog named “Balloon Juice”.
I can’t speak for others, but I don’t typically turn to this mix of discussion and sarcasm and snark and bitching and moaning and comments sections full of various monomaniacs and party liners and so forth in order to get the best analysis of a range of topics on the world.
A good number of people here had strong and even vituperative debates about military intervention into Libya; but it’s not where I’d turn for intelligent and well-sourced analysis of the topic. Or for matters regarding Central or South America. Or labor struggles throughout the US and the hemisphere. Or soshullist critiques of the reeling international system of financialized, wealth over-concentrating publicly subsidized capitalism.
Mainly, because it’s an odd commentary, snark, discussion, and so forth blog.
Maybe you’re convinced it’s a key link in an ideological chain, and if John or the blog in general can be broken and its threat to the ideological repressive superstructure defeated, there will be a bigger chance of some sort of non-imperialist or less authoritarian economically exploitative national power struggle.
I’m not thinking it quite has that centrality.
If you’re convinced John’s that urgent of a target, a key node in a network of watering down dissent, well, okay, then, keep at it.
Whatever trips your breaker.
JR
He’s not running for President. He’s running to be Dick Cheney. He knows some pastiche of George W. Bush is going to be the nominee, and he’s ready to play the part of the reassuring elder statesman who lets the more moderate Republican voters delude themselves into thinking that a grown-up will be minding the store and it’s okay to vote for this cycle’s nominee regardless of the absolutely insane statements s/he made while seeking the nomination.
Nutella
@Liberty60:
Ordered from Central Casting and somehow created from erstwhile normal people. Pic of Mrs G III before she married Newt where she still looks human.
JBerardi
“Senior staffers demanded that Gingrich focus on pressing the flesh and fundraising…”
Reached for comment, Gingrich responded: “I’ll press your flesh, you dimwitted sumbitch! You don’t tell your pappy how to court the electorate. We ain’t one-at-a-timin’ here. We’re MASS communicating!”