(Jeff Danziger’s website)
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Via TPM, the most honest man in Iowa:
When a man in a camouflage coat grabs your hand in an Iowa grocery store and calls you ‘a fucking asshole’ to your face, it might be time to take stock of your position in the state.
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For Newt Gingrich, who was on the receiving end of the unorthodox greeting Tuesday, it was a sign that his campaign is returning to earth after having rocketed since Herman Cain’s collapse…
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And for your further entertainment, I suggest Jonathan Chait’s dissection of “The Brilliance of Newt Gingrich“:
What makes Newt Gingrich so entertaining is that he is able to combine an adolescent arrogance with a childlike capacity to live in the exact moment, with no sense of the past or the future. Everything is always perfectly obvious, even when it is the exact opposite of what he believed before. He can toggle between perfectly obvious conclusions at will…
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Perhaps the best comic touch is his droll observation about the effect of negative ads. A few weeks ago Gingrich declared he was almost certain to win the primaries because – duh! – he was ahead in the polls:It’s very hard not to look at the recent polls and think that the odds are very high I’m going to be the nominee. And by the way I don’t object if people want to attack me, that’s their right. All I’m suggesting that it’s not going to be very effective and that people are going to get sick of it very fast.
Obviously Newt was going to win! Look at the polls! And of course negative ads would not do anything to change those polls. Except now it is perfectly clear that the opposite is the case. For a self-styled historian and futurist, Gingrich has an unusually poor grasp of both the past and the future. He prefers to reside in a present in which he sees everything with perfect clarity.
Maybe there’s the germ of a new campaign slogan there: Vote Newt — the perfect candidate for our modern Idiocracy!
Villago Delenda Est
Yes. If by “it”, that is, the thing they become sick of, you mean “Newt Gingrich”.
dmsilev
So, this means that Ron Paul is now the official Not-Romney of the moment?
Good times, good times.
JGabriel
As I noted in an earlier thread, what makes “fucking asshole” such an apt description for Gingrich is what you get when you literalize it: an aggressively thrusting hollow shit egress, which is to say, what the GOP calls “a man of ideas”.
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Benjamin Franklin
Newt !
The Gift of Christmas present, past and future.
Huzzah !
JGabriel
BTW, Anne Laurie, you might want to add a link to Newt’s latest favor to Democrats: urging gay people to vote for Obama.
We’ll be happy to take those votes, Newt.
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gnomedad
“He arouses passions in people.” Right. Because he’s a fucking asshole.
aimai
I think this is absurd. It shows nothing but that the big money knives are out for Newt and will use anything to crush him. Do you think for one minute that hundreds of anti Obama people haven’t seized the moment when they were on a rope line with him to tell him the same thing? That’s basically what Joe the Plumber did when he had a chance to shake Obama’s hand.
This is not news. Fucking asshole isn’t a “cleanup in aisle 4” campaign moment.
A nice christian lady shaking her fist at Newt and saying “You cheated on three women and divorced your wife while she was in the hospital with cancer. I’m a Catholic and I won’t vote for you. Good luck with the Evangelicals if you can fool them with your shtick.” Now that would be some good TV. This not only means nothing it wasn’t even an exciting clip since they had to bleep out what was essentially a two word slur. The only reason this rose to the top of the clip file is that they will do anything to take Newt down before the end of the primary.
I would like them all to DIAF but this is not a sign of anything but the fix is in.
aimai
chopper
@JGabriel:
of course. newt only engages his mistresses.
JGabriel
@gnomedad:
I love how “passions” has become the euphemism du jour for “anger bordering on violence”.
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Hungry Joe
Seriously, it’s just getting weirder and weirder in GOP Land. Usually I have at least a vague notion of how I think some political situation might play out, but I’m throwing up my hands, throwing in the towel, just throwing … up. I can’t even come up with some faintly likely scenario and then declaim it in an authoritative voice as if I knew what I was talking about (which is my standard m.o.), because every single scenario seems less than faintly likely.
Tone In DC
@aimai:
I can appreciate your opinion, but Newt can self destruct just fine without the big money guys. No different than Cain the serial philanderer/harasser/general malfeasant. These guys take themselves out a goodly amount of the time.
Punchy
@JGabriel: I’d love to see the Log Cabin Republicans’ response to this. I’m sure it’ll be more of the Domestic Violence Excuse….”he’ll change! I know he will! I love him no matter what!”
Benjamin Franklin
What you miss is he’s using their donor money, not ours. When it comes to Newt, the question from the DNCC should be “What have you done for us, lately?”
Amir Khalid
@chopper:
Shorter Noot: “I don’t want your vote, you f*gg*t, now fuck off!”
Truly, this man has the common touch. The presidency is his for the asking.
Monkey Business
What ever happened to the days when people had greatness thrust upon them, when the universe and fate called of them their reluctant service?
rikyrah
This dude is my hero.
tell it
JWL
The guy who insulted Gingrich looks like he votes republican. Assuming he is, it makes me wonder- if he thinks Gingrich is an asshole, which candidate does he support? Because one of them will be the nominee, and they’re all walking-talking cuckoo clocks.
Judas Escargot
So this means that Newt’s peculiar retro-brand of 1930s Catholic Fascism was in fashion for what? Two weeks?
So now, on to 1964 with Ron Paul (who, IMO, is really just a cunningly rebranded Bircher).
MarkJ
HaHa! It’s funny because it’s true!
MarkJ
@Benjamin Franklin: Did you mean the Grift of Christmas past, present and future?
carpeduum
This is not entertaining at all. I luv me some Newt. He’s the man who should get the nomination I say….if any teabagger asked me.
However, I think I will find plenty to be entertained with in the latest shooting star.
Anyone else notice how Ron Paul looks like the Disney 7 dwarfs character Dopey?
Frankensteinbeck
@Judas Escargot: and @dmsilev:
No way. I don’t know what’s going to happen with the GOP nomination. I’ve taken every candidate seriously, because 2009 demonstrated that the GOP establishment is terrified of the primary-voting base, and 2010 proved why. Ron is DOA. He has the hardcore libertarian vote, which means the obsessives who will pack one vote and then decide their work here is done. That’s ALL he has. He’s not a Republican, and everybody knows it. He’s a vehicle to deliver Libertarian votes, and that’s all.
Paul in KY
@JWL: I wondered about that too. Maybe ‘fucking asshole’ is a term of endearment. Like ‘By God, I want my man to be a fucking asshole up there & get some stuff done!’.
Either way, it is a true statement when applied to the Newtster.
Laertes
Great. Now every dumbshit cracker in wingnuttia will be looking to get his fifteen minutes by shouting obscenities at politicians in front of cameras.
Newt Gingrich is indeed a fucking asshole, but that doesn’t excuse acting like an incoherent tantrum-throwing child when you get a moment to talk to him, and acting like this was some kind of “have you finally no shame” moment is a shabby display of immaturity from newsfolk who outta know better.
If the best you can do to describe Newt Gingrich’s failings is “fucking asshole” then you should spend less time running your idiot mouth in public and more time reading people who know how to organize their thoughts.
Judas Escargot
@Frankensteinbeck:
I don’t expect Ron Paul to win the GOP nomination: He might win Iowa. He might even win NH. Then he’ll fizzle once we get to the Southern States.
I wish folks would stop letting Ron Paul call himself a “Libertarian” though: That whole womb-as-property thing kind of excludes him from modern Libertarianism.
He’s a racist, a corporatist, and a neo-Bircher. Think of him as the echo of 1964’s Goldwater.
someofparts
I know zombie armageddon is due any day. For now though I have Christmas cookies, a delicious Newt takedown and, did I mention I babysit dogs overnight at a chic intown kennel, and Jack (the world’s biggest, sweetest Great Dane) is staring at me through the big window in the office as I type this? Does it get any better? I think not!