Dave Wiegel, at Slate, has been following Newt Gingrich around Florida this weekend:
LUTZ, Fla. — Newt Gingrich began his day in one the front pews of the Exciting Idlewild Baptist Church, one of the largest non-airport faciilites I’ve ever seen a Starbucks inside of. The speaker, Callista, and his top Florida surrogate Bill McCollum sat, stood, and sang along for a service tied to Sanctity of Life Day…
__
Gingrich wrapped up and found a good place for a receiving line, right in front of the crowded Starbucks. The chatter from the crowd: Respectful of Gingrich, very forgiving of his “moral values.”
__
“I heard Dick Morris say that Republican women don’t like Callista,” scowled Mary Gaulden, who’d hand-made Newt buttons and affixed them to her shirt. “That’s nonsense. I’ve met Callista, and I can tell you she would bring to the White House a kindred spirit to Jacqueline Kennedy.” The speaker and his wife were saved, and penitent, and that was that…
Jacqueline Kennedy? Ah-HAH!
But the real Red(State) meat was distributed later in the afternoon:
… Newt Gingrich was in The Villages. If you needed to design a last redoubt of the Tea Party voter, a place to collect the older, whiter conservatives who make up the movement, you could do no better than a planned community of at least 75,000 people, with a central census-designated zone of around 8,000, where people under 19 can only stay with permission for 30 days. Gingrich pulled more than 1500 people over to the Sumter Park section of the complex. Parking began outside of a Barnes and Noble. It spilled across the street, with souped-up golf carts sharing space with SUVs, fighting for small patches of grass. Representatives of the Tri-County Tea Party passed out brochures, advertising meetings of 2000 people, showing the markings that previous conservative ambassadors had put on them.
__
Gingrich, taking a stage with his wife beside him, spoke for 27 minutes. The text was a splice-up of Tea Party talk and attacks on Mitt Romney — different flavors of the same soup…
__
Gingrich needed the audience’s help, because the Republican establishment was afraid of him, and (implictly) doing damage… “The truth is we have been served badly, the American people, by the establishment of this country in both parties. Let’s be clear about it. In both parties! It’s time someone stood up for hard-working, tax-paying Americans and said, enough! And if that makes the old order uncomfortable, my answer is: Good.”
Name-brand third-party candidate available, for the right price. Although I sure don’t see the ‘sensible centrists’ at American Select accepting The Newt as their spokesmodel.
“I’m delighted that tomorrow Michael Reagan will be campaigning with me,” said Gingrich, “which should tell you how false the ads were earlier this week by Romney, to suggest that I wasn’t a Reagan Republican. Nancy Reagan said in 1995, ‘Just as Barry passed the torch to Ronnie, Ronnie passed the torch to Newt.’ And Michael will be here to prove tomorrow, to every doubting person, I am in fact the legitimate heir of the Reagan movement. Not some liberal from Massachusetts!”
__
Up to now, Gingrich had been calling Romney a “Massachusetts moderate.” The “liberal” tag was new; it was exactly what the Tea Party was longing for.
Rejected-by-his-own-party Ex-Speaker Gingrich: Zombie Reagan’s Heir! In Revenge of the Golfcart Snowbirds, coming to the Hell’s Octoplex this August…
dead existentialist
Time to rethink that whole death panels thing.
John O
Newt Gingrich: Still a dick.
Violet
An older family member of mine lives in The Villages. I wouldn’t peg her as a Tea Party type, but I could be wrong about that.
jl
I read LUTZ, Fla, and LULZ, Fla, and thought it was going to be a prank. But, sadly, no.
The Villages place sound creepy. Won’t catch me there, day or night. Sounds like it is a one of our reptilian overlords’ replicant hideouts, or maybe its hainted with spirrts. Or just, very weird.
The phrase ‘establishment’ is coming up with Newt. Is them The Villages poeple, ex DFH, who have gone even more bad?
I wonder if there is ‘The Villages People’ pop group. Would be interesting to see bitter old white people sing and dance.
Martin
3rd party? Half the GOP hates Romney, who is the face of the party. They hate Congress too. When the party’s establishment approval rating is as low as the GOPs is, you can actually win the party vote by running against the party leadership.
It’s like the Domino’s ad campaign that ran a while back: “Holy fuck did our pizza suck cock! Did you taste that shit? Please buy our new pizza.”
Violet
@Martin:
If their pizzas had actually done this, Domino’s would have sold a lot more of them.
Suffern ACE
I hope I’m never sucked into one of those “Adult Communities.” I wonder if there is a Village child catcher to find those contraband youth.
John O
@Violet:
Perhaps it’s because I’m up way past my bedtime, but that really made me laugh. Because it’s true.
Martin
People never appreciate that the most important part of a joke isn’t the punchline, it’s the setup.
John O
I hope Newt, realizing the grifting potential in a drawn out primary battle, stays in it until the bitter end, hurling grenades at Romney. It would all be good news for John McCain.
chrome agnomen
@Violet:
could be that’s what led the hermanator to become godfather ceo.
jl
@John O: I heard the Word of Newt on the radio machine just three hours ago or so.
Listen up peoples! Newt sayeth that the true conservatives Newton himself and Rih Anhorumh, have more combined support than Romney.
So if the Rih is not prudent enough to step aside for the World Historical Figure in our midst, well, Newt will stride the blast, and take it to the convention anyway for the final reckoning.
And I think that would just be mighty fine, swell, and terrific, really.
I think Romney’s ratings will dive as more people are exposed to his style. As I said before, he comes off as a bad swindler breaking out in a flop sweat and getting angry with the mark who doesn’t quite believe the pitch.
Most successful politicians are good orators. Take your FDR, your Reagan, your Clinton, our Obama.
Willard is more like a hectorator.
You can see him going ‘Aw hector, I don’t think they believe this BS’ inside his head. And he comes off like he is trying to intimidate and threaten, in his manner and subtext.
I think that is because that is what he was trained to do as a take over artist at Bain. After the deal closes, you have them by their money, and you can start intimidating, with a smile. I think Romney has internalized that down into his bones. He cannot ‘maintain’ all the way to the election. His limbic reflex center tells him that the deal should be closed by now and he can start with the heavy manners on the marks, who can’t do much. But long election campaigns do not work that way. The deal is closed after election day.
srv
What’s up with Nancy? Michael spiking her meds?
jl
@srv: I think you conflated the the Words of Newt with the Words of Nancy. Newt was quoting (quoting in Newt’s not so humble opinion) Nancy from 17 years ago. I wonder of Nancy Reagan ever said such a thing. I cannot believe either Reagan would be so daft. But maybe she was mocking him.
Anyone know?
The prophet Nostradumbass
What’s the newly-minted Catholic Newton Leroy Gingrich doing in a Baptist church?
John O
@jl:
I think that’s a pretty good take, jl. Romney has been so programmed in so many ways since such a young age he just doesn’t seem to have a core, and I think people sense it. This is good:
srv
So apparently she doesn’t hold a grudge for Newt referring to the Iceland summit as “Hitler-Chamberlain”
huffingtonpost.com/huff-radio/both-sides-now-newt-reagan_b_1240626.html
Chris
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Newt Gingrich is as loyal to his churches as to his wives, methinks.
just me
There is a simple, non-creepy reason for the age restrictions in communities like “The Villages”. It’s taxes and schools. Residential communities that can guarantee that no children will be added to the local school system can often be zoned in where normal residential populations cannot.
paramedicx
Frank Lutz, FL.
Chris
@srv:
Funny how we forget the little things. Like how we now remember Reagan as a total God Of Conservatism who totally had a plan to bring down the Soviet Union and was on top of things the entire time.
As opposed to the second half of the 1980s, when the hard right kept looking at the evidence that the Soviets were falling to pieces, screaming “It’s a trap!” and denouncing anyone who, like Reagan, was dumb enough to fall for it as a communist agent.
Anne Laurie
@just me:
Well, except that it leads to the distinctly creepy (and, I would argue, un-American) scenario where the post-childrearing Elders in “The Villages” refuse to support the existing schools, because “Our kids are done, and we don’t care whether other peoples’ kids get a decent education”… frequently with an extra dollop of “those trailer-trash spawn of unwed teenager sluts / illegals who don’t even speak English / ghetto minority thugs in a holding pattern until they’re old enough for juvie”, depending on location and personal prejudice. No matter how you remember it now, Gramps, other people paid towards your education, and if you think you got shorted on that bargain, the self-respecting thing would be not to cheat the rising generation.
Calouste
Sounds like exactly the right length for when you’re addressing the Tea Party.
Chuck Butcher
@Anne Laurie:
Class of ’71 in Central Ohio and I was not cheated and neither were my fellows in that school. 9-12, 900 students with a choice of 4 languages, 4 choices of musical instrument organizational styles, 2 choices of vocal, various ‘clubs’, and anything from voc ed to top level college prep. Sr Adv Math was freshman collegiate level calculus and advanced algebra, 2nd yr Chem & Bio were collegiate level entry courses, same across lib arts courses. It wasn’t cheap to do and the results were born out in ACT/SAT, Nat Merit, college rankings of acceptances, job placements, etc. The graduating class list of college acceptances read like a who’s who of top Universities – straight up public educational system.
FYIGM should be completely foreign to this country…
Spence
Well, Mrs. Kennedy turned a blind eye to adultery in the White House; I wouldn’t be surprised if the third Mrs Gingrich carries on her legacy in that manner. Poor Zhack-leen! Callista looks like a dessicated Jackie-O drag queen.
Mike S.
Summers, Geithner, Emmanuel, Daley, Lew…
plus Obama’s transition to office team was a bunch of Citigroup schmucks.
Barack Obama campaigned on letting the Bush tax cuts expire (for the top 2%), yet once in office he remained silent on that issue ’till the very week the bill was to expire. In the run up (ie when it mattered), the President was MIA.
Bowels-Simpson? Entitlement Reform? Ahahahah! The Presidents cronies are gunning for Medicare and Social Security. Obama is no new-dealer, Obama is not a progressive!
Clinton signed Gramm-Leach-Bliley.
DiFi’s husband, Dick Blum, uses UC’s money to invest in his own businesses and acts like he doesn’t understand when the people complain about it. The UC was buying mortgage backed securities in 2007… did our financially sophisticated Regents get taken for a ride? No. Regent Gould was formerly Senior VP at Wachovia… looks like the Big Banks unloaded garbage paper on the UC.
So, yes, both parties.
BGK
So the Newt’s appearance with the lesser Reagan reisdue will be this afternoon within walking distance of my office. I wonder if anyone at work will front my bail money?
Regarding the Villages and school taxes: Florida school districts are all county-based, and school property taxes are levied at the county level. Doesn’t matter if it’s 55-and-over only, or a development patterned after “Logan’s Run,” everyone gets levied the same millage, no exceptions.
MikeJ
@Mike S.: You’re a fucking moron. Show me where Obama’s “cronies” have had the slightest effect on Medicare.
The tax cuts for the rich? Yeah, Obama wanted to get rid of them, but they were the price paid for continuing unemployment insurance. You already know that though, you just neglect to mention it because you’re a fucking liar, or a fucking moron, or both.
Emerald
@MikeJ: Not just unemployment insurance. He also got START and the repeal of DADT in that deal, including some other major goodies. I think the payroll tax deduction was in that deal too.
The critics don’t realize that those tax cuts were going to be extended anyway, because if we’d let the middle class ones expire it would have pushed the economy into a dive. So they were going to be extended. The Republicans wanted ten years for the top brackets. Obama got ’em down to two years, with all those other goodies thrown in.
And the looney left says he can’t negotiate. He’s cleaned their clocks every time.
Samara Morgan
May i remind you that Dave Weigel voted Paultard in 2008 and is still a “libertarian”?
If hes sneering at Newt its only to elevate his own personal brand of insanity.
dance around in your bones
There is something so sad about this…’hand-made Newt buttons’; I mean….really?
geg6
If Newt and Calista are “saved,” they are in deep shit with the Catholic Church, sorry to say. Rome tells us that Catholics are saved when they are baptized, but it is not the same as the “saved” that Protestant evangelicals mean. And to undergo the Protestant evangelical version of being saved would be a major heresy.
Of course, it’s all bullshit anyway, but I’m going to taunt my wingnut Catholic acquaintances with this. They will scramble to find some sort of theological justification for it, but there is none. Catholic dogma says no fucking saving by heretics. Period.
Professor
Why is it that consevatives always live in the past? Why can’t they look to the future? We always hear about the ‘good old days’ but good for whom? Please somebody put me out of my misery!
Southern Beale
I read that dateline as “LOLZ, FL” not “LUTZ.” I think mine was more accurate.
Southern Beale
@jl:
Just saw your comment.
We both need more coffee.
Southern Beale
This is so funny, I nearly crapped my pants: Sarah Palin telling her fans to vote for Newt if for no other reason than to …
dmsilev
@Southern Beale: Clearly, Palin is in tune with the conservative zeitgeist.
Linda Featheringill
Newt is running against The Establishment? Does that make him a disestablishmentarian? He converted to Catholicism and embraced disestablishmentarianism?
kay
@Mike S.:
He actually campaigned on two things there.
The other thing was that he wouldn’t raise taxes on those making less than 250k a year.
I just think it’s interesting that the second part is never mentioned.
jeffreyw
@Linda Featheringill: His disestablishmentarianism is entirely situational. I’m sure he is, in his heart, an antidisestablishmentarian.
Shalimar
@jl: Nancy Reagan did actually say it, though Gingrich leaves off the part after his name where she said “Newt and the other congressional Republican leaders”. She was also speaking in 1995, when Newt was at the height of his power, before Clinton’s reelection. I suspect that since then she has regretted saying anything complimentary about the narcissistic blowhard.
kay
@Mike S.:
Just want to correct the record there. Howard Dean endorsed Daley for Chief of Staff.
Dean’s endorsement was based solely on the fact that Howard Dean knows Daley personally, and likes and trusts him.
Linda Featheringill
@jeffreyw:
:-)
ant
In a church?
I wonder how the flying sked monster feel about that.
Seem otta place in my mind. but I aint been to church since I was a teenager.
weird.
Donut
@kay
And whaddaya know, a whole bunch more votes can be found in the under 250k brackets. Gosh, why would Barack Obama “cave” on the cuts to the top brackets like that?
DanielX
What is that sound I hear at places like the Villages? It is the sound of demographic desperation. Every now and then we do get desperate (h/t to J. Geils Band) and these folks are more desperate than most. Newt is telling them what they want to hear, but the background noise says the next two or three elections will be the swan song of the Republican party unless the party broadens its appeal (impossible given wingnut influence) or elected Republicans resort to wholesale disenfranchisement (partially accomplished already).
kay
@Donut:
I had such a funny conversation with an 80 year old man here, who was yelling at me because Obama hasn’t raised taxes on the rich.
He was in the front seat of a car and I was in the back seat, and I just listened to the whole rant (really long) and then reminded him about the second half of the promise. He remembered that.
He was good, actually. He accepted that this might be a complication he hadn’t considered, and we were both wondering why the second half of what was often a single sentence is never mentioned.
Wasn’t that the entire focus of the Joe the Fake Plumber incident? Under 250k?
Doug
I read somewhere that The Villages were the STD capitol of the country. How about no taxpayer support for STD treatment?
liberal
@kay:
But the Summers and Geithner criticism is dead on.
polyorchnid octopunch
Just a quick point: snowbirds are by definition Canadian, which means they don’t vote… and besides, all of the Canadians I know (which is quite a few, given that I am one) thinks that Dog on Car is off his nut, let alone Revolting Amphibian.
Southern Beale
TN’s most notorious homophobic state senator, Stacey Campfield — author of our “don’t say gay” bill and recently in the news for claiming heteros only “rarely” catch AIDs/HIV — was refused service at a Knoxville restaurant. The proprietor said he wanted Stacey to know how it feels to be unfairly discriminated against.
Right wingers are having a hissy fit, calling it hypocrisy and everything else. So NOT.
kay
@liberal:
I just object to the implication that Obama is somehow outside the Democratic Party.
He isn’t. One can object to Obama, and one can object to the Democratic Party, but setting Obama somehow outside the mainstream of the Democratic Party is nonsense.
The Democratic Party exists. It’s a collection of individuals. It isn’t a theory. Obama is squarely in the center of that group of individuals, ideologically.
To me, it’s exactly like the conservatives who say one or another person isn’t a “real” Republican. They’re not dealing with what is. They might have a better theory for the Republican Party, but the Party they describe does not actually exist.
The truth is Howard Dean has always trumpeted being a tightwad, as far as budgeting. Always. But that doesn’t fit within the current frame of his being a “progressive”, so we never mention it.
Dean liked Daley, because he knows Daley. So does that make Daley a “crony” of Deans? I don’t know, but I would suggest that these things are interrelated and complicated.
Unsympathetic
Newt Gingrich: The Reagan you always wanted to remember, with none of the no-good reality-based decisions you wanted to forget!
Gingrich/Ryan – winning!
Egg Berry
What does “crony” even mean? Is it like “czars”? Just another demeaning term that has no value except for bomb-throwing?
Shawn in ShowMe
@kay:
An 80 year old man who is angry that the President hasn’t raised taxes on the rich? I don’t think this is the type of angry white man accounted for in Rasmussen polling. Bless his heart.
Long term, the introduction of class warfare into the public consciousness may be the significant development of the last four years. This is an example of how the bully pulpit is supposed to work — the people hit the streets (OWS), and the Prez follows their lead by hammering the class issue home on the campaign trail.
kay
@liberal:
Where’s Howard Dean in the Democratic Party?
I just want to stay tethered to reality. Both Obama and Dean are Democrats.
kay
@Shawn in ShowMe:
Well, yeah, but it’s self-interested, because he’s worried about Medicare, but still.
It’s good he’s looking to revenue :)
Frankensteinbeck
@kay:
No, this meme is far less fair and more blind than that. Obama has been anything but kind to bankers and hedge managers and the rich in general. Wall street reform, creating the meme that the rich aren’t paying their fare share, new regulations on industries across the board – Obama’s actions prove this entire ‘he works for Wall Street’ meme is bullshit. Their evidence is that he has Wall Street people on his staff. If on the one hand his actions have always been hard on bankers, and on the other hand he knows a few, anybody who thinks he’s owned by the banks is engaging in conspiracy theory.
Hell, Mike S brought up Simpson-Bowles. Anyone who so much as mentions them seriously needs to be dismissed as a deranged paranoid. Obama’s had the best opportunities any president has ever had to gut the safety net, and instead he expanded the Hell out of it and gave a major speech about how everything they’d recommended was immoral.
There is no there there on these accusations. They consist of wishes he’d destroyed people he’s already waged war on, and purist paranoia that having experts on your staff means you secretly worship causes they may not even have.
kay
@Frankensteinbeck:
I can’t stand this one in particular, though, because it reminds me so much of the Right.
“They’re not real Republicans!”
Yeah, actually, they are.
What conservatives are objecting to is the reality of the Republican Party. There is no alternate Republican Party. There’s just the one. I’ll grant them a sort of aspirational Republican Party, one that could conceivably be better if it had wholly different members, but that Party does not, in fact, exist.
To me, one can’t get to aspirational or “better” w/out starting at reality. They skipped a step.
kay
@Frankensteinbeck:
A lot of these themes, I think, are based on omissions.
One example that drives me crazy is “Obamacare is exactly like Romneycare”
It is if you don’t include 9 million poor people. They leave Medicaid expansion out. I’ve come around to thinking it’s better if we leave Medicaid out, because there’s no real political support for helping poor people, so better we all just ignore that and hope no one notices, but still, that’s a rather LARGE omission, 9 million people.
kay
@Frankensteinbeck:
I was laughing in the last GOP debate, because Santorum kept saying Romneycare was Obamacare, and that characterization relies on a giant omission, Medcaid expansion, but I decided it works in my favor if we don’t discuss poor people AT ALL, it’s better if any poor people help goes completely under the media radar, so I’m sitting there, cheering him on.
“Go! GREAT comparison!”
I think I’d rather they discuss the imaginary health care law rather than the real health care law :)
Frankensteinbeck
@kay:
It’s a bigger omission than that. The expansion of health care is a wonderful thing, but it’s the tip of the iceberg. The iceberg is two thousand pages of regulations to bring health care costs into line, most of which put the insurance industry in a vice.
All the major anti-Obama narratives are based on ignoring the man’s historically great record while taking a few actions out of context so that they SOUND bad. It’s so extreme that I can’t criticize him at all, because there’s no way to sort out anything he’s actually bad about from the bullshit lies and misrepresentations used to attack him.
Frankensteinbeck
@kay:
I’ll give them this, he absolutely did not find a way to overcome congress’s scarily, inexplicably unanimous desire to keep Guantanamo open and block any legal justice in any way. I can’t see anything he could have done against the kind of 90-8 majorities that laugh at a veto threat, but hey, he did fail.
kay
@Frankensteinbeck:
Oh, I agree. It’s just that these things can (occasionally!) work to our advantage.
Santorum doesn’t know what it’s in the health care law, and either does Wolf Blitzer, and thank goodness for that!
Finally, we catch a fucking break :)
Shalimar
@Egg Berry: Not sure about everywhere else, but in old-style Alabama politics “crony” had a specific meaning. It was a non-elected official who supported the governor and did all the dirty work of getting him elected and getting his policies passed. In return, the cronies got rich from rigged contracting deals.
George Wallace’s cronies were very proud of their status. It probably started as an insult, but they used it in their favor when talking with voters and even reporters.
phoebes-in-santa fe
@Shawn in ShowMe: Hey, I’m a little old lady myself and in the top 3% and I am furious the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy were extended. I don’t pay enough in taxes so I am especially generous in donating what I would have paid in real taxes to charites for animals and children.
Becoming older sometimes makes a person more aware of the inequities in life and more appreciative for what they themselves are fortunate to have. And for the need to “pay it both BACK and FORWARD”.
JGabriel
Dave Weigel via Anne Laurie @ Top:
As a raised, though inactive and agnostic, Papist, Catholics don’t do “Jesus Saves”. We do conversions, and they’re slow, with lots of reading and priest-talking. Ask Newt.
If Newt & Callista have been “saved”, I think their bishop might have some problems with that.
That said, it’s not a quote from anyone, and is probably just Weigel’s woefully wrong interpretation. If Weigel’s not Catholic, he probably isn’t aware of the sniffy & snobbish attitude of disdain most Catholics have for the sudden and impulsive nature of a “Jesus Save”.
Also, what geg6 said — with the caveat that it’s probably Weigel’s error, not Gingrich’s.
.
JGabriel
Dave Weigel via Anne Laurie @ Top:
Whoa. Is that legal?
.
shortstop
All, right, AL; I stand corrected on the Jackie wannabeism.
liberal
@kay:
Where did “Mike S.” imply Obama was outside the mainstream of the Democratic Party?
What’s your evidence for that?
liberal
@Frankensteinbeck:
No, actually, “their” evidence is that in terms of policy and actual actions, Obama has not been hard on the banksters.
RedKitten
The irony is that a sizeable percentage of the residents of The Villages are Canadian. I know of at least five couples in my mom’s generation who go down there after Christmas and stay until April. And that’s just within my small circle of acquaintances.
Scott P.
I just saw an astonishing statistic over at Sully’s place. In the 2008 Florida Republican primary, 75% of Republican voters were over 45, and 44% were over 60. I know Florida is where conservatives go to retire, but daaayum.
stinger
“Name-brand third-party candidate available, for the right price.” LOL – you’ve nailed it. Third-party allows him to continue to run/grift without any risk of actually becoming President.
I’m fascinated by the notion that Callista is “penitent”. Has she publicly repented for her 6-year affair with a married man?
I’m also fascinated by Baptists embracing Catholics, who, as all Baptists knew when I was young, are going to hell.
Anne Laurie
@polyorchnid octopunch:
I believe our Canadian neighbors invented the concept, but now even the Boston newscasters use it for New Englanders (mostly retirees) who spend their winters down in Florida. So do the ‘snowbirds’ I’ve met. And it’s not just regional, because it’s also widely used in upper lower Michigan (around Traverse City), where the tourism industry makes a big chunk of its profits on snowbirds between Memorial Day and Thanksgiving.
Newtron Bomb
I am the true heir to
Vladimir IlyichSaint Ronnie. Just read histestamentdiary.gnomedad
Enemies of the Heir Beware!