angrydragon
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The GOP in Limbo: How Low Can You Go? (Newt Gingrich is a disaster) by Jeff Taylor
Long article, but worth the read. Here are parts of it.
http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2012/01/the-gop-in-limbo-how-low-can-you-go-2/
Sioux Center, Iowa. The Republican Party managed to accomplish three amazing things last week, in the course of two debates and one election. It revealed a bloodlust that easily trumps concern for personal character and social morality. It scorned a fundamental teaching of Jesus Christ. It showed that the only thing that really matters to the party is the perceived ability to beat Barack Obama in the November election. At least those were the messages sent by South Carolina Republicans. Not by all, but by many if not most. We can hope they are unrepresentative of the party as a whole.
Yes, the crowd actually booed the golden rule of Jesus Christ. You could argue they were booing Ron Paul, but it was Paul’s proposal that U.S.foreign policy be guided by the golden rule that elicited the booing. The apostle Paul, archangel Michael, or Jesus himself could have been on the stage and they would have gotten the same reaction. It was the message, not the messenger, that outraged the audience. The crowd reaction to the militaristic, hateful pandering of a group of chicken hawks was shameful in the extreme. Sadly, it’s the norm for purportedly Bible-believing Christians so it barely raised an eyebrow.
The rank-and-file who sit in the pew are another. Laurence Vance and Bill Anderson over at LewRockwell.com do their best to coax fellow evangelicals into a more biblical and rational approach to politics, but such voices seem to have little effect. I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no group more naive in U.S. politics than Christians. The more sincere the Christian, the more naive. This is true for whites and blacks, evangelicals and modernists, charismatics and fundamentalists, Protestants and Catholics. It doesn’t matter. Committed Christians did not enter politics in an organized, self-conscious way until the 1970s and our inexperience shows. Our gullibility is gigantic. Both major parties take their most loyal voters—white Christians for the Republicans and black Christians for the Democrats—for granted because their votes can always be counted on, regardless of how little policy action they receive in return. The parties actively court and repay swing voters, not the loyal base. Just as black Democrats are lucky to get a few crumbs from the table of power under a Democratic president, evangelical Republicans receive promises on the campaign trail and are then ignored for the next four years when a Republican is in the White House.
I like aspects of both the Religious Right and the Religious Left but both tend to place their faith in faithless politicians who cynically exploit our idealism, make promises they have no intention of keeping, and take Christian support for granted because they know true believers won’t vote for the other party—no matter how disappointed they become—because the other party has been successfully demonized. It’s the boogeyman approach. Vote Republican or the Democrats will get you! And vice versa. Last week, 78,000 South Carolinians (Christian and not) rose above the politics-as-usual theater of illusion. They recognized quality, and an echo of God’s truth, in Ron Paul. That’s something. But not enough to win an election.
Let’s turn to the winner of the latest election. The new darling of the Religious Right is the thrice-married bloviator and million-dollar Freddie Mac historian Newt Gingrich. An unlikely pairing in some ways, but quite likely in others.
Gingrich is a bully. Someone needs to give him a smackdown in the upcoming debates—fair but firm. The equivalent of the excoriation Christ gave to the Pharisees, or, to take a less divine but more recent example, the hard-hitting “serial hypocrite” ad used by the Paul campaign to deflate Gingrich in Iowa. Romney is too much of a milquetoast to do it. Despite his passionate views, Paul is too much of a gentleman to aggressively go after an opponent in person. [sigh, it's true, Ron needs to be assertive]
Exploiting the unfocused rage held by Republicans against the mainstream media, which is seen as being in the corner of the hated Obama, Gingrich has given the media talking heads repeated pokes in the eye during the debates. Gingrich does it with ease and it has yielded rich dividends in cheers and votes. But it’s contentless. It neglects to mention that the ostensibly “liberal” media has never met a war it hasn’t liked and that it shares the foundational economic and foreign policies of every Republican president. It ignores Fox News’ comparable propaganda and manipulation on behalf of the Republican establishment. It also overlooks the fact that Gingrich, as president, would not be much different from Obama (based on his record). So we have the opportunity to exchange Pepsi for Coke. That tiny difference is enough to get many Republicans worked into a frenzy.
They can see Romney’s centrist opportunism for what it is. They can’t see the presence of the exact same thing in Gingrich because he speaks conservative platitudes with such force and bashes Obama and his media friends with such aplomb. It’s all style, no substance. Just like Obama. Ironically enough. (If GOP voters really want to stick it to the corporate press, they should vote for Congressman Paul, who is ignored/ridiculed/attacked by the entire lot, from MSNBC to Fox, from AP to CBS.)
Gingrich is a master of righteous indignation although he’s far better at being indignant than being righteous. Like his political twin Bill Clinton, Gingrich is a good liar because he’s shameless. There are few politicians who can lie with more vigor.
Gingrich is a dangerous man. I have little respect for Romney, but, on a personal level, he’s a doofus at worst. Gingrich is in a whole different category, which is why he makes the GOP establishment nervous. They have no policy differences with him, and they recognize that his anti-Bain rhetoric is just demagoguery, but they know that the reckless Gingrich could self-destruct at any moment, bringing a rockslide down on himself and, by extension, closing the path by which they can return to power. This explains the wariness of Karl Rove, the elected party hacks, and their ilk. It’s not about principle.
What would Gingrich do as president? Anything is possible. We can be confident it would be neither conservative nor Christian (as defined by Kirk and Christ, respectively). He might well wreak havoc on a national scale like his heroes Wilson and FDR or perhaps on a global scale like Hitler (a fellow intellectual with a gravely-deficient moral compass).
Gingrich and other power elitists describe Paul’s foreign policy as “dangerous” because he favors defense at home and peace abroad. To me, it’s far more dangerous when unbridled arrogance and ambition are combined with immense power. That is what you would have with President Gingrich. When you’re convinced that you’re the smartest person in the room and that you’re not subject to the rules that apply to others, you embody great danger.
Gingrich is in a position to say anything and everything. When you’re not constrained by truth or conscience, all bets are off. Nothing is too absurd. This is why the debate crowds gave him standing ovations. Watching his performance in crushing John King’s opening question at the CNN debate, fueled by fake outrage, and watching the audience’s pavlovian response, was surreal. Both elements seemed staged in some way—not only Gingrich’s theatrics but also the crowd’s hysterical enthusiasm.
Dear Religious Right, From here on out, please spare us the prattle about family values and the unborn. Just as Gingrich’s fellow draft-dodger Dick Cheney had “other priorities” that precluded a stint in the jungles of Vietnam, you have other priorities when it comes to politics. Dobson and Bauer have endorsed Rick Santorum, for the time being, but when Santorum drops out, is there is any reason to think that the grand poobahs of Republican evangelicalism won’t endorse Newt Gingrich over Ron Paul? If Gingrich flops, eventually they’ll end up supporting Romney over Paul. Paul is too dangerous. He’s been married to the same woman for over half-a-century, he sincerely opposes Roe v. Wade, he supports the Defense of Marriage Act, and he’s the only evangelical Christian still in the race. But he’s pro-peace! That’s the unpardonable sin for this group of Christians.
Gingrich is a convert. All is forgiven. Or so he says. I don’t believe Gingrich’s conversion-to-God story. He doesn’t bear the marks of repentance. First and foremost, and most obviously, he’s stuffed full of pride. Pride is the original sin, the very sin of Lucifer that pre-dates the fall of Adam. With Gingrich, there’s no recognizable humility, no meekness of spirit, no sense of common humanity. Instead, there’s a continued and continuous display of braggadocio, coupled with dishonesty and thuggishness. A failed professor (denied tenure) and failed leader of the House (forced out of office when caught committing adultery with a young staffer and when his GOP colleagues tired of his self-promoting/party-injuring shtick), Gingrich retains his inflated self-image. Impervious to reality and possessing the snake oil salesman’s ability to convince the simple, he routinely compares himself to Churchill and other iconic figures. He is sure he has a rendezvous with destiny as the transformative agent of our age. We often deceive ourselves before we deceive others.
Long article, but worth the read. Here are parts of it.
http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2012/01/the-gop-in-limbo-how-low-can-you-go-2/
Sioux Center, Iowa. The Republican Party managed to accomplish three amazing things last week, in the course of two debates and one election. It revealed a bloodlust that easily trumps concern for personal character and social morality. It scorned a fundamental teaching of Jesus Christ. It showed that the only thing that really matters to the party is the perceived ability to beat Barack Obama in the November election. At least those were the messages sent by South Carolina Republicans. Not by all, but by many if not most. We can hope they are unrepresentative of the party as a whole.
Yes, the crowd actually booed the golden rule of Jesus Christ. You could argue they were booing Ron Paul, but it was Paul’s proposal that U.S.foreign policy be guided by the golden rule that elicited the booing. The apostle Paul, archangel Michael, or Jesus himself could have been on the stage and they would have gotten the same reaction. It was the message, not the messenger, that outraged the audience. The crowd reaction to the militaristic, hateful pandering of a group of chicken hawks was shameful in the extreme. Sadly, it’s the norm for purportedly Bible-believing Christians so it barely raised an eyebrow.
The rank-and-file who sit in the pew are another. Laurence Vance and Bill Anderson over at LewRockwell.com do their best to coax fellow evangelicals into a more biblical and rational approach to politics, but such voices seem to have little effect. I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no group more naive in U.S. politics than Christians. The more sincere the Christian, the more naive. This is true for whites and blacks, evangelicals and modernists, charismatics and fundamentalists, Protestants and Catholics. It doesn’t matter. Committed Christians did not enter politics in an organized, self-conscious way until the 1970s and our inexperience shows. Our gullibility is gigantic. Both major parties take their most loyal voters—white Christians for the Republicans and black Christians for the Democrats—for granted because their votes can always be counted on, regardless of how little policy action they receive in return. The parties actively court and repay swing voters, not the loyal base. Just as black Democrats are lucky to get a few crumbs from the table of power under a Democratic president, evangelical Republicans receive promises on the campaign trail and are then ignored for the next four years when a Republican is in the White House.
I like aspects of both the Religious Right and the Religious Left but both tend to place their faith in faithless politicians who cynically exploit our idealism, make promises they have no intention of keeping, and take Christian support for granted because they know true believers won’t vote for the other party—no matter how disappointed they become—because the other party has been successfully demonized. It’s the boogeyman approach. Vote Republican or the Democrats will get you! And vice versa. Last week, 78,000 South Carolinians (Christian and not) rose above the politics-as-usual theater of illusion. They recognized quality, and an echo of God’s truth, in Ron Paul. That’s something. But not enough to win an election.
Let’s turn to the winner of the latest election. The new darling of the Religious Right is the thrice-married bloviator and million-dollar Freddie Mac historian Newt Gingrich. An unlikely pairing in some ways, but quite likely in others.
Gingrich is a bully. Someone needs to give him a smackdown in the upcoming debates—fair but firm. The equivalent of the excoriation Christ gave to the Pharisees, or, to take a less divine but more recent example, the hard-hitting “serial hypocrite” ad used by the Paul campaign to deflate Gingrich in Iowa. Romney is too much of a milquetoast to do it. Despite his passionate views, Paul is too much of a gentleman to aggressively go after an opponent in person. [sigh, it's true, Ron needs to be assertive]
Exploiting the unfocused rage held by Republicans against the mainstream media, which is seen as being in the corner of the hated Obama, Gingrich has given the media talking heads repeated pokes in the eye during the debates. Gingrich does it with ease and it has yielded rich dividends in cheers and votes. But it’s contentless. It neglects to mention that the ostensibly “liberal” media has never met a war it hasn’t liked and that it shares the foundational economic and foreign policies of every Republican president. It ignores Fox News’ comparable propaganda and manipulation on behalf of the Republican establishment. It also overlooks the fact that Gingrich, as president, would not be much different from Obama (based on his record). So we have the opportunity to exchange Pepsi for Coke. That tiny difference is enough to get many Republicans worked into a frenzy.
They can see Romney’s centrist opportunism for what it is. They can’t see the presence of the exact same thing in Gingrich because he speaks conservative platitudes with such force and bashes Obama and his media friends with such aplomb. It’s all style, no substance. Just like Obama. Ironically enough. (If GOP voters really want to stick it to the corporate press, they should vote for Congressman Paul, who is ignored/ridiculed/attacked by the entire lot, from MSNBC to Fox, from AP to CBS.)
Gingrich is a master of righteous indignation although he’s far better at being indignant than being righteous. Like his political twin Bill Clinton, Gingrich is a good liar because he’s shameless. There are few politicians who can lie with more vigor.
Gingrich is a dangerous man. I have little respect for Romney, but, on a personal level, he’s a doofus at worst. Gingrich is in a whole different category, which is why he makes the GOP establishment nervous. They have no policy differences with him, and they recognize that his anti-Bain rhetoric is just demagoguery, but they know that the reckless Gingrich could self-destruct at any moment, bringing a rockslide down on himself and, by extension, closing the path by which they can return to power. This explains the wariness of Karl Rove, the elected party hacks, and their ilk. It’s not about principle.
What would Gingrich do as president? Anything is possible. We can be confident it would be neither conservative nor Christian (as defined by Kirk and Christ, respectively). He might well wreak havoc on a national scale like his heroes Wilson and FDR or perhaps on a global scale like Hitler (a fellow intellectual with a gravely-deficient moral compass).
Gingrich and other power elitists describe Paul’s foreign policy as “dangerous” because he favors defense at home and peace abroad. To me, it’s far more dangerous when unbridled arrogance and ambition are combined with immense power. That is what you would have with President Gingrich. When you’re convinced that you’re the smartest person in the room and that you’re not subject to the rules that apply to others, you embody great danger.
Gingrich is in a position to say anything and everything. When you’re not constrained by truth or conscience, all bets are off. Nothing is too absurd. This is why the debate crowds gave him standing ovations. Watching his performance in crushing John King’s opening question at the CNN debate, fueled by fake outrage, and watching the audience’s pavlovian response, was surreal. Both elements seemed staged in some way—not only Gingrich’s theatrics but also the crowd’s hysterical enthusiasm.
Dear Religious Right, From here on out, please spare us the prattle about family values and the unborn. Just as Gingrich’s fellow draft-dodger Dick Cheney had “other priorities” that precluded a stint in the jungles of Vietnam, you have other priorities when it comes to politics. Dobson and Bauer have endorsed Rick Santorum, for the time being, but when Santorum drops out, is there is any reason to think that the grand poobahs of Republican evangelicalism won’t endorse Newt Gingrich over Ron Paul? If Gingrich flops, eventually they’ll end up supporting Romney over Paul. Paul is too dangerous. He’s been married to the same woman for over half-a-century, he sincerely opposes Roe v. Wade, he supports the Defense of Marriage Act, and he’s the only evangelical Christian still in the race. But he’s pro-peace! That’s the unpardonable sin for this group of Christians.
Gingrich is a convert. All is forgiven. Or so he says. I don’t believe Gingrich’s conversion-to-God story. He doesn’t bear the marks of repentance. First and foremost, and most obviously, he’s stuffed full of pride. Pride is the original sin, the very sin of Lucifer that pre-dates the fall of Adam. With Gingrich, there’s no recognizable humility, no meekness of spirit, no sense of common humanity. Instead, there’s a continued and continuous display of braggadocio, coupled with dishonesty and thuggishness. A failed professor (denied tenure) and failed leader of the House (forced out of office when caught committing adultery with a young staffer and when his GOP colleagues tired of his self-promoting/party-injuring shtick), Gingrich retains his inflated self-image. Impervious to reality and possessing the snake oil salesman’s ability to convince the simple, he routinely compares himself to Churchill and other iconic figures. He is sure he has a rendezvous with destiny as the transformative agent of our age. We often deceive ourselves before we deceive others.
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