I DON’T SALUTE NEWT

12/11/11

A good and trusted friend asked me whom I would support, Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich, should it come down to a choice between the two. My reply turned out to be a tirade against Mr. Gingrich rather than an argument in favor of Mr. Romney; what is there to argue about, one way or the other, in Mitt Romney anyway? I thought that perhaps the thoughts I outlined to a friend were perhaps too strong to post on the blog, but then I figured “What the he(ck)? When have my readers ever known me to hold back much, if at all?” So here is the only slightly edited repeat of my reply to my pal Joe:

(By the way, the Peggy Noonan article in yesterday and today’s (i.e., 12/10 and 12/11/11’s) Wall Street Journal that I reference is, as are most of Ms. Noonan’s articles, a very worthwhile read.)

Thanks.


12/11/11

I simply can't vote for Gingrich for four reasons, one of which might seem petty and one of which is no reason to support him over Romney because his stance on this issue is not all that different from Romney’s:

--Newt Gingrich’s character is abominable. I guess I should believe more in redemption than I do in this case, but three marriages, two of which were the result of illicit affairs and one of which resulted in his serving his first wife with divorce papers while she was in a cancer ward, are things I can’t overlook. And then he has the temerity to campaign among those who espouse “family values,” and they support him! Yes, there is no perfect person, but there is a great distance between a “perfect person” and three marriages and serial extramarital affairs and then being hypocritical about it. The man is a moral pygmy.

--As Peggy Noonan said in yesterday’s (Saturday, 12/10’s) Wall Street Journal,

What is striking is the extraordinary divide in opinion between those who know Gingrich and those who don't. Those who do are mostly not for him, and they were burning up the phone lines this week in Washington.

The clincher was Tom Coburn, the senator from Oklahoma and one of the few people in either house of Congress for whom I have any respect, who said, according to the same article.

that Mr. Gingrich was "the last person I'd vote for for president of the United States."

Note that Coburn has few, if any ideological problems with Newt. Neither do I, except for that outlined in my last bullet point.

--This might sound petty, but it means a lot to me. We learned earlier in the campaign that Mr. Gingrich and his wife Callista once owed $600,000 to Tiffany’s. Newt defended (!) himself by stating that it was a revolving line of credit that he paid off. As you can probably determine by reading my blog, in my opinion ANYONE who spends $600,000 at Tiffany’s spends like a fool and is a fool. To defend such an excerebrose peeing away of resources by saying that “I can afford it” only doubles down on the imbecility. He (or she) would never get my support for ANYTHING, political, business, or otherwise. He (or she) is a fool, an idiot, a popinjay, a poltroon, a spiritless, hopeless lost soul desperately trying to fill some kind of void with a useless, trashy, ostentatious trinket that indicates nothing but utter stupidity and overarching insecurity, a reflection of the moral vapidity that is destroying our country in so many ways. Think of all the ways that $600,000 could have been spent for something worthwhile, helping someone who really needed help, rather than for some worthless, valueless, tacky, reeking bauble or assortment of worthless, valueless, tacky, reeking baubles. Strong enough for you? How do you think I REALLY feel about this?

Maybe other candidates have spent $600,000 on the utter crap dispensed at places like Tiffany, but I haven’t learned of it yet; if I do, I will similarly dismiss them as serious human beings, let alone serious candidates.

--I obviously disagree with Newt on foreign policy, as you can deduce from our conversations on the topic. Newt seems to want to ramp up the disastrous Bush/Obama approach to foreign policy (“You’ll do what we tell you to do because it’s good for you because we say so (and besides, we owe our political careers to the defense contractors)!”), a policy that will only expedite our utter ruin as a nation. Unfortunately, Romney feels the same way, so this, perhaps my only substantive policy difference with Mr. Gingrich (except, of course, for the marvelous efficacy of Fannie and Freddie, which Mr. Gingrich used to espouse but apparently no longer believes in now that there is nothing monetary in it for him), is no reason to support him over Romney…six of one, half a dozen of the other.


Sure, if one takes no account of the utter gormlessness displayed by his imbecilic excretion of money on worthless symbols of the rot of the society he purports to want to save, Gingrich is smart in the ways our modern society judges smartness. Nixon, Carter, and Wilson also had considerable intellects. So that oft-mentioned argument for Mr. Gingrich holds little water.

So I could never support Gingrich for the reasons outlined above. Furthermore, from a practical perspective, Mr. Gingrich is likely to blow up and say something stupid (like the Palestinians are an “invented...people.” Who does he think the Philistines were? But I digress.) AFTER he gets the nomination, handing the presidency to President Obama. Mr. Romney may not be to my ideological liking (if there were any ideology there, but that is another issue), but I would surely support him over Gingrich, as I would (even) Bachmann (sp?), Perry, Santorum and (especially) Huntsman and Paul. If (Naperville professional homeless celebrity) Scott Huber were the only alternative candidate to Newt Gingrich, I’d have to think long and hard before voting for Newt.

All that having been said, I will not vote for either Mr. Romney or Mr. Gingrich, one of whom (and I still think Romney; see my 7/19/11 piece, MICHELE AND SARAH, MAKE ROOM FOR THE FAT LADY, and, while you’re at it, for more reasons to oppose Newt, see my 11/17/11 piece “I WISH YOU COULD HAVE COME UP WITH A BETTER STORY; I FELT DISTINCTLY LIKE AN IDIOT REPEATING IT.”) will wind up with the GOP nomination. I will, as I (almost) always do, vote Libertarian, regardless of who the candidate is, and I hope it’s Ron Paul, unless, of course, Dr. Paul somehow pulls off a miracle and gets the GOP nod.