Last week on my “Hillyer Time” radio show, my opening monologue
explained why I think it’s ludicrous to think Newt Gingrich could
possible win a general-election battle against Barack Obama -
analysis that stands regardless of whether one personally
likes the idea of Gingrich in the Oval Office if he should pull off
the miracle and win anyway. Some people wanted to be able to read
what I said.
So, slightly adapted from radio notes for reading ease, here’s what
I said:
Welcome to Hillyer Time….
For now, I really need to vent. I am absolutely flabbergasted at
what I see in the latest Republican polls for president. What I see
looks like a mass political suicide attempt — so determined to
commit suicide that it uses too many pills, plus a slit wrist, plus
a gun, on the ledge of a 1,000-foot building, just to make sure
that at least one of the methods succeeds.
What I’m talking about is the rise of Newt Gingrich to the front
of the Republican pack. If this isn’t mass suicide, is mass amnesia
of a particularly dangerous variety. And, politically speaking, if
it continues it will be an absolute guarantee of Barack Obama’s
re-election next Fall.
Why? Well, for months I’ve said… … that Mitt
Romney was the only legitimate contender the Republicans could
choose who could NOT make a case against Obama’s biggest area of
weakness, which is Obamacare, because Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts
health plan was almost the exact model for Obamacare. It doesn’t
matter how he spins it, Romney can’t make a cogent case against
it.
But the reason I said Romney was the only one was because I
didn’t consider Gingrich a legitimate contender. Well, if he
is a serious contender, he becomes the second person who
can’t make a case against Obamacare, especially against its
individual mandate. Gingrich has supported an individual mandate
for almost 18 years, has written in favor of it as recently as
2008, and even several times this year has defended it in
concept.
So Gingrich can’t make a case against Obamacare.
He also can’t make the case against the liberals on the cause of
the housing and banking crises. Why? Because he was selling out to
Freddie Mac to the tune of more than a million dollars, and
publicly advocating the Fannie Mae the whole time. He was on the
wrong side of the system, the side that brought the system
down.
So Gingrich can’t make the case against Obamacare or against
Democratic housing policies. How about the case against all of the
global warming alarmism and against corporate favoritism for
ridiculous so-called green industries? Nope. Gingrich can’t make
that case either. He was out there pushing ethanol mandates even
after Al Gore himself had backed off ethanol, after the science
proved that corn-based ethanol is in many ways more harmful than
helpful. But none of that mattered, because Gingrich had sold
himself to the ethanol industry as well, to the tune of more than
300 thousand dollars.
So take Obamacare and Freddie Mac and overregulation to fight
globaloney for insider profits, take them all off the table. What’s
left? How about making a real case for market-based entitlement
reform?
Oops! Gingrich can’t do that. He blasted those reforms as,
quote, “right-wing social engineering.”
How about education reform, or how about ending racial
grievance-mongering? Oops, can’t do that: Gingrich toured with none
other than the vicious race-baiting felon Al Sharpton to push
dubious education policies.
Gingrich can’t make the case against Obama’s growing ethics
problems: As Speaker, he was found liable for ethical violations
and fined several hundred thousand dollars.
How about effective leadership? Well, the one time Gingrich was
in real power, his own side tried a coup against him in just the
third year, in mid-year, and then Gingrich imploded so badly in the
fourth year that he was pushed out after near-disastrous election
results.
How about attracting independents? Oops: Polls have shown for 15
years that Gingrich’s persona badly turns off independents.
How about enthusing Tea Party volunteers, so at least he can
have a good grassroots effort? Oops: Tea Partiers don’t like him
much either: Not only did he support the hugely expensive Medicare
prescription drug program without insisting on other reforms, and
not only did he spit all over Paul Ryan’s free-market Medicare
reform plan, and not only did he end up supporting the TARP
bailout, but he also nearly nipped the conservative grassroots
movement in the bud by supporting ultra-liberal Republican DeDe
Scozzafava in a special congressional election in New York over
conservative favorite Doug Hoffman.
Gingrich also has supported partial amnesty for illegals, and at
one time even supported the Fairness Doctrine that let government
dictate broadcast content.
Even on foreign policy, Gingrich can’t make a coherent case that
Obama will have any trouble exploding. In just a few weeks earlier
this year, he shifted from being for military intervention in Libya
to being against it, based entirely on which way the political
winds seemed to be blowing.
And none of this even touches the megalomania of a man who used
to write notes to himself describing himself as “definer of
civilization, Teacher of the rules of civilization,” - those are
direct quotes - and who also would refer to himself, in the
presence of other people, as a, quote, “world historical
figure.”
This is a man who, if he gets the Republican nomination, has
less chance of defeating Barack Obama than the Tulane Green Wave
football team would have this year of defeating the Alabama Crimson
Tide.
The Gingrich surge is madness, sheer madness.
And don’t think for a minute that doing well in debates will
make a difference. It’s easy to do well in debates when you are one
of eight and none of the other eight is attacking you. Watch what
happens when he gets offended in a two-way debate and loses his
cool, snapping some snarly remark to Obama. It won’t work. And even
if it does, it won’t matter much because debates will make less
difference next fall than they seem to be doing now. Right now,
almost nobody is advertising. Next year, Barack Obama will have
$800 million to pour into an effort to define Gingrich in the
public mind….
Or, rather, to reconfirm the definition of Gingrich that has
prevailed for most of the past 16 years, which is that of a
brilliant but disagreeable and somewhat smarmy, overwhelmingly
cynical political operative.
Yes, folks, start putting the cyanide in the Kool-Aid - because
that’s what millions of Republican voters will be drinking if they
choose Newt Gingrich for their nominee.
So there. Never let it be said that we don’t lay it on the line,
here in Hillyer Time.
