She turned me into a Newt! (I got better)

To be clear, I do not think that Newt Gingrich stands a hope in hell of being nominated as the Republican candidate for president. There is simply way too much stacked against him: he has proved to be an inept campaign manager, he can’t come close to matching Romney’s money, the Republican establishment loathes him, and (perhaps most important of all) South Carolina played too perfectly to Newt’s strengths in a way that is highly unlikely to be repeated as the primary battle drags on.

My prediction: Newt rides the momentum of SC for everything it’s worth, fighting until his last dollar is gone. Perhaps he wins another, perhaps he comes close; in either case, he deals irreparable damage to Romney. I have to wonder if the worst damage hasn’t already been done: three states down, and the presumptive Republican candidate has won (then lost—the recount in Iowa went to Santorum) in a squeaker, won respectably in New Hampshire, and got his ass handed to him in South Carolina. This could potentially go on for a long time, and every primary and caucus that passes without Romney locking in the nomination bleeds him more. It’s not like four years ago in the protracted battle between Obama and Hilary—there, we had two strong candidates with devoted and indeed worshipful followings, and whatever resentment might have lingered, there was never any question that the loser would get behind the winner.

That isn’t a certainty here. Quite the opposite, actually. The antipathy to Romney is powerful, powerful enough to elevate wingnuts like Bachman, Cain, and Perry, a religious bigot like Santorum, and … well, honestly, I don’t know how to classify Newt. All of the above?

Mind you, I’m not totally counting out Newt. Just mostly. “Not a hope in hell” normally means no chance whatsoever, but having followed this carnival for what feels like ten years now, I don’t want to commit myself to the reasonable prediction. If I was a betting man, I’d say the good money’s on Romney … but I’d be really, really tempted to put a dollar down on Newt’s long odds. The old chestnut, “That’s so crazy, it might just work!” needs a re-jigging here. The Republican base is so crazy, they just might nominate Newt. How’s that?

For what it’s worth, I think an Obama-Gingrich showdown is precisely what the Republicans need. Would I be utterly gleeful to see Newt get destroyed by Obama? Yes. Would I be over the moon to watch the FOX/Limbaugh industrial-complex stymied? YES. A thousand times, yes. But I also want conservatism in the U.S. to return to its senses, for all our sakes. I think it needs its Goldwater moment again, to be so thoroughly destroyed that it has no choice but to reject the Palin/Bachman/Santorum wing of the party, to discredit the FOX contingent, and to embrace its intelligent spokespeople.

Of course, I say this knowing that a Gingrich-Obama showdown holds a 1% chance of Newt winning. At which point, Newfoundland doesn’t feel far enough away and I might start looking for English-language universities in Sweden.

And you thought "teabaggers" was bad ...

Oh, Rick Santorum ... as of this moment, you are the #1 reason Jon Stewart has the easiest job in show business. Seriously.

Apparently, Santorum has just launched a new fundraising group (or PAC, or SuperPAC, I'm uncertain of the distinctions these days), named "Conservatives Unite Moneybomb."

Got that? Yes. He has in fact started an organization whose acronym is C.U.M. Which meant that this morning I was treated to this headline in Google Reader:

(Which would not have been quite as bad if I hadn't been drinking a slightly gelatinous breakfast smoothie. Blerg.)

Besides going down (heh) as the most inopportune acronym since Canada's right wring briefly united under the moniker Conservative Reform Alliance Party, it also reflects so well on Santorum. Or at least it does from my perspective. His unrelenting and frequently unhinged attacks on gay marriage, gay rights, and the LGBT community generally echo the unreconstructed racism of people like George Wallace railing against civil rights even as the tide of history swamped them. That's what Santorum has to look forward to, but with a particularly cruel twist. Dan Savage's revenge--making "Santorum" synonymous with, and I quote, "the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex," and making it the number one result when one Googles the name--has effectively made the former senator's very name a joke ... and which added a rather revolting double entendre during the Iowa Caucus, when pundits and commentators spoke of him "surging" in the polls.

The Conservatives Unite Moneybomb won't do nearly as much as Savage's savaging, but it has the added bonus of being self-inflicted. And the fact that America's most vocally anti-gay mainstream politician will go down as a footnote to history forever associated with bodily fluids and gay sex ... well, to quote Buffy Summers, as justice goes, it's not unpoetic.

The unbearable cynicism of Mitt Romney

There once was a time during this extended carnival of the Republican race for the nomination that Mitt Romney seemed like the one sane person in the asylum, and his inability to establish a commanding lead an indictment of the current state of the Republican base. Seriously: the best thing that can be said about the successive surges of the non-Romney candidates—Bachman, Perry, Cain, Gingrich, and, most recently, Santorum—is that they all proved unsustainable, that in the end all but the most froth-at-the-mouth evangelical nativist wingnuts conceded that these people were at the very least unelectable. (I won’t speculate on how many would still be backing the likes of any of these candidates if they were conceivably electable; it’s enough relief to know the vast majority of Americans run screaming from the prospect of President Gingrich).

I’ve never liked Romney, always seeing him as basically fake, a reasonable simulacrum of what Hollywood imagines presidents to look like. But he was at least moderate and reasonable, as his record as governor of Massachusetts shows. And I can forgive a certain amount of flip-flopping in the name of campaigning, as that’s really just the nature of the beast. To be certain, I would have more respect for the man if he were to say something like “I passed liberal policies like health care in Massachusetts because Massachusetts is essentially a liberal state and I am not an autocrat.” Of course, that wouldn’t get him many votes among the party faithful, but it would earn him more respect than his relentless pandering.

At any rate, what I said two paragraphs ago about once seeing Romney as the sane one? Not so much anymore. And it’s not so much that he’s batshit as that he is appallingly, cynically mendacious. I watched his victory speech in the New Hampshire primary and was just left open-mouthed. It basically broke down to: (1) Obama is not American; (2) Obama is waging war on the private sector; (3) Obama is attempting to reshape America along a European socialist model; (4) hence, this election is about saving America’s soul; (5) and finally, Obama is an appeaser who wants to denude American military might, something he (Romney) will reverse and return America to its proper global military hegemony.
Seriously. Watch it:



When I hear someone like Michelle Bachman say this kind of horseshit, I’m at least convinced that she believes it. But Romney? He can’t possibly be that stupid.

These days I find myself increasingly reading conservative bloggers and essayists inveighing against precisely this kind of mendacity. When David Frum becomes the voice of reason in conservative circles, the time is out of joint. One of their frequent refrains is that such patently false accusations as Obama’s antipathy to capitalism—to say nothing of birtherism or the attempts to characterize him as an “anti-colonialist Kenyan,” to borrow Gingrich’s memorable phrase—completely miss the boat when it comes to issues on which Obama is genuinely vulnerable, such as his appalling record on civil rights and executive power (which, incidentally, are issues on which certain segments of the left and right vehemently agree).

Speaking as a committed liberal, the complete asshattery of the Republican presidential hopefuls distresses me on two fronts. The first is that I firmly believe a rational and reasonable right wing is vital to national discourse, not least because it keeps those of us on the left on our toes. The second is because it is not inconceivable that Romney might be the next president … and he has shown himself to be a man of no principle whatsoever, entirely beholden to whomever he happens to be wooing.