Just when it seemed the presidential campaign could not become odder, it has. If, as I wrote last week here, Mitt is an improbable savior for America, Newt Agonistes is an apparition that the mothers of America could use to frighten their children into eating their breakfast cereal. As the inventor last month (I doubt if anyone else would claim or even admit to it) of the Hegelian Newt — who would not win the nomination but could prevent Mitt from closing the deal and enable the Republican convention to draft their party’s best and strongest candidate — and as one whoalmost conceded last week, after looking at Mitt’s big lead in the South Carolina polls, that the anti-non-Mitt assassination squads had riddled Newt beyond recovery, so that he could not perform his Hegelian mission of being the supreme non-Mitt, I bow low indeed to the resurrected Newt.
Even if it’s not durable, this is a comeback of Nixonian, if not Lazarene, proportions. Never mind that the attacks on Mitt’s business career were outrageous, or that Newt’s moral indignation over the criticism of some of his own whoppers by other candidates and the media was over the top, and that this level of internecine backbiting can only help the Democrats. Newt Gingrich’s perseverance in relaunching his campaign, which had been left for dead by almost everyone, is a Homeric achievement, and he capped it with a stirring presidential address on Saturday night.
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If turning a 20-point deficit in the South Carolina polls to a 14-point lead on primary day two weeks later is remarkable, it also illustrates the extreme vulnerability of the Romney lead. On January 17, just four days before the primary, the Wall Street Journal’s perceptive Kimberley Strassel wrote a major opinion piece under the headline “Romney’s Rivals Fizzle in South Carolina.” But Romney’s subsequent setback wasn’t the result of a terrible gaffe like Edmund Muskie’s tearful performance in New Hampshire in 1972, or George Romney’s claim to have been “brainwashed” in Saigon in the 1968 campaign.
Despite the mighty efforts of conventional Republican professionals to give the front-runner the traditional benefit of his status — legitimize him and fluff up the cushions under him and make him appear unstoppable — the Romney campaign has clay feet and a glass jaw, as his sudden erosion in the Florida polls confirms.
Having heaped on Newt the honors due the imperishable underdog, and due a legendary figure of the nation’s recent political history, the Republican party cannot seriously consider nominating him for president. If it is now endorsing Newt’s animosity to the sort of sophisticated financial enterprise that Romney successfully ran, then that party no longer has a raison d’être.
The problem with the Republicans’ association with the Tea Party is that very few of the tea partiers are truly prepared to make the sacrifices — such as cuts to Social Security or Medicare — that are necessary to restore fiscal sustainability to the federal government. No one in either party is giving the “blood, toil, tears, and sweat” speech the condition of the country demands, though Santorum and non-candidate Paul Ryan hint at it. And there is no evidence that the Republicans buy into Newt’s shtick, including his masquerade as a Reagan Republican, any more than they do Mitt’s frequent, poll-driven conversions to policy changes, most recently tax simplification. It is inconceivable that 41 percent of Republicans, even in South Carolina, really want Newt as president, but they have rewarded his eloquence and doughtiness by making him the instrument of their underwhelmed reticence about Mitt. Hegel rides again, one more time: From an indecisive confrontation of the unacceptable, a candidate may be drafted who stands unequivocally on a Republican platform that pledges tax simplification, entitlement reform, increases in domestic oil drilling and natural-gas production and conversion, the stimulation of value-added employment such as manufacturing, and the prevention of a nuclear-armed Iran. The Republicans could lead America away from the squandering of its income and borrowings on fungible pleasures and the proliferation of redundant services, such as the legal industry, which is now an onerous surtax on American life.
Mr. Black, I commend you for a column with some Buckleyian flair and wit: commodities not seen often enough in NRO these days. Anyone who can write of a"Hegelian mission" by "Newt Agonistes" and, especially, to contemplate the effects of "neo-Poujadian populists" deserves a tip of the hat for verve, flair, and high spirits, but, these qualities may well fly over the heads of many of the readers and bloggers of today. However, please keep up the high spirits and good work! I am sure that there still remain more than few readers who appreciate a writer who does not kowtow to a generation not as well educated as their self-satisfied self-regard and level of indebtedness for college tuition bills suggests that they ought to be.
Well put Dow.
Mr. Black, your education is showing and it is not flattering.
Your description of the Tea Party brings into doubt all of the other judgements you make in your article. I've only met one racist in all my dealings with Republicans here in The South and he was a Ron Paul supporter (no I'm not issuing a blanket indictment intended to Mr. Paul or his supporters as you have done to the Tea Party).
The arrogance of stating that a party that rejects Romney has no reason to exist is exactly the attitude that many of us are hell-bent on expunging from the party. Newt changed the course of America's national political dialog from 1992 onward. Mitt by contrast was unable to change the conversation at all in MA and only used his dalliance in politics as a stepping stone to the presidency. Mitt is running to please his father's ghost. Newt may be doing it for his ego but at least he can get the job done.
BTW: Mitt isn't without his skeleton. His lack of oversight of one company ended in a $119M fine for Medicare fraud. Check it out: External Link
What I see is the need for a leader to take us into the inevitable fight. If a republican wins he'll have to fight from the end of election day until the end of his term. So far Newt has shown that fight. Mitt Rommey not so much. His campaign to date has been prevent defense. He can prevent himself out of nomination. Because the next Republican President can expect to have senators under cut him like McCain busy being the ant-bush and Chuck Grassley helping kill SS reform. On top of that the CIA, State Dept and DOD will likely throw open there doors to anyone with axe to grind or don't you remember the year and half it took us to "rush" in to Iraq. Managers are nice when things are going well. Leaders are needed when you've got make changes needed to dig out obama care and all the other legal bombs that will be found in the wake of Obama's administration.
Politics is apparently like football in that the guy on the bench always looks better than the guy slugging it out on the field.
There are two stubborn trends among Republicans this year:
1. The establishment's insistence on telling the voters they are wrong and
2. The voter's insistence on telling the establishment to take a flying leap.
While I usually enjoy your posts as you are equally irreverent to all. You are bordering on the scoundrel seeking refuge as your diatribe advances the liberal charge that the tea party is racist. The left has failed to come up with any facts supporting that charge; do you care to offer any?
You are also bordering on the foolhardy advancing Jeb Bush as a candidate. As I posted yesterday:
Conservatives likely to never trust the big spending government expanding Bushes again
Liberals despise the Bushes beyond the point of rationality
Independents are still suffering from Bush burnout
Please don’t waste our time with Jeb recommendations, I expect even he is wise enough to not heed such fool hardy advice.
No! It is Satanic! Only one force could cause a moral reprobate to take over a political Party this way and that is Satan.
Lazurus was the work of God. Newt is the exact opposite. It is the epitome of evil. There is no question who is the author of these lies! Newt's master is the author of all lies. Every action in his life has served that master.
"The problem with the Republicans’ dalliance with the neo-Poujadist populists in the Tea Party is that serious canvasses of these groups reveal that most of them are reactionaries. They all want to soak the rich, expel the undocumented immigrants, take the birch to the ungrateful and demonstrative youth, and slam the cash drawer on the idle, especially those of another pigmentation. "
I never thought I would read a sentence like this in the National Review. Thank-you for proving me wrong.
Well written piece in the Buckley tradition. He would have been proud of your work for intertwining a few thousand years of history with our current topic, Mr Newt.
I can't help but notice, again, your omission of another very influential person on the Newtownian rise and party discontent....Governor Sarah Palin
Newt, as well as Rasmussen Polling, were complimentary towards Sarah' instruction to the voters of South Carolina to vote for Newt to keep the contest going.
Newts' phone banks and contributions shot up with her 'sorta' endorsement and he won decisively, in part, because of it and excellent debates. Mrs Palin is our rain maker in the GOP and they better get their acts together or the fracture will grow in our party.
Mitch Daniels has no shot at all in winning a national election in today's politics. His message is no different than many, and his short comings (pun intended) would not appeal to the vast majority of vain and superficial voters.
Paul Ryan has as much 'spunk and pizazz' as your local accountant. Strike two.
Jeb Bush was a great Governor of Florida (where I live), and I voted for him twice. The problem is his last name is Bush and that dog won't hunt for another election cycle. Strike three.
I can only surmise that flat out bigotry is the reason we 'never hear' a word about Governor Sarah Palin from The Establishment guys or gals at NRO and similar venues. She is not one of them....snobby.
I'll take another Harry Truman or Sarah Palin type of leader right now, over ANY elitists that thinks they know better than the rest of us on how to run our own lives.
The GOP has only two really good fighters in their stable of candidates that have repeatedly shown they can beat democrats:
Speaker Newt Gingrich and Governor Sarah Palin
Follow the lawsuits and ethics violations filed against each, almost entirely by Democrats, in response to their victories over them.
(Newt: 84 ethics charges, 84 dropped, paid $300k to reimburse cost of investigation)
(Palin: 27 ethics charges, 26 dropped, returned $386k in legal defense funds to donors)
Conservatives MUST REALIZE that our opponents will use the legal system (they created) as their tool to attack their STRONGEST enemies to achieve what they can not at the ballot box.
File a charge....regardless of merit....and 'the charge' becomes 'the club' used to beat you over the head with in the media and on campaigns.
Democrats have told us who they fear the most by the lawsuits they file.
Romney as a candidate looks he has been designed in a lab by Obama’s campaign consultants who have decided to run a campaign of class warfare on the super rich:
- Super rich Wall Street guy
- Supports bailouts for Wall Street – but not for US automakers
- Worth hundreds of millions of dollars mostly made by managing money and dismantling companies (Bain used US crony capitalism, international crony capitalism - the Italian job - government bailouts, etc.)
- $100M (a hundred million $) in a tax-free (government-sponsored) IRA
- Pays a much smaller tax rate than his secretary, driver, and house help – not only on his investment income, but also on his salary/compensation as a money manager.
- Uses Caiman Island accounts and Swiss bank accounts to keep his money
Also – since Obamacare looks like the most important issue for Republicans, the designed candidate should not be able to attack Obama on it – ideally you want someone who has devised and implemented the individual health care mandates (Romneycare) that Obama based his on! Thus Obamacare is off the table!
Throw in as an added bonus complete disconnect with the regular people. Make the designed candidate says things like:
- “We should discuss tax policy in quiet rooms, outside of public view”
- “$370,000/year is a small amount of money”
- “Let’s bet $10,000” on trivial things
- “I come from the real streets of America”
- “I like to be able to fire people”
- “I have worried several times about getting a pink slip”
- “Like you, I am also currently unemployed”
- “Yes, I transport my dog in a cage strapped to the top of my car – but the dog does not mind”
If you really, really want to make a perfect candidate – make him also a flip-flopper who does not seem to have any core beliefs, and will say anything and will take any position to be elected for whatever he is running.
Romney is the absolute perfect candidate for Obama to run against. Also Romney as a candidate 100% ensures that carried interest (the way Romney made his money) will be taxed at regular income rates next year, the capital gains and divident tax rates will go up next year, and the Bush tax cuts will not be renewed. Not only Romney will lose to Obama, but there surely are large tax increases coming if he is the candidate!
I can't stand reading Conrad Black. He is a pompous blowhard who cannot write in an engaging manner. His articles are purely intended to show off his education and vocabulary. How about just writing a good article without showing us, in every other paragraph, how superior you consider yourself.
Ugh, ugh Mr. Black, regarding your snippy remark about tea-partiers not willing to give up stuff; As of Jan. 2012, we over the $85,000 income citizen/tax payers, are being assessed - per the means-concept - an extra bunch of $$,monthly, to pay for OTHER PEOPLE'S medical insurance (probably the reproductive limiting type).
Hey, when I was fecund and all that, I limited my family at MY OWN EXPENSE; this was a no-brainer. This extra taxation will come out of my annual charitable donation fund, so in the end, no one will win.
I have found National Review to be a disgrace during this election cycle. Is winning an election so important that you would throw out every principle of conservatism in the process. Who, other than Newt Gingrich, has done anything to decrease the size of the federal government in our lifetime? Yes, he has dallied with foolish ideas and annoyed many. Yet, he is the only Republican to have actually accomplished anything of conservative note since Reagan. So the Republicans did not want to reelect him as speaker. Why, I wonder. I suspect it was because he expected them to actually be willing to fight for conservative causes. But they were scared because the press had beaten them up over the government shutdown. Better to rebel against the leader who had helped you obtain your majority and force him out than to stand up for the principles you were elected to uphold, I suppose?
I am so sick of the elite power hungry part elites trying to extort their way to more power, more government, more influence and more debt. I am voting Newt and I don't care what happens in November. Better to fight for what we believe to be true and right and go down swinging than to accept a compromise that leads in the same direction as Obama's America. I am 43 have two kids aged 8 and 6 and I want America to be there for them. I am sick to death of all the government intrusion that has ocurred in my lifetime. I want it to stop now - and Mitt Romney will not get it done. Maybe he can tune it up and it will work better, but I don't want better working government I want less government!
Gingrich has risen again because he has been saved by cheap grace. Nothing else matters. Here is a link to an article about evangelical pastors defending Gingrich and blasting Mitt Romney. External Link
Gingrich is the classic example that saved by cheap grace and born againism has been Satan most effective tool in America. The message to evangelical youth is that you can be a serial adulturer your entire life until you are about 70. You can easily and quickly repent and you can be adored and defended by your very own pastor. In fact you can be elected President of the United States.
At age 68 and with a wife young enough to be his daughter, does Newt really have the physical energy to pursue another affair? Has he really repented in his mind? No matter, Newt is saved and that terrible Mormon who has been faithful to one woman is entire life--even when he found out she had Multiple Scelorsis--is going straight to hell and is not fit to be president.
I would gladly vote for Santorum. Although I am less enthused about the other three candidates, I would support them willingly against Obama. But I will never, never, never vote for another member of the Bush family.
So, the solution to a pack of GOP establishment RINOs is Jeb Bush? Believe me when I tell you that we conservatives haven't forgotten Jeb's liberalism. He's an imposter, just like his brother and his dad. Read our lips: no more Bush's!
How can a new contender rise to promenence? All that person has to do is say the magic words "2,000 mile, triple-barrier physical fence" and they will surge forward on a bipartisan wave of support.
