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August 18, 2005
More Newt
So long as I'm talking Gingrich (see next post), I love this quote from his former press secretary Lee Howell:
There is the Newt Gingrich who is intellectual, appealing, and fun to be with. And there is the Newt Gingrich who's a bloodthirsty partisan who'd just as soon cut your guts out as look at you. And who, very candidly, is mean, mean as hell.
Newt nostalgia mostly turns on memories of the first guy, the eccentric ideologue who loved dinosaurs, wrote alternative history novels, thought we should blast handicapped folks into space, lived for technology, and was a general cross between a batty poli-sci professor and a 10-year-old. That's the Newt who's been on display since 1998 (save for a mostly-forgotten moment when he basically accused Colin Powell of treason). The other guy, the guy who said the Republican party's problem was a lack of nastiness, who said "Democrats were the enemy of normal people everywhere", who said that following the Democratic foreign policy would mean "tyranny everywhere, and we in America could experience the joys of Soviet-style brutality and murdering of women and children", we've kinda forgotten about him.
That Newt is in there. And the moment he's elected to something again, that Newt will return. Studying up on the old him has given me a lot of respect for the public relations turnaround he's engineered, a store of esteem I can add to my respect for his brilliance and tactical savvy. But all that aside, the guy is fairly horrible when he gets into power and we should try not to forget that.
August 18, 2005 in Republicans | Permalink
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» Long Live Newt from One Caveat
Ezra probably knows a lot more about this subject then I do, and I interested in ready the piece he is working on, but I don’t hold the same disdain for Newt Gingrich that he does.I have met Newt [Read More]
Tracked on Aug 19, 2005 9:36:00 AM
» Long Live Newt from One Caveat
Ezra probably knows a lot more about this subject then I do, and I interested in ready the piece he is working on, but I don’t hold the same disdain for Newt Gingrich that he does. I have met [Read More]
Tracked on Aug 19, 2005 3:17:56 PM
Comments
I'll never forget when I first came across Newt. One of my friends at school (in the UK) had his Little Red White and Blue Book (funny how the Republicans love appropriating Maoist tropes), which was probably the first book written by (OK, quoted from) a politician I had ever read. I'd read a fair amount of politics, but mostly by academics/intellectuals. So I was used to reasoned discussions of policy decisions and how they would affect society. Then I read Newt. The book was cunningly divided into chapters by topic or theme. The big idea in the poverty section was, and I am not kidding, getting rid of welfare and replacing it with tax credits for laptops.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Aug 18, 2005 6:24:41 PM
Beware the PR re-engineered rightwing nasty nutball: Nixon!
Only when he was elected Pres. after his rebirth did his earlier dirty-tricks worldview get fully realized as a paranoid, bigoted thug.
Posted by: JimPortlandOR | Aug 18, 2005 6:37:07 PM
It's a lot easier to be popular if you don't have to run for anything or take as much responsibility as the next guy. You can do a lot of back-seat driving and look pretty smart.
The flip side is, once you are in power, the best way to keep your approval rating up seems to be to take responsibility, at least up until a point.
Posted by: Nick Beaudrot | Aug 18, 2005 7:32:51 PM
I saw a copy of Newt's wonderful alternate history novel, 1945, on sale for fifty cents yesterday. Would you like me to go over a couple of the more bizarre ideas within it? One that I found interesting is the idea that you can make a World War II fighter plane perform better by strapping a rocket to it. If only Newt had spent more time playing flight simulator games he would have realized that it is possible to snap the wings off a World War II plane even when it doesn't have a rocket attached just by flying it too hard. Admittedly most U.S. planes self destructed less easily than Messerschmitts or Zeros, but using a rocket to make them go faster wasn't a practical option. So much for Mister Science.
Another interesting thing in the novel is that when the Germans raid America, Newt says that ordinary, everyday, armed citizens fight them off. Unfortunately Newt had already said that the Germans were wearing American uniforms and doesn't explain how the ordinary, everyday, gun toting Americans could tell the Germans apart from their own soldiers. Is Newt suggesting that if America is invaded U.S. citizens should shoot their own soldiers?
There are other weird things in the novel, but I'm afraid I lack the strength to go on.
Posted by: Brak | Aug 18, 2005 9:05:00 PM
man, you;re all about the gingrich over here!
i dont think any one with half a brain should fall for mr gingrich's 2-facedness, but who said anything about the media having more than half a brain anyway?
Posted by: almostinfamous | Aug 18, 2005 9:38:27 PM
I saw a copy of Newt's wonderful alternate history novel, 1945, on sale for fifty cents yesterday.
Sadly, when I saw it on sale (back in '98, when it was selling for at least a dollar), I bought it, and I have read it. I definitely put in the same category as "The Star Wars Holiday Special" -- so bad that you just have to see it for yourself.
Kind of like "Fatherland" if it had been written by a Republican politician who wished he were Tom Clancy. Go figure.
Posted by: Constantine | Aug 18, 2005 11:28:14 PM
I should apologise for an error in my previous comment. I failed to convert currencies. In U.S. dollars Newt's book was actually selling for 38 cents.
Posted by: Brak | Aug 19, 2005 12:17:58 AM
Another interesting point about the book '1945' (and this is where Gingrich's native wingnuttery came into its own) was the way that the German commando invasion was beaten off. Newt spends lots of time extolling the training, motivation and massive levels of experience of the SS commandos, who take out the US Rangers at the invasion site handily.
They eventually get into trouble when civilian from nearby start using the guns they have stored thanks to the good ol' 2nd amendment. The complete absence of any form of realism in this part of the book is shocking - Recent American experiences in Somalia and Iraq suggest that when civilians, even very motivated and relatively well armed civilians, engage regular modern infantry head-on, the result is a one-way blood bath - 20 to 1 seem to be the kind of kill ratios you end up dealing with.
In Newt's case, if i remember rightly , non-suicidal US farmers, armed with shot guns and hunting rifles, kick ass against the WW2 equivalent of very experienced Delta Force/SAS type troops! Of course, a 2nd Amendment nut may feel he has to believe this kind of horse**** if he is seriously to claim that private arms offer protection against the tyranny of government.
Posted by: JohnTh | Aug 19, 2005 2:57:41 AM
kinda like red dawn, johnth. rent it. a bunch of high school jocks in colorado, led by, iirc, patrick swayzee and c. thomas howell, beat back a combo soviet and cuban forces.
written and directed by john milius.
Posted by: harry near indy | Aug 19, 2005 4:35:10 PM
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