Posted on 01/22/2012 6:50:50 AM PST by nikos1121
ORANGEBURG, S.C. - - Newt Gingrich trundles into the meeting hall - - a former X-rated movie theater - - to rapturous applause.
He is not the best-looking guy in Republican race or the best-funded or the most ideologically pure. But he has found his shtick, and he is shticking to it.
Newt Gingrich is the angriest man in America.
Mitt Romney will tell you that Barack Obama is a “nice guy” but that he is “in over his head.”
Newt Gingrich will tell you Barack Obama is “the most radical and most incompetent president in our lifetime!”
Obama is more than incompetent, in fact. To Newt, he is a moron. “It’s one thing to say the White House can’t play chess, it’s another to say it can’t play checkers,” Newt says and pauses like the professional he is for the laugh to build. “But tic-tac-toe?”
But Obama is more than stupid. He is dangerous. This is important to keep in mind.
The Gingrich campaign is based on the notion of perpetual struggle against perpetual peril.
“How many of you believe the left will fight us every step of the way even after we win?” Gingrich asks the crowd.
The next day, Gingrich will win the South Carolina primary. But he already knows that will happen. That is a given. Just like his nomination and election. But even that will not be enough to silence the “secular socialists” who oppose him from the left.
The “left” is a broad category to Gingrich. It includes liberals, socialists, anti-religious bigots, i.e. Democrats, most of the media, some misguided Republicans, and, well, anybody who opposes Newt Gingrich.
“We knew there’d be attacks, and the closer we were to winning the more ferocious the attacks would be,” Gingrich says.
John King of CNN, who asked Gingrich in a debate Thursday night whether he had ever asked his second wife for an “open” marriage, is part of the ferocious attack machine that seeks to thwart Gingrich.
Gingrich has called this “despicable” and now he calls it “grotesque.”
“Is the American news media just totally out of touch with reality?” he asks reporters after the rally. “You want to say: Get a life! There is a consistent pattern year after year that the American people are sick of the behavior of the news media. Sick!”
Anger, umbrage and bitterness are so much a part of Gingrich’s public persona that he likes to attack the very concept of happiness.
Gingrich, like other candidates for the Republican nomination, has a fondness for quoting the Founding Fathers, but he now says that when they wrote “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence, it did not mean what we think it means.
“Happiness in the 18th century meant wisdom and virtue, not hedonism,” Gingrich says without a scintilla of embarrassment, even though he, himself, has pursued a fair amount of hedonism in his lifetime.
“And they promised us the right to pursue,” Gingrich continues. “There is no provision for a Department of Happiness. They issued no happiness stamps. And if you said that you were going to take happiness from some and distribute it to others, the Founding Fathers would have asked by what right?”
So if we don’t have happiness to look forward to, what does Gingrich offer?
Work. Effort. Struggle.
“Work is something you need,” Gingrich says. “I don’t think it’s inappropriate for a 12- or 13-year-old to push a mop. We have the finest food stamp president in American history. I want to be the finest paycheck president in history.
“We will never give somebody 99 weeks of money for doing nothing!”
The crowd cheers its approval. Imagine people getting unemployment benefits for 99 weeks. For doing nothing! The average weekly unemployment benefit in America in 2010 was about $295, which is hardly a princely sum. But if people faced actual starvation instead of getting food stamps and unemployment insurance, wouldn’t this be a better country? As long as you had a job, that is.
There are now three Republican contenders with gold medals: Rick Santorum (Iowa), Mitt Romney (New Hampshire) and Newt Gingrich (South Carolina).
But Gingrich is unworried about Santorum and unworried about Ron Paul, who has yet to win anywhere. Only Mitt has the money and organization to beat him, Gingrich believes, but Romney will fail because Romney’s speeches are filled with optimism and other infantile notions.
Americans don’t want sunshine, lollipops and rainbows. They want blood, toil, tears and sweat. They want a dependably gloomy man in the Oval Office. They want Newt!
And he believes they will elect him come November.
“It will shock the country,” Newt says. “It will shock the world. And shock is what we need.”
. But he has found his shtick, and he is shticking to it.
Newt Gingrich is the angriest man in America.
Anyone who, today, thinks anger has to be ginned up is delusional.
I'm for Rick staying in as RINO insurance. Let's not forget that just a few weeks ago Newt was personna non grata here, and that for good cause.
The fact that he's hitting the right notes on the campaign trail does not blind me to his real weaknesses that could blow up at any time.
Why can't the conversation be about Romney dropping out? Come on Florida, make it so.
Soooo Roger Simon is NOT ANGRY!!!.. What does it take to get Roger angry?..
A slap on the face?.. Confiscatory taxes?.. Treasonous domestic and international issues?..
Anybody that is not angry with american politics must be FOR the current direction.. or don’t really care..
On the other hand Roger could be a “PROGRESSIVE”...
You know....... a Republican one.. the worse kind.......
Newt seems to have the right anger about the right things in the right time in the right amount toward the right people..
NOT BEING ANGRY should mark you out as being “A TOOL”..
It’s very strange that these people like Mitt who are so called antiextremists (Mormons pride themselves of being a religion that never was founded in any bloodshed event), would associate with Islam.
I am sorry, but while there exist extreme situation requiring extreme mindfulness and methods (self defense), it does not mean that we advocate extremism.
It is Islam which is advocating extreme forms of submissiveness and nothinking that is most dangerous. In fact, they only thrive in extreme situations that they create.
Is Romney in need of that which he lusts for, like a hypocritem, extreme violence, that is? He is one creepy guy.
I am sorry where exactly is the anger? I hear intensity, I hear determination, I hear actual thoughts, reason and intelligence, I do not hear anger.
And even if Gingrich is angry so fracking what, we need a person to be angry enough to do something to get rid of the current man in the WH.
We do not need a guy yo blames America for every ill in the world.
We do not need a guy who political is nearly identical to BHO.
We do not need a perfectly nice guy who appears not to have a fire in his belly.
We need a guy who will storm the WH and take control.
And so am I.
Anger is a natural emotion. God created a range of emotions. There is a purpose to each. Willard, Santorum and Paul do not have a fire in their belly. What is wrong with them? I will stop being angry when our Republic has been returned. I think Newt will too. In the meantime, I require some anger to drive me. Happy faces, rainbows, political correctness and unicorns do not cut it.
No, we want a dependably anti-Marxist pro-American in the Oval Office.
As the witch in Into the Woods says, “You’re not good. You’re not bad. You’re just nice. I’m not good, I’m not nice. I’m just right. I’m the witch. You’re the world.
The article seems to say that optimism (rainbows and lollipops) and anger are opposites and that just isn’t always the case. Appropriate anger, for instance at abuse, is not pessimism, rather it is the very first step at making things better. The “nice” candidates seem like the adult, who COULD do something, but instead gloss things over. We, the American people feel as if we are being kicked around and we are almost starving for someone to be real and speak the unvarnished truth. Apprpriate anger is actually the opposite of helpless victim.
Newt isn’t angry, he is like most of the rest of us who pay the freight... disgusted and tired of hunkering down in our foxholes.
Tom Coburn lost me when he said obastard is his friend. That said more about Coburn than obastard. Coburn confirmed his poor judgement to me.
Newt is the real thing but he needs a good finisher to help him execute his ideas. West has been floated at VP and is probably a good man but he is not experienced in the ways of the beltway. Maybe he is what Newt needs to form a winning picture but he will need someone with more experience to be his XO.
“Americans don’t want sunshine, lollipops and rainbows. They want blood, toil, tears and sweat. They want a dependably gloomy man in the Oval Office.”
That was pretty much Reagan’s path to victory in 1980. Reagan pointed out the peril of this country (under Carter) both economically and militarily. The “Morning in America” stuff didn’t happen until 1984.
I'm a little touchy of late given the scurrilous posting of some anti-newt posters.
YES! Ever hear of cops playing good cop/bad cop. In future debates think you're going to see these two master the technique against Willard when necessary.
Also at convention Rick can release any delagate he has made while all the delegates do not go to the "winner" to Newt. (Just like Mitt set up in NH with his cousin Jon Huntsman)
Did you know, Roger Simon, why crowds stand up and cheer when Newt slapps jerks like you? Because we think you are scum and damaging this country.
Mitt is the democrats Judas Goat, and they are pushing him with everything they have.
Apology accepted. I’m all in for Newt.
The premise of this article, which I disagree with, is that anger in a presidential candidate is a bad thing. Since when? Well, yes, we know that the leading characteristic of Reagan as a politician was his optimism. But remember moments like “I paid for this microphone”? There are times to be angry and one such time is now. As bad as the economy and the mood of the country might have been under Carter, it was nowhere near the jaw-dropping state of corruption and recklessness that Barack and his minions are perpetrating (with the help of RINOs, I might add). If there ever was a time that a politician’s anger on the campaign trail was appropriate and necessary, that time is now. Gingrich is tapping into this common theme that binds all conservatives, Reagan democrats and honest independents: the country is truly in peril. The criminally corrupt and reckless class in Washington are hell-bent on driving the train off the cliff and it is time for all patriots to be aroused with a furious, righteous anger to energize a radical change of direction which is the only thing at this point that can save the country from plunging into the socialist abyss.
Anger is exactly the right emotion for these times.
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