Newt’s Mysterious Flight to Frontrunner

Just as I was preparing to write a column critical of Newt Gingrich and wonder at his apparent surge from obscurity to a virtual tie with Mitt Romney in the Republican presidential primary race, darned if Ann Coulter didn't get one into print before I could. And if ever there was an analogous story to the elephant and the mouse, Jerry McConnell vying with Ann Coulter might be it.

But on the other hand, maybe not, as Ann had Newt in her sights merely as a foil to her real intentions of running an obvious early campaign commercial promoting Mitt Romney. I have no intentions of going that far as yet, in that I am still on the sidelines, not sulking, please understand, glowering, perhaps (I like that word), because I am unable to find anyone conservative enough along with other qualities that I could endorse. And that last statement is not entirely correct either as, in fact, I have discovered that richly endowed with conservatism candidate that could make me pull the voting lever in a flash. Unfortunately, we here in my voting precinct do not have voting machines with levers, only recently moving from hand marked paper ballots that were laboriously also hand counted, to paper ballots that require the voter to ink in an oval shaped blank next to the name of the candidate of your choice, and subsequently stuff it into a large rectangular bin, that counts and records simultaneously for the record; all of which takes about as much time as typing this sentence has taken me to complete.

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Paraphrasing Ann Coulter's column title, "If Not Romney or Gingrich, Who? If Not Now, When?" my answer is: "Keep reading". Getting back to my peeve at the opening of this column about Ms. Coulter beating me to the punch regarding Newt Gingrich's rise from the phoenix ashes to co-front runner in the primary race for POTUS, it is pure mystery to me how Newt did it. I mean he was DEAD in the water or even out of it just weeks ago having committed more blunders per square inch than an Obama look-alike does in an Arab Sultan's tent during a meeting of heads of state. Seeing Gingrich at the top of the candidates poll positions makes me feel a bit sorry for Governor Tim Pawlenty who was riding high in the polls and then suffered the misfortune of placing third in the August 13, 2011 Iowa straw polls for no clear reason other than a severe lack of dynamism. Why would that relatively minor flaw cause a withdrawal when Gingrich, who has been saddled with numerous gaffes and transgressions, has soared to the heights since these faults have surfaced? Are Republicans subconsciously looking for another Clintonesque wayward rascal who thinks the laws apply only to others? Some of Gingrich's blunders are of minor pandering mistakes such as apologizing to another scalawag such as Jesse Jackson for something as inconsequential as an errant remark by a black Republican, J. C. Watts. He would have fared better had he just kept his mouth closed on that non-issue. Inviting that same GOP nemesis, Jesse Jackson, to a State of the Union address was a tasteless and obvious bit of pandering on Gingrich's part which didn't sit well with true Republicans. One of Newt's biggest mistakes and 'not-ready-for-prime-time' duties as president was his totally flawed backing of a more liberal than most progressive Democrat candidates, Republican In Name Only, Dede Scozzafava, for a special election as U. S. Representative to fill a vacancy in New York's 23rd Congressional District. This after much notoriety ensued from the support she received from the communist George Soros. This same candidate so praised by Gingrich eventually lost the primary race to a conservative Republican and withdrew while supporting the liberal Democrat in the race. Nice pick, Newt. Gingrich, as Ann Coulter pointed out in her column, was even more non-Republican-like in his favoring global warming commercial made jointly with none other than the most liberal of all progressives, Nancy Pelosi. How a former GOP Speaker of the House could join forces with one of the leaders of the opposite and enemy political party, not to mention agreeing with the absolute number one OAF of that wayward party in the Senate, the infamous Al Gore, himself rivaling another blundering buffoon of that same party, Joe Biden, is hard to fathom. Is Newt telling us that he is a coming-out-of-the-closet-RINO as well? One of Newt's most egregious gaffes and criticisms against his own party came when, as reported by Tim Collie in a Newsmax.com article on May 15, 2011, Gingrich "stirred a lively debate Sunday by slamming Rep. Paul Ryan's plan to reform Medicare" on NBC's "Meet the Press." It's one thing to 'fraternize' with your sworn opponents like Pelosi, Jackson, etc. but when you blast a young, energetic up-and-coming new light in the party structure such as Wisconsin's Paul Ryan when he presents a plan designed to assist our senior citizens with Social Security, you have gone too far left for me and most other REAL conservatives. Then, to put icing on the corroded cake, recent revelations of Gingrich's dipping into the profits pool for corrupt politicians and their first hand knowledge of favoritism, the former Speaker himself admitted to being "paid between $1.6 million and $1.8 million in consulting fees from two contracts with Freddie Mac, the nation's second-largest provider of mortgage funds" according to a report by Kay Henderson on Reuters.com as recent as November 16, 2011. In my estimation, these mistakes do not make a presidential leader; but more likely greatly assist his swift backwards slide to the depths of the chart.