To The Point Of Making Your Ears Bleed

Newt Gingrich isn't Barack Obama's bigest fan or anything, but I wasn't aware he had totally thrown away any and all credibility he had left (which was microscopic to begin with) by descending into the ranks of the birthers.

Citing a recent Forbes article by Dinesh D'Souza, former House speaker Newt Gingrich tells National Review Online that President Obama may follow a "Kenyan, anti-colonial" worldview.

Gingrich says that D'Souza has made a "stunning insight" into Obama's behavior -- the "most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama."

"What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?" Gingrich asks. "That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior."

"This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president," Gingrich tells us.

"I think he worked very hard at being a person who is normal, reasonable, moderate, bipartisan, transparent, accommodating -- none of which was true," Gingrich continues. "In the Alinksy tradition, he was being the person he needed to be in order to achieve the position he needed to achieve . . . He was authentically dishonest."

And not only has he descended into the circle of Birther Hell, he's doing so in order to cynically and specifically stoke dog-whistle us vs them racism as well.  He's all but accusing the President of being a Kenyan citizen here and not even American, of having "played a wonderful con" and lying to all of us.  It's the most base form of Obama Derangement Syndrome here.  "Will nobody rid me of this troublesome Kenyan?"

At this point Newt is just blowing the racism dog-whistle so loudly that it's bursting eardrums.  It's disgusting to see our politics and politicians playing at this level, but the 2010 campaign season is officially here and the insane GOP is going full out to portray Barack Obama as the scariest black man who ever lived.

It's sad.  Of course, nobody will say a word to Newt about this.  He'll be joined by a majority of the GOP soon enough.  Birthers are now the official mainstream position of the Republican party.  But there's a reason for that:

Gingrich bases his portrayal of Obama as a Manchurian foreigner programmed by his Kenyan father to wreak Africa’s revenge for Western colonialism on an article in Forbes by Dinesh D’Souza. D’Souza’s argument was given its proper name—ideological birtherism—and utterly destroyed by Daniel Larison here.

But pointing out that ideological birtherism is wholly based on lies won’t deter its champions from using it as a political strategy. Why? Because that’s all they’ve got. 

It's the new Southern Strategy, and they are blowing that whistle until the dogs rip free from their frayed leashes and savage the country.

On the other hand, Steve seems to think Newt's just projecting his own crap onto Obama.  He's got a pretty fair point.