But here’s the thing: The voters in their infinite wisdom have just given a huge boost to perhaps the only GOP candidate who could shift the spotlight from President Obama to himself, alienate virtually all independent voters, lose more than 40 states and put the House majority in jeopardy.
We’d be looking at four more years of Obama’s economic policies, four more years of strained relations with allies, several new Supreme Court justices and an unprecedented power shift to the executive branch.
It seems, gentlemen, it’s time to get off your . . . er . . . time to get off the bench and into the game. It is time to make the case for winning conservatism — a conservatism attractive to centrist voters that can be translated into a reform agenda. If conservatism becomes a movement of anti-media bashing and hyperbolic rhetoric, it will cease to be a force in American politics. And if it is led by an egomaniac whose personal advancement takes precedence over any principle, the GOP will be (correctly) mocked.
So how about it? One of you can run yourself. Or you can instead collectively get behind a not-Gingrich candidate. But really, if you are to have a Republican Party to lead one day in the future, you can’t very well do nothing.
Part of that of course is Gingrich's win this weekend coming off of racial dog whistles and media bashing. They didn't much like it when Sarah Palin did it in 2008, and they certainly aren't going to stand for Newt trying to get away with it in 2012. Rubin is practically in tears trying to get someone like Chris Christie to enter the race at this point just to sink Newt. The liabilities that Gingrich exposed in Romney's facade are mortal.
Bill Kristol at the Weekly Standard is now playing the same song: it's time for somebody else to run.
Two months ago, I wrote an editorial headlined “Evitable.” The subhead captured the thrust of the piece: “It might not be Mitt. It could be Newt. It could be someone else.”
The editorial concluded:
“Or, if Iowa (January 3), New Hampshire (January 10) and South Carolina (January 21) produce fragmented results, and the state of the race is disheartening to Republicans, a late January entry [I'd now say an early February entry] by another candidate isn't out of the question, either . . .
“With a splintered field in a turbulent time in an Internet age, there are more possible outcomes in today's politics than are dreamt of in the philosophy of inevitability.”
I notice a new online petition was launched Saturday night to try to produce one possible outcome. It’s at runmitchrun.com.
They understand two things: one, that Newt knows how the game is played far better than Romney does and that means he will force the Village to back his awful dog-whistles and media-bashing and that the Village will lose all credibility or risk getting cut off by conservatives. Either way, they lose access and influence. Two, they know it means President Obama will be re-elected as a result. They don't want either.
I have no sympathy for Rubin. She and Bill Kristol and others like her helped create this monster. They are in a near panic now, and they know it. They wanted Mitt Romney to wrap up the nomination quickly so that he could pretend to be a moderate for the next nine months and win people over. There is no chance of that now, as Romney will now have to go to the right of Gingrich in order to stop Newt. By doing so, he destroys all chance he has in the general. If he doesn't, Newt wins the nomination only with the same result in the general.
Rubin and Kristol pleading for a white knight to save the party is proof enough that they believe this is true.
And Barack Obama will be laughing all the way to re-election.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment