George Will: Newt Gingrich a 'rental politician ... not a historian'

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George Will: Newt Gingrich a 'rental politician ... not a historian'



Conservative scribe George Will ridiculed Newt Gingrich as a "rental politician" on ABC's "This Week" yesterday, scoffing at the idea that the Republican Party's self-described "big ideas" candidate is employable as a historian:
Gingrich’s is an amazingly efficient candidacy, in that it embodies almost everything disagreeable about modern Washington. He’s the classic rental politician. People think his problem is his colorful personal life. He’s gonna hope people concentrate on that, rather than on, for example, ethanol. Al Gore has recanted ethanol. Not Newt Gingrich, who has served the ethanol lobby. Industrial policy of the sort that got us Solyndra – he’s all for it. Freddie Mac, he says, hired him as a "historian." He’s not a historian. Hire Sean Wilentz, hire Gordon Wood if you want a historian.
Mediaite has the video here. Will's undisguised scorn is a good illustration of why Gingrich, even as he makes a bid for the affections of rank-and-file anti-Romney voters, is unlikely to win over much of anti-Romney conservative upper crust. As much as there's still a demand for an impressive, thoughtful conservative in the race who can lead the party to Romney's right, most of the political elites who know Gingrich best were convinced a long time ago that he isn't that guy.
 
George Will: Newt Gingrich a 'rental politician ... not a historian'



Conservative scribe George Will ridiculed Newt Gingrich as a "rental politician" on ABC's "This Week" yesterday, scoffing at the idea that the Republican Party's self-described "big ideas" candidate is employable as a historian:
Gingrich’s is an amazingly efficient candidacy, in that it embodies almost everything disagreeable about modern Washington. He’s the classic rental politician. People think his problem is his colorful personal life. He’s gonna hope people concentrate on that, rather than on, for example, ethanol. Al Gore has recanted ethanol. Not Newt Gingrich, who has served the ethanol lobby. Industrial policy of the sort that got us Solyndra – he’s all for it. Freddie Mac, he says, hired him as a "historian." He’s not a historian. Hire Sean Wilentz, hire Gordon Wood if you want a historian.
Mediaite has the video here. Will's undisguised scorn is a good illustration of why Gingrich, even as he makes a bid for the affections of rank-and-file anti-Romney voters, is unlikely to win over much of anti-Romney conservative upper crust. As much as there's still a demand for an impressive, thoughtful conservative in the race who can lead the party to Romney's right, most of the political elites who know Gingrich best were convinced a long time ago that he isn't that guy.
George Will still remembers what happened during the '90s with Newt, as well.
 
George Will: Newt Gingrich a 'rental politician ... not a historian'



Conservative scribe George Will ridiculed Newt Gingrich as a "rental politician" on ABC's "This Week" yesterday, scoffing at the idea that the Republican Party's self-described "big ideas" candidate is employable as a historian:
Gingrich’s is an amazingly efficient candidacy, in that it embodies almost everything disagreeable about modern Washington. He’s the classic rental politician. People think his problem is his colorful personal life. He’s gonna hope people concentrate on that, rather than on, for example, ethanol. Al Gore has recanted ethanol. Not Newt Gingrich, who has served the ethanol lobby. Industrial policy of the sort that got us Solyndra – he’s all for it. Freddie Mac, he says, hired him as a "historian." He’s not a historian. Hire Sean Wilentz, hire Gordon Wood if you want a historian.
Mediaite has the video here. Will's undisguised scorn is a good illustration of why Gingrich, even as he makes a bid for the affections of rank-and-file anti-Romney voters, is unlikely to win over much of anti-Romney conservative upper crust. As much as there's still a demand for an impressive, thoughtful conservative in the race who can lead the party to Romney's right, most of the political elites who know Gingrich best were convinced a long time ago that he isn't that guy.
George Will still remembers what happened during the '90s with Newt, as well.

He should stick with baseball. More accurate.
 
More George Will:


Gingrich, however, embodies the vanity and rapacity that make modern Washington repulsive. And there is his anti-conservative confidence that he has a comprehensive explanation of, and plan to perfect, everything.

Granted, his grandiose rhetoric celebrating his “transformative” self is entertaining: Recently he compared his revival of his campaign to Sam Walton’s and Ray Kroc’s creations of Wal-Mart and McDonald’s, two of America’s largest private-sector employers. There is almost artistic vulgarity in Gingrich’s unrepented role as a hired larynx for interests profiting from such government follies as ethanol and cheap mortgages. His Olympian sense of exemption from standards and logic allowed him, fresh from pocketing $1.6 million from Freddie Mac (for services as a “historian”), to say, “If you want to put people in jail,” look at “the politicians who profited from” Washington’s environment.

His temperament — intellectual hubris distilled — makes him blown about by gusts of enthusiasm for intellectual fads, from 1990s futurism to “Lean Six Sigma” today. On Election Eve 1994, he said a disturbed South Carolina mother drowning her children “vividly reminds” Americans “how sick the society is getting, and how much we need to change things. . . . The only way you get change is to vote Republican.” Compare this grotesque opportunism — tarted up as sociology — with his devious recasting of it in a letter to the Nov. 18, 1994, Wall Street Journal (http://bit.ly/vFbjAk). And remember his recent swoon over the theory that “Kenyan, anti-colonial” thinking explains Barack Obama.

Gingrich, who would have made a marvelous Marxist, believes everything is related to everything else and only he understands how. Conservatism, in contrast, is both cause and effect of modesty about understanding society’s complexities, controlling its trajectory and improving upon its spontaneous order. Conservatism inoculates against the hubristic volatility that Gingrich exemplifies and Genesis deplores: “Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.”
 
That column is pretty withering. Reminds me of Newt's faith in beach volleyball as the future of America. Seriously. Google it.

Anyway, as soon as Newt came out for amnesty, he was done for me.
 
Even Tom Coburn, senator from OK, can't stand Newt. He blasted Newt on Meet the Propagandists today. I still say Newt wants to sell more books and then bail-out of the race. Only Mitt has a shot at beating BO.
 
Even Tom Coburn, senator from OK, can't stand Newt. He blasted Newt on Meet the Propagandists today. I still say Newt wants to sell more books and then bail-out of the race. Only Mitt has a shot at beating BO.
No, only Huntsman has a shot at beating Obama. But he can't get traction from the wingnuts.

With this circus, I wouldn't count him out.
 
Even Tom Coburn, senator from OK, can't stand Newt. He blasted Newt on Meet the Propagandists today. I still say Newt wants to sell more books and then bail-out of the race. Only Mitt has a shot at beating BO.
No, only Huntsman has a shot at beating Obama. But he can't get traction from the wingnuts.

Honestly, guy, where do you even think that?

Huntsman? Really?

Maybe you need to escape your worldview and apply a little rationality.


Because Moderates don't win elections, enthusiasm does.

This is a center right country. That's why the Democrats win when they run centrists, but Republicans win when they run true conservatives. Obama hid what he was, but people know now.

As a rule, when the GOP nominates real conservatives, they win. When they nominate moderates, they lose.
 
Are we SUPPOSE to care what George Will says?

I think they think we are.

This is an odd election, in that the GOP establishment is determined to regain control of the party. But they picked a candidate that the base plain old does not want.

But they also spent a lot of time shooting down or sandbagging anyone who might pose a challenge to their choice. So those of us who don't want Romney didn't have a lot of good choices.

Newt Survived because he stayed in the shadows while others self-destructed. He's a pretty capable guy, but he's not their pick. Unfortunately the two minute warning has sounded, and they don't have much they can do about it.

Except get George Will to scold us. But no one cared about what George Will has had to say since the 1990's.
 
Newt Survived because he stayed in the shadows while others self-destructed. He's a pretty capable guy, but he's not their pick. Unfortunately the two minute warning has sounded, and they don't have much they can do about it.

He may not have been their first pick, but they can work with him. Currently, they're just negotiating a price.
 
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This is a center right country. That's why the Democrats win when they run centrists, but Republicans win when they run true conservatives. Obama hid what he was, but people know now.

Given that Obama campaigned to the left of where he has governed, you may need to rethink your sociology of elections.
 
Even Tom Coburn, senator from OK, can't stand Newt. He blasted Newt on Meet the Propagandists today. I still say Newt wants to sell more books and then bail-out of the race. Only Mitt has a shot at beating BO.
No, only Huntsman has a shot at beating Obama. But he can't get traction from the wingnuts.

I agree. Huntsman has a shot at beating obama, he's just not very popular and not a lot of republicans will vote for him. Other than that, yeah he has a great chance at beating obama
 

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