Today In Newt Gingrichland

Two stories of note surrounding the Newtster.

First, is the column by Dana Milbank.  Here, Milbank argues that Gingrich won't last because he's not conservative enough for the GOP voters.  I think Milbank is subtly advancing the idea that GOP voters are freaking lunatics, but he does mention the many times over Gingrich's career that Newt has made a stab towards reality based policy.

I guess my response is that the Tea Party is only partly about policy.  In fact, policy isn't really important at all.  The real driving force is grievance and victimhood.  They feel oppressed by smoking bans and the inability to tell blonde jokes and being taxed to pay for black people's food stamps.  The merits of Obamacare (or Romneycare) are largely irrelevant.  Hell, the fact that Obamacare is largely the GOP position from the '90s is not evidence that Gingrich and Romney are too far left.  It is evidence that facts don't matter (see almost every damned post at this blog for examples).

Gingrich's advantage over Romney is stylistic.  Gingrich is the pissed off, middle aged white guy.  He's the one going after the media.  Romney is the suit who laid off cousin Daryl at the plant when his firm bought the company and downsized every one.  Oh, and he's a cultist, too.

Gingrich is a conservative because he feels genuine grievance.  Romney is a fraud because he can't summon that true righteous anger at the status quo.

The second story - and this comes as no surprise - is that Gingrich's tawdry, self-serving past is coming to the fore.  The problem for Mitt and Karl Rove (the most likely source for all this) is that any attack will have to come through the media.  And the media are the enemy.  What killed Perry and Bachmann was their own words, their own blank, soulless stares.  What might kill Cain is not the harassment scandal, but his increasingly poor handling of it.  That and his Perry-esque brain fart on Libya that's circling the web.  Gingrich has largely insulated himself from attacks through the press by making attacking the press his main schtick.

Gingrich is flawed as hell.  But ultimately, the game of Musical Notromney ends when the song stops and there is only one chair left empty.  Maybe Romney will be the only one left to take it.  We can dream though.

But while Newt may have the charisma and moral compass of a cockroach, he also has the same survival skills.