It's hard to credit
the rise of Newt Gingrich in the Republican Party primary race. He seems to
represent the worst of the party's weaknesses. The "Contract with
America," a pledge to behave in fiscally bizarre and short-sighted ways,
resulted in the shut-down of the federal government in 1994 and the collapse of a
Republican majority in Congress. His
leadership of the move to impeach Bill Clinton preceded revelations that he had cheated on his own wife, followed by his own punishment
by the House for financial indiscretions. He has taken money for years from
various powerful business interests to act as their hack on the Hill. His
political philosophy masquerades as scholarship as he claims to be a professor,
but has been shown to be so inconsistent as to be essentially dishonest.
He should be a
laughingstock -- and has been for years.
Can Romney really be
so distasteful to people that they'll swallow this instead?
As The Economist notes,
Nowadays, a candidate must believe not just some but all of the following things: that abortion should be illegal in all cases; that gay marriage must be banned even in states that want it; that the 12m illegal immigrants, even those who have lived in America for decades, must all be sent home; that the 46m people who lack health insurance have only themselves to blame; that global warming is a conspiracy; that any form of gun control is unconstitutional; that any form of tax increase must be vetoed, even if the increase is only the cancelling of an expensive and market-distorting perk; that Israel can do no wrong and the “so-called Palestinians”, to use Mr Gingrich’s term, can do no right; that the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education and others whose names you do not have to remember should be abolished.This is a bizarre combination, created by "fatwa," to steal another phrase from The Economist, rather than by any rational or even political process. The radical "base," led by many people so divorced from empirical reality that most of us would consider them crazy, now dictates the terms of Republican primaries.
Like The Economist, I would like to see a productive Republican Party. We need a serious discourse to replace the nonsense we get these days.
SOURCE: The Economist December 31, 2011 (www.economist.com)
