Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney -- the perfect dynamic duo for our times, if not the end times.
A Batman and Robin for the one percent. Defenders of truth, justice, and a Gulag Achipelago filled with child janitors and the fandango of the foreclosed.
If
you're rooting for President Obama, or just plain enjoy the guilty
pleasure of watching a Real Housewives of the Neo-Confederacy, your
dream contest has arrived. Even before the news cameras and nation's
attention trek north to the frostbitten fields of Iowa, these two should
provide constant amusement as they do battle over who's had the most
swift conversion to the principles of the Tea Party.
While they
may be very different, they're also one in the same. Romney's a
patrician's patrician, a guy who naturally grows khakis as a sort of
protective exoskeleton and makes John Kerry seem like Jack Hanna.
Gingrich grew up in more humble circumstances, a "historian" whose
second wife (I think, allow me to consult my calculator) told Esquire
a year ago that her former husband "always wanted to be somebody" and
didn't feel a need to privately live up to the principles he espoused
publicly (I smell sitcom!).
Romney is handsome with his hair
dry-iced to his scalp. Gingrich, well, let's just leave it at this: go
back and watch some old 1980s episodes of Jake and the Fatman.
The
similarities, however, once you get past the surface, are striking.
Both started off as Rockefeller, or moderate, Republicans, and moved
expeditiously right to stay in tune with the base of an increasingly
radicalised party. Both have no patience for government assistance, even
though they've grown wealthy via the tried and true path of Washington
political welfare -- where your father's name or a former position in Congress takes the place of a dollar and a dream.
Gingrich cut a television ad with Nancy Pelosi warning that we had to address climate change, a scientific phenomenon that Romney believed
included "human contribution." Meanwhile, Romney passed the pre-cursor
to "Obamacare" (you may remember Tim Pawlenty's lone memorable phrase
from his 2.5 weeks as a GOP presidential candidate, when he referred to "Obamneycare") and Gingrich, as recently as a few years ago, was "earning" the whopping $37 million given by Big Health Care
to his "Center for Health Transformation" by advocating for the very
same individual health-care mandate that can be found in Romney and
Obama's health-care laws.
As I bet you've guessed by now, Romney
has disavowed his own health care legislation as nationally relevant
(and climate change as real), and Gingrich goes all Jason Bourne when it
comes time to discuss his climate-change ad with Pelosi (ditto his
advocacy for the "individual mandate"). They'd have you discover any
solutions to these two crucial issues by attending the dinosaur exhibit
at The Creation Museum or a board meeting at the Chamber of Commerce. In
fact, a current Democratic National Committee advertisement hitting Romney and a Ron Paul web savaging Gingrich for their ever-changing ideologies are almost interchangeable.
What they most possess in common, however, is personal. They may literally be the two least popular men in their party. In a recent piece
by Charles Pierce for Esquire, he reminded us that "one of the few
insights worthy of anyone's time in that horrible Game Change book was
the fact that, by the end of the 2008 presidential cycle, all of the
other Republican candidates had come to despise Willard." Willard being
Romney's real first name, even though he (yes, really) denied it during a recent debate.
Gingrich, similarly, since his sudden rise in the polls past apparent Barry White stand-in Herman Cain, has been torn to shreds by a who's who of conservatives -- from Joe Scarborough to Tea-Party favorite Rep. Allen West; George Will to Rep. Paul Ryan.
Forget
having a beer with these guys, most Republicans (and not just elites,
as evidenced by Romney's inability to surpass 25 percent in polling of
the Republican primary electorate) seem to think finding something
likeable about either man to require a spelunking expedition into their
souls to search for hidden treasure.
Of course, the big winner in
all this is President Obama, who, with unemployment at nine percent
and a foreclosure crisis still unfolding, should be all but finished in
next year's election. But he must be thanking his lucky stars for the
Tea Party and its chosen Republican representatives, who threaten to
make him a two-term president, much as a bevy of B-listers did for
another incumbent who had no business being re-elected in 2004.
Cross-posted from Al Jazeera
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