the bad Newt

I have a confession to make. I have been on the Newt Gingrich mailing list from the beginning and I will remain so if only to keep tabs on what he's up to. I've been on the mailing list since he founded "American Solutions" several years ago. I've always regarded him a conservative visionary but I realize now that I was not fully aware of the full spectrum of both good and "bad" Newt. And we are certainly seeing the bad Newt now, and in spades.

Throwing Paul Ryan under the bus should have been the first sign of trouble but in general I gave him a mulligan on that. (Such charity I would later learn to regret.) Gingrich grandiosely declared Paul Ryan's forward looking and visionary way of saving Medicare "right wing social engineering" when apparently he needed to cater to what he imagined was a left leaning audience. He later quasi- backed off that statement. Whatever.

His latest attack on Romney is what pushes me well over the edge and even if I had one foot ever in his camp I cannot now.

In response to Romney's idea that perhaps Gingrich should give back the tax payer money he earned when he was profiting essentially off of what led to the financial crisis by peddling his DC influence to Freddie Mac, Gingrich called for Romney to return, one wonders to whom, the money he made from reconstituting companies in the private sector while a member of Bain Capital. Clearly this is the line of attack that those on the left have lamely adopted on countless occasions. Gingrich seems to have let on that he's at least willing to use the rhetoric of the left when he feels threatened. Such vanity is not an endearing quality.

With one sentence I think Newt may have jumped the shark. With no real memory of 90's politics and giving him a break on the throwing of Paul Ryan under the bus I was buying into the Potemkin village version of Newt, the facade. I was mistaken and naive.

We can only hope the rest of the party catches on before it's too late.