Gingrich, when he spoke, was a soft package of sour narcissism, like a moldering lemon with a sunken white fuzzy spot where his head should be. When he came onstage, in Georgia, he had won that state, where he’s  from, which he’d represented for years, and spoke as if everyone who’d ever doubted him ought to be ashamed. He turned an isolated win in a  losing campaign into an occasion to recite an enemies list. “I hope the analysts in Washington and New York, who spent June and July explaining  our campaign was dead, will watch this,” he said.

It was precisely because the national elites, especially in the Republican Party, had decided that a Gingrich Presidency was so frightening that they had to kill it early.

“Especially in the Republican Party”,peevishness seems to be the reward for getting anywhere near Newt. But not to worry; even though, in his telling, the agents of “Wall Street money” plotted against him, he  was saved by “the power of large solutions and big ideas.” Would those “large solutions” be the millions of dollars Sheldon Adelson gave via a Super PAC? “Big ideas” seems to mean anything that crosses his mind.

It took several minutes for Gingrich’s railing about wrongs other  Republicans had done to him (“the Reagan negative ad, that is a total  lie, O.K.?”) to be joined by his contempt for Obama (“shallow”, “deliciously incoherent”) “debating him would be just one of those moments where you could almost sell tickets for charity”) Also, the media was so “desperate to prove Gingrich was gone,  that it didn’t get  that Santorum was a phony: “He went to three states nobody else was in, and he won them.” As for the other not-Romneys,

It’s all right. There are lots of bunny rabbits that run through. I am the tortoise.

Bunny rabbits. Newt aims for condescension, but stumbles on his own pettiness.

And yet Newt, in his loud, crude way, illustrates what other Republicans are trying for, too. They all come bearing grievances.  Santorum seems to welcome the wounds, to want everyone to know that he is bitter and has been wronged, and that America has been, too.

Read more, click here: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/03/super-tuesday-four-republican-candidates.html#ixzz1oU1NDmk1
 

The TerryReport:

This commentary from the New Yorker is revealing in ways that might make the candidates themselves uncomfortable and would do the same to some of their supporters, if they were willing, even for a moment, to step outside of the “rah, rah” of a campaign to look at what is happening to the candidates in their party. As a former daily news reporter who has observed many campaigns, some up close, the language of these candidates is fairly amazing. What are they so upset about? Why do they insist on being upset and irritable more or less all of the time?

Seldom, if ever, have we heard candidates speak with such contempt of a sitting president. Sure, candidates get rough behind closed doors when speaking to their most ardent supporters, but this level of animosity seems to be something new and ready to veer toward the ugly at any second.

It would fascinating to have an expert in semantics or linguistics study and compare this year’s rhetoric with that of previous campaigns against a sitting president. This year seems far more mean, angry and dirty than any year in my memory.

Why is it happening? The election of Obama upset a lot of people because it represented a new era when someone of African heritage could take the presidency. It is a long way from JFK or Reagan to Obama. There is a huge group of voters who simply cannot accept him as president and who never will. The recession has not exactly improved anyone’s mood and many voters cheer when the candidates sneer.

There is another major factor. The Republican party’s leadership believes that no Democrat should ever be president. Never. Or, at least not in the next 100 years. So, when one is elected, as with Clinton, they go nuts. Their only goal, morning till night, is to turn the people against that president and to make sure he is seen as a failure. In that kind of atmosphere, anything goes, including showing contempt and ultimate disrespect. The Republicans tell themselves that they are giving back to the Dems what Nixon and G.W.Bush got, but they are wrong. The Republican campaign is fifty or a hundred times more virulent and is backed by huge corporate backed efforts.

The tea party Republicans have also upended and confused the Republican party. Every candidate wants their votes, but no one is sure how many voters there are in that grouping and what it would take to get them. Romney implied a week ago that he would have to “set my hair on fire” to get the most extreme voters and he said he was unwlling to do so.  In any case, the idea of the tea party means that all of these candidates, with the possible exception of Ron Paul, are trying to play to that crowd.

The kind of speeches we have seen so far in this presidential election year are probably only the beginning. It is going to get a lot worse. Once the Republicans have a nominee, a kind of roaring desperation could set in as they realize that their chances of winning are not that great. This could get  very, very ugly before it is over, doing great damage to the presidency  itself, not just this presidency. 

Doug Terry, 3.8.12

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  Photography from Guatemala, Maryland, Italy and elsewhere by Doug Terry

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