Ft. Sumter: The Rise of the "GingFish"

BLOVIATOR IN CHIEF?


Soooooo....Newt. I wanted this because I thought it would be more interesting. It is indeed more interesting. Seeing Newt declare victory with the frightening...and there is no other word but frightening for her... blowing up a new populism from the right was really frightening. I was excited for Newt to win and to shake things up but this guy is an extremely articulate, quick thinking demagogue of the Huey P. Long genre. I love to read about Huey Long, because he is dead and he never got further than Louisiana. The question a guy like Gingrich poses is whether our whole country has essentially devolved into Louisiana 1932. The “GingFish”.

Everybody gather 'round
Loosen up your suspenders
Hunker down on the ground
I'm a cracker
And you are too
But don't I take good care of you
-Randy Newman “The Kingfish”

What is so mind numbing about this is that he is NOT a man of the people. He is a man who stands for himself and his vision of the hour. He changes his vision quicker than he changes wives and I do have to bash his wife once again. I have never heard her speak. To the best of my knowledge she cannot speak. I have read a little about her. She went to Luther College in Decorah Iowa and was a music major and is evidently a very talented musician and a committed Catholic. I admire all those things... but she appears to be a plastic, broken person with creepy, crazy eyes. She scares me like clowns scare me and that is the meanest thing I can say. Now I will leave her.

But I digress. Romney might be too much of a cold fish to be electable. He does not seem to be a street fighter and the Republicans howled again loudly that he is not their guy. After a proper counting in Iowa, he lost. He got killed in South Carolina. Perhaps he will rally back but he clearly is a wide open target for average Joe, Joe the plumber type attacks and whether it is Gingrich or OBama those attacks will come.

Why do we let three little states, all diverse but tiny to have such a loud, almost deafening voice in this process. These states carry population ranks of 30, 42 and 34 respectively. No one is even in the top ½. I had no idea that Iowa was full of evangelicals. That is because it is not. The Republican base in Iowa is full of evangelical conservatives. New Hampshire... do they have Republicans? South Carolina...seriously? South Carolina? Why should they have any voice in anything other than their key historical move of firing the first shot in the civil war. That worked out well, didn’t it? That what last nights primary was, Fort Sumter. It is a battle for the Republican party and it is the evil, final consequence of Nixon’s “southern strategy” to bring the social conservatives into the party...and now they are saying, “IT IS OUR PARTY!” It will be interesting to see if they are right.

Who took on the Standard Oil men
And whipped their ass
Just like he promised he'd do?
Ain't no Standard Oil men gonna run this state
Gonna be run by little folks like me and you

Watching FOX on a Sunday morning the said that Newt won a huge percentage of South Carolina voters who make less than 50k a year. What is a person who makes less than 50k a year doing voting Republican? How does that happen?

Kingfish, Kingfish
Friend of the working man
Kingfish, Kingfish
The Kingfish gonna save this land

The big question that my former party needs to ask itself is how were they left with these choices. I even think that Gingrich, Paul and Romney might be the best of the original pack but what a sad sack collection of people to send forward in the most eminently winnable election for them in years. I think they are going to have to find another person (and it is not Sara Palin) to carry their flag. There would be tremendous momentum for a Chris Christie or Jeb Busch or even that idiot from Indiana Mitch Daniels. They need fresh blood and it might be nice if they did not chum so much blood in the water. The electorate is taking notes, and they are not impressed. Gingrich is not a populist. He is not our friend. The Republican base is the party of the angry white man. Angry people make bad decisions and we just saw the Republicans in South Carolina make a very stupid mistake.