2012 republican presidential nominee III: can romney get santorum out of his hair?

since like, rather

Mmmmmmmmmmmmm.....prizes.

i thought it was counterfactual historical novels. what if the Confederacy won the Civil War?, etc.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1995/aug/10/the-teachings-of-speaker-gingrich/?pagination=false

i link to this everywhere but thats joan didion in 1995 absolutely murking gingrich mostly just by reproducing all of his stupid ideas right next to one another

To complain that Mr. Gingrich’s thinking is “schematic,” as some have, seems not exactly to describe the problem, which is that the “scheme,” as revealed in his writing and in his lectures, remains so largely occult. The videotaped “Renewing American Civilization” lecture in which Mr. Gingrich discusses “The Historic Lessons of American Civilization,” which is Pillar One of The Five Pillars of American Civilization, offers, for example, clips from several television movies and documentaries about the Civil War, but not much clue about why the lessons of American civilization might be “historic,” and no clue at all why the remaining four Pillars of American Civilization (“Personal Strength,” “Entrepreneurial Free Enterprise,” “The Spirit of Invention and Discovery,” and “Quality as Defined by Deming”) might not be more clearly seen as subsections of Pillar One, or lessons of civilization. Similarly, the attempt to track from one to five through Mr. Gingrich’s “Five Reasons for Studying American History” (“One: History is a collective memory”; “Two: American history is the history of our civilization”; “Three: There is an American exceptionalism that can best be understood through history”; “Four: History is a resource to be learned from and used”; and “Five: There are techniques that can help you learn problem-solving from historic experience”) leaves the tracker fretful, uneasy, uncertain just whose synapses are misfiring.

bless you max that is just what i need to read rn!

http://cdn103.iofferphoto.com/img/item/141/364/681/vTp2XDQ2h0OgnNJ.jpg

everyone knows custer died at little big horn. what this book presupposes is...maybe he didn't

^^newt, circa 2001

sure but what does caitlin flanagan think

that his first wife should have given him an open marriage and anything else he wanted?

Newt will not waste time answering valid questions!

uh romney's glee that ted kennedy had to take out a mortgage on his house when running against him might not play that well in housing market under water florida

every time I hear the word "obamacare" I want to suicide myself

and get obamacare to take care of my self inflicted stab wounds

like Obama is my dr

uh romney's glee that ted kennedy had to take out a mortgage on his house when running against him might not play that well in housing market under water florida

eh don't underrate peoples' love for other peoples' suffering

pretty hardcore when you're richer than the kennedys tho

Esp Ted Kennedy. In this audience, people probably love that image.

maybe. i still think the way he hit the word "mortgage" was unfortunate, like it was a situation he couldn't imagine.

uh romney's glee that ted kennedy had to take out a mortgage on his house when running against him might not play that well in housing market under water florida

whoa for real? this guy has zero clue how to be a tough guy. it's like he was raised by his sainted rich mormon dad and then went out into the world, and the first like cool assholes he ran with were other investment bankers

yeah the entire sentence was "i didn't win but ted kennedy had to take out a mortgage on his house running against me" like is that supposed to be badass?

I was going to mention the Kennedy line too. Second time he's thrown that out--it's creepy.

Romney wins when he doesn't lose, so I guess he won. Tonight shouldn't change anything, but when both Romney and Gingrich are calmly answering questions, I get the feeling it slows whatever movement there's been in Gingrich's direction.

great find on that didion thing, max

from reviews i've read newt's fake history isn't 'what if the south' won, but like odder and dumber. like the civil war is different somehow but the north still wins, ww2 is different but the nazis lose. yeah idk either.

re: romney mortgaging his house, that comes off as crass. and it's a talking point, he's said it before. it's in really bad taste because kennedy isn't around to defend himself - leave the man in peace.

yeah it was just gross all around

the other reason why it's a poor talking point is that HE LOST THE ELECTION

haha that didion piece :D

i know! "i didn't win but the other guy went broke" makes you seem like a jerk and pathetic at the same time!

Then, midway through this tuned and calculated Christmas reverie, Mr. Gingrich drops, abruptly and inexplicably, through the ice, off message: “At heart,” he dismayingly confides, “I am still a happy four-year-old who gets up every morning hoping to find a cookie that friends or relatives may have left for me somewhere.” This cookie is worrisome: Was it forgotten? Hidden? Why would they hide it? Where are they? Are they asleep, out, absentee friends, deadbeat relatives? The cookie was the treat and leaving is the trick?

xpost and the other guy didn't go broke, and then the other guy won the election and helped elect obama and then obama passed health care for all!

lol "dismayingly" "worrisome"

last didion quote i pormise

Those arguments in To Renew America not immediately suggestive of ethical conflict tend to speed headlong into another kind of collision. We have, according to Mr. Gingrich, “an absolute obligation to minimize damage to the natural world,” a “moral obligation to take care of the ecosystem,” but since this collides with his wish to lift the “ridiculous burden” of “environmental regulations hatched in Washington,” the fulfillment of our moral obligation to take care of the ecosystem is left to a constituent in Mr. Gingrich’s district, Linda Bavaro, who turns two-liter Coca-Cola bottles into T-shirts, which she sells at Disney World. “Linda,” Mr. Gingrich notes, “has a good chance of doing well financially by doing good environmentally. That is how a healthy free market in a free country ought to work.”

oh wow, didion. <3

never stop imo

xp

i just got sad for linda bavaro right then

i don't even understand. she turns them in to t-shirts?

i think newt might have gotten that story wrong tbh

If You Give a Newt a Cookie.

Maybe the stress of taking out a second mortgage contributed to Kennedy's death; Romney can take some solace in that.

"...if, as now seems possible, Obama wins in a landslide"--sometimes I think Andrew Sullivan's reading of this election is as reality-challenged as those he decries.

there are so many good quotes in that didion piece and its amazing how she mostly just lets newt hang himself but i thought this was sorta the newt phenomenon put v succinctly:

The real substance of Mr. Gingrich’s political presence derives from his skill at massaging exhaustively researched voter preferences and prejudices into matters of lonely principle.

I think Andrew Sullivan's reading of this election is as reality-challenged as those he decries

shocking

As I mentioned upthread, I think he's written some really smart stuff the past few days in analyzing what's going on on the Republican side; he just kind of loses it when he glides past Obama's problems going into the election.

Okay--this is huge:

http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/01/fred-thompson-endorses-newt-gingrich.php?ref=fpnewsfeed

Reader comment: "Next he'll get the much coveted Wilfred Brimley endorsement."

amazing

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/2012/01/23/liveblogging-absurdity-5/

http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/intel/2012/01/23/24-tampa%20debate.o.jpg/a_560x375.jpg

I would guess Brimley is a Paul guy.

hey folks reassure me that there is NO chance of a gingrich presidency.

b/c i dunno i might prefer a military coup to that.

Remember the margin by which Clinton creamed Dole or Reagan creamed Mondale? Uh yeah, it will be tighter than that, even with Gingrich's billions of foibles, but Obama should take it in a walk.

i mean the thing is that gingrich won't even have the support of half of his party. it'd be like humphrey or something.

Can I just....?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ab/ElectoralCollege1984.svg/800px-ElectoralCollege1984.svg.png

I was only ten when this happened and I don't remember what kind of candidate Mondale was. All I remember is that Ferraro was his veep-hopeful and that Reagan was on tv every day and night. I can't imagine how gutted Democrats must have been that night. Any reported suicides?

i remember watching those results with my dad at his office - his office threw a late-night election party, they were all big lefties - and even at my very young age i remember knowing something had gone very wrong, wrong beyond banter, beyond jokes