Newt’s Crab-Like Soul
The 2012 Republican Party is filled with anger, angst and resentment and Newt Gingrich does anger, angst and resentment better than any other politician in America. But will that be enough to win his party’s nomination? To borrow a word made infamous by Mitt Romney this week, “maybe”.
It is entirely possible that Newt will crack up before he gets to the finish line. After all, he has a history of going too far and scuttling his own success. But he has two things in his favor right now. First, he is selling what the conservative base is buying. And second, he is up against an opponent who seems to have no idea how to connect to those very same voters. Romney looks weak, while Gingrich looks cocksure. Romney exudes northeastern elitism at the same time that Gingrich is reminding voters why northeastern elites are to be hated. Most importantly, Romney looks like a loser right now while Gingrich wears the mantle of victory like a conquering Caesar. Romney’s all important image as the inevitable nominee who is most likely to beat Barack Obama is wearing thin. It turns out that the emperor has no clothes and Gingrich is all too happy to point that out.
Gingrich’s problem is that he may not have a second act. He has stoked the audience into a frenzy. He has identified the villain (Obama) and fingered the fool (Romney). But what comes next? Anger, angst and resentment only go so far. Eventually people start to look for something more, something concrete, and something inspiring. What Gingrich isn’t, is a hero, and every story needs a hero. Gingrich does not inspire love or devotion. He is the type of person people follow to a lynching, not elect to high office. In the end, Gingrich can only be despised. His language of anger, angst and resentment will end up being a source of embarrassment for Republicans, not pride. If he succeeds in being the nominee, his continuous characterizations of other Americans as unpatriotic, disloyal and evil will taint the GOP for the next 20 years.
There have always been people on earth, like Newt. They prosper by exploiting the dark side of the human condition for their own ends. Victor Hugo may have described these twisted beings best in his novel Les Miserables.
“There exist crab-like souls which are continually retreating towards the darkness, retrograding in life rather than advancing, employing experience to augment their deformity, growing incessantly worse, and becoming more and more impregnated with an ever-augmenting blackness.”Newt has every right to run for President. The Republicans have every right to give him the nomination. But expect no sympathy from the rest of the country when his drumbeat of antipathy proves to be disastrous.
