Timothy Egan takes on Gingrich this morning in another exquisite post. Here he “deconstructs a demagogue,” the title of his piece. He writes:
Gingrich is the rare politician who can dissemble without a hint of physical change, defying Mark Twain’s maxim that man is the only animal that blushes — or needs to. He’s also skilled at attacking the very things he practices. In the South Carolina debate last week, when Gingrich went ballistic over a question on an ex-wife’s claim that he wanted an open marriage, he said he had offered ABC numerous witnesses to rebut the charge. In fact, his campaign admitted this week, there were no such witnesses — only character rebuttals by children from a previous message.
His claim that he was paid at least $1.6 million by the mortgage backer Freddie Mac for work as a “historian” was a laughable fiction. This week, those contracts were released, and show no mention of historian duties; it was old-fashioned influence peddling.
What bothers me, as it should you, is that Gingrich is playing to the most hateful and narrow-minded of voters, and there seems to be a lot of them, too many to simply dismiss.
Obama likes to talk of our being one America, neither red nor blue. A nice wish, perhaps, but hardly reflective of reality. Just listen to Newt and his tribal followers.
