Santorum's Southern Double

What began as a seemingly Quixotic run for the Republican nomination is not looking so hopelessly romantic tonight.  Rick Santorum has taken both the Alabama and Mississippi primaries.

In doing so, he prevailed over Mitt Romney's money in Newt Gingrich's backyard.  This, after capturing 51% of the vote in Kansas last weekend, is startling.

The man may not have money and organization, but he has traction.  Can he really win the nomination, however, over the howls of angst from Dorothy Rabinowitz (whose man is Newt Gingrich) and the Upper East Side Republican set?

South Carolina's Secession

In a break with the Republican establishment, South Carolina Republicans supported Newt Gingrich rather than Mitt Romney with their primary votes.  There is the scent of revaluation, if not revolution in the air.  

Gingrich regaled ebullient supporters with an articulation of the broad principles distinguishing the two Parties (i.e., the America of the founding fathers v. Saul Alinsky's America), and a sharp denunciation of the President's leadership including his recent decision to block the development of the Keystone pipeline (and blame it on Republicans), a Canadian-American project essential to the health of the US economy.

Newt commented upon the President's Keystone blunder in the days before the election.  His stress in those remarks was on the stupidity of President Obama's decision, whereas his victory speech underscored the danger that a President capable of such stupidity poses to the nation.

In other significant news, Occupy Wall Street graced Rick Santorum's election night gathering with its disruptions.  That a gaggle of compensated agitators would single out Santorum at that particular moment when he didn't even win speaks volumes about its phobias, and assessment of the primary season thus far.

First, it indicates where the Left's hatred is focused, and who it most wants to destroy.  Being a religious man, Santorum is likely to be honored by the abuse: "Blessed are you, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake."

Second, it underscores the connection between the big government Statism that OWS favors and the sexual deviancy at the heart of the Democratic Party.  Chants of "bigot" and screams about gays are the best way the Left can think of to discredit a campaign predicated on returning America to its traditional values, which include limited government, strong families, freedom, vibrant faith, the work ethic and an abiltiy to retain the fruits of one's labor rather than have them spread around DC.

Finally, Santorum has been locked in a struggle with Ron Paul for the ancillary attention of Republican voters.  OWS's attack on Santorum indicates that the Democratic party is rooting for Paul and his principled libertarianism, which is ironically more congenial to its Statist ambitions--via sexual degeneracy best exemplified by the mainstreaming of abortion and homosexuality.

The Republicans' VP choice will indicate which faction of the Party's soul prevails.  Santorum has positioned himself as a candidate who can deliver the fly-over States of blue collar persuasion, and would be a great asset on the ticket with a President Gingrich, or Romney.

Marianne Gingrich and Her Would-be-President Ex

No man is a hero to his valet--or ex-wife. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

These two aphorisms explain why Noman won't be watching the Newt Gingrich hit piece video that ABC has taped with Marianne Gingrich, his former wife of 18 years, in anticipation of the all-important South Carolina primary.

Since its inception in 1980, no Republican candidate has ever won the Party's presidential nomination without first winning the SC primary.  Newt is in the running, and closing fast on front-runner Mitt Romney.

Laughably, the headlines concern ABC's qualms about running the interview before the primary vote. Wasn't that the point?  If ABC had moral qualms about allowing itself to be used to exact vengeance on the eve of a make-or-break election, it wouldn't have taped the interview in the first place.

Newt is a Republican, and he'll be treated accordingly.  ABC will run the video before the vote, and at the moment calculated to inflict maximum damage on Gingrich and the Republican Party.  

Democrats get a different standard, which was applied to Bill Clinton during his impeachment trial.  NBC sat on an exclusive interview of Juanita Broaddrick, an ex-campaign worker who accused the President of raping her when he was the attorney general of Arkansas, until after the Senate had voted to acquit him.

Even if Marianne Gingrich could successfully run the media gauntlet that would form to protect any Democratic President or candidate--which she couldn't--can you imagine her getting through a President Clinton's, say, bimbo eruption unit?  Like Kathleen Willey, she would soon discover her cat missing, and be asked about it by an anonymous jogger who mentioned her children by name.

Were Marianne to offer dirt on a Democratic hopeful, she would be vilified like Linda Tripp, and hounded to get plastic surgery.  There is no stigma, however, attached to slinging mud on a Republican.

Quite the contrary, the emoluments are extraordinary.  Just ask Sharon Bialek.

Marianne Gingrich has aired her grievances before.  With Newt's ascent in the polls, she is back in the limelight.

"He believes that what he says in public and how he lives don't have to be connected," Marianne Gingrich, Newt's wife of 18 years, explained to ESQUIRE last year.

That doesn't sound good.  But, it does sound familiar.

Headline: "Newt is human."  Does that make it advisable to vote for someone else?

If this story is true, Newt has imbibed the Lefty zeitigeist.  Liberals' fiercely maintain that one might flagellate his goldfish in a leather teddy for kicks, but that it has absolutely nothing to do with the person he is once he steps outside of the naughty room.

Every Democrat stands for the platitude--practically, if not outspokenly--that what a man is bears no relation to what he does, let alone to the difference between that and what he says.  We are all bombarded by this siren's song, which is near and dear to the heart of President Obama, President Clinton, Secretary Clinton, et al. and their Party.

Granting the worst about Newt, ad arguendo, why then should it be the decisive factor in any race between him and any of them?  At least with President Gingrich, the nation wouldn't have to check every 60 seconds to see if a new czar had been appointed, a new law passed or regulation adopted to curtail American freedom.

Newt is not Noman's man; Rick Santorum is.  But, he deserves better than this shabby airing of his domestic disputes when he's trying to finish the serious political business he started in 1994.

Marianne's taking Newt out of the running--should the public be so manipulable as to let her--might be a blessing in disguise.  The disgust factor might drive people further away from the Democratic Party and its leering media.

On a different note, Jack Abramoff indicates a different reason in "Capitol Punishment" for why Newt might not be the most effective antidote to four years of Obama poisoning: he is a know-it-all.  Abramoff tells the story of his initial lobbying efforts on behalf of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.

He was retained to prevent Congress from imposing a 30% tax on the Indians' gaming revenues, which would have cost the tribal government budgets tens-of-billiions of dollars over the ensuing decade.  Abramoff was able to cast their position as a tax issue and to win the support of Grover Norquist at Americans for Tax Reform, Majority Whip Tom Delay, and Majority Leader Dick Armey.

He describes Speaker Gingrich's reaction to his pitch:

"Yes, I know about the tax.  You know what" I was flying last week and sitting right there, in first class, was an Indian.  Where do you think they're getting that kind of money"  They need to be taxed like everyone else." 

I couldn't believe me ears.  "Newt, what? You're kidding, right?" 

He wasn't kidding.  He felt that the tribes had a sweetheart deal with their untaxed casinos.  It wasn't fair. 

I wanted to ask him whether he thought it was fair that the Indian nation made treaties with our country and had every one of them broken, often accompanied by mass slaughter of that tribe?  Was it fair that we made agreements with the Indian nations and later decided that the land we gave them was too valuable, so we moved them to swamps and bogs?  Was any of that fair?  But, I kept quiet. 

There's no sense arguing with Newt Gingrich.  He is always right (emphasis added).

We've already got a President like that.  And, unlike President Bush who preceded him, President Obama is never chided by the talking heads for not entertaining doubts about the course he is setting the nation on.

Noman's hope for a President Gingrich, should it come to pass, is that he would have the sense to surround himself with intelligent, passionate people who challenge his assumptions and conclusions.  Unlike the present occupant of the Oval Office, Newt doesn't need a phalanx of sycophants and adorers for validation.

He can repent of the sins visited upon his ex-wife before and after making a good confession to a priest, or in purgatory.  But, America is too far down the road of family destruction, sexual chaos and political defilement to deny anyone the nomination on the grounds that his ex-wife hates his guts.

The Best and Worst of Newt

Newt Gingrich had a good night in Fox News's South Carolina debate.  All of the candidates besides Ron Paul did in Noman's estimation.  

Newt was especially strong when deflecting Juan Williams's race baiting (on Martin Luther King day), and generally by laying out intelligent ideas in compelling language.  His only faux pas was going after Mitt Romney's super-pac for running misleading ads, when his own has been less than circumspect.

It's hard not to like Newt when he's demonstrating how smart he is, and exposing how smart Lefty reporters aren't.  But, it's hard to like him when he gets strategic, political and worst of all, venal.

Newt's virtue is of the battle-tested, intellectual variety rather than moral.  Newt is reflective and wise from experience, not just intelligence.  

But, his Achilles heel--vain opportunism--periodically rears its ugly head to choke off his greatest virtue.  That makes him hard to trust.

This is not to say that Newt is a bad man.  But, it is to say that he wears his fallenness--a universal condition that he shares with humanity--rather heavily.

Neither should his untrustworthiness be likened to that of President Obama.  Newt merely gets lost in a miasma of ideas and incentives.

President Obama thinks he has to transform America for it to be good.  That takes vanity and opportunism to another level, that of Olympian deities.

Questions of stability notwithstanding, Newt had a good night.  Noman hopes that whatever the outcome of the nominating process, his formidable skills won't be lost to the country.  

The same goes for all of the other contestants that began this arduous process, even Sarah Palin who declined to engage in it.  If the debates have revealed anything, it is the breadth and depth of the Republican Party: in a word, diversity.

What the candidates share--their choice for life rather than its destruction; a sense of personal and governmental limits; respect for American traditions and history; a predilection for market solutions; a mistrust of concentrated power; a love of country and resentment towards its antagonists; a belief in what free people can achieve rather than an obsession with what they supposedly can't; a preference for opportunity rather than structured outcomes--leads Noman to believe that they can get along for the common good.  If only they can control their staffers.

Jack Abramoff shares a 1990's anecdote about Speaker Gingrich in his political confession "Capitol Punishment" that sheds light on why Newt can't mollify the disconcerted.

Abramoff had been retained by the Northern Marianas Commonwealth--a group of islands located in the North-western Pacific Ocean immediately to the east of the Philippine Sea. The largest island in the group is Saipan.

It wanted to preserve its dominion over applicable immigration and minimum wage laws for which it had negotiated when becoming a US territory.  Labor unions were on the attack through Congress, however, as goods from the Marianas bore the "Made in the USA" label even though it's workers were not paid mainland scale.  

Had the island price of labor been that high, goods from the Marianas would have lost their competitive advantage.  Consequently, the Marianas would have forfeited the benefit they had gained--favorable access to the US market--by ceding control of the islands.

Abramoff saw it as a free-market issue and began to sell it as such in Congress, which was receptive to such an appeal after the Republican Revolution of 1994.  He describes his meeting with Speaker Gingrich:

I had only a few minutes with Newt in the Speaker's office, but I figured that should suffice.  I was wrong.  His tendency to wander was a bit unnerving, as he never seemed to be able to sit still or focus for more than a few minutes.  Finally, when I told him about the Marianas, his response stunned me.  He suggested we make the Marianas and other American Pacific territories--Guam and American Samoa--part of Hawaii.  "That way," he said, "they can all have a congressman and be a real part of the United States."

Was he not listening at all, or did I somehow say something to lead him to such a conclusion? Later on, I'd come to realize this was classic Newt.  As soon as he heard an issue, he would quickly decide what to do--even without the benefit of all the information--and that was the end of the discussion.  I tried feebly to bring us back to the real issues at hand, but he was having none of it.

He continued, ignoring me, "Yes, part of Hawaii.  That would be great.  That would solve their problems.  Super... Jack, you take care."  The meeting was over. 

In the event the reader is interested, Abramoff was able to retain the Marianas' privileges, no thanks to the Speaker.

This vignette in the life of a public man about whom much has been recounted reveals something important.  Gingrich is a man who relies a touch too much on his own intellectual prowess.

Should Newt become President, he will need people around him that question his thinking and challenge him on it, rather than like-minded strategy wonks who merely seek to foist his legislative agenda onto the American public via Congress.  In other words, he'll need to run the White House in a completely different fashion than it's presently being run.

Unlike President Obama, Newt is a grown up.  Noman imagines that he will see the wisdom of surrounding himself with strong, experienced, and contrary minded people.

Nazi Nancy

Democratic Minority Leader Pelosi has advised us that she has some sludge to sling at former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.  Her problem is that she dredged it up from a confidential swamp: a 1990's era ethics probe of the former speaker.

As Noman vaguely recalls, charges were ginned up against Gingrich about the shell of a 501(c)(3) tax exempt entity that he appropriated to accept donations for a politics class he taught--or something like that--and in which he recruited Republican activists.  Democrats from Harvard Law School to the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts were shocked, SHOCKED! to learn that there was political activism occurring on college campuses.  Since it was Republican activism, maybe they really were shocked.

Even more vile were the facts that Gingrich had taken in $10-$20 million in contributions to GOPAC over the course of seven years, some of which he used on himself, and that he got a $4.5 million book advance from Rupert Murdoch.  These offenses were beyond the pale.  By the time that Hillary Clinton's (D-NY) $8 million book advance was approved by the Senate's Ethics committee, and her husband (D-AK) had enriched himself through political campaigning and honoraria, standards had changed.  Or, should Noman say doubled?

The linked Meet the Press interview by Tim Russert (Jan. 5, 1997) of David Bonior (D-MI) and John Boehner (R-OH) gives an indication of how Democrats play rollerball politics.  It is instructive and well worth watching.  Bonior was the hit man, Gingrich the marked man, Pelosi the gun moll and Boehner the morgue attendant whose job it is to preserve the corpse from further desecration at the hands of the trash-talking assassin.

Gingrich's violations were of the run-of-the-mill variety rampant among politicians.  How else would they get rich while sitting in Congress?  Ask Harry Reid, or Nancy Pelosi.  Gingrich's brashness and venality merely made it easy to assail him for greed.  

His real crime in Democrats' eyes was political: engineering the Republican's complete takeover of Congress in 1994, something they hadn't been able to pry away from Democrats' death grip in the prior forty years.  They hated him for beating them.  For that, a determined hit squad of the least principled partisans was loosed on him.  Given time, resources, infinite indulgence by the media, and manic zeal, Bonior, Pelosi et al got their man.  

Tactics used went so far as for Democratic activists to illegally intercept and record Gingrich's cell phone calls, turn the recordings over to a Democratic member of the Ethics Committee, Jim McDermott (D-WA), who passed them along to the New York Times, which printed the illegal transcripts in a front-page hit piece on the Speaker.  Nothing of consequence happened to any of them, except the Republican, Gingrich.

Bypassing her own culpability in the sordid affair, Pelosi recently commented on Gingrich's rise in the polls:

One of these days we’ll have a conversation about Newt Gingrich,” Pelosi told Talking Points Memo. “When the time is right. … I know a lot about him. I served on the investigative committee that investigated him, four of us locked in a room in an undisclosed location for a year. A thousand pages of his stuff.

This reminded Noman of nothing so much as Artie Johnson's Laugh-In Nazi.  "Vee haf infurmashun abou chu!"  Whether Pelosi's intimations are more interesting than stupid, Noman can't decide.  But, it is creepily gestapo-like for a sitting politician to issue extortion threats and make allusions to an opportunistically timed smear.  Such is the high character of politicians on the Left.

For his part, Gingrich fired back: 

"I want to thank Speaker Pelosi for what I regard as an early Christmas gift," Gingrich said at a press conference in Manhattan Monday. 

Gingrich denounced the threat from Pelosi, who is now the minority leader in the House, as "a fundamental violation of the rules of the House," and said that if Pelosi were to disclose details of the investigation, it would expose the "tainted ethics process the House was engaged in." He also called for the House to condemn Pelosi if she were to reveal anything from the ethics probe.

That kind of moxy is why Gingrich has taken the lead in the polls.  Republicans, conservatives and even independents are sick of the unjust double standards by which Democrats survive, and love candidates who don't take guff from unprincipled interlocutors, especially reporters and smarmy politicians.  Had Newt thrown more punches and nuzzled up less to Lefties over the years (e.g., global warming ad with Nancy Pelosi; taking GSE payola), he'd be more credible, and formidable, now.

Nancy Pelosi is a flawed politician herself, though one who doesn't mind living in a glass  house.  She made a twenty-point gain on the VISA IPO in two days, while killing legislation on the floor of the House that would have hurt profits at credit card companies.  (By the way, the practice of allotting hot IPO shares--which regular people cannot get--to VIP's who can reciprocate the largesse by engaging in a quid pro quo is called "spinning," which is what got superstar banker "Frank Quattrone" in trouble with the law).  

Her response:

Following the report, Pelosi's office released a statement saying that "Congress has never done more for consumers nor has the Congress passed more critical reforms of the credit card industry than under the Speakership of Nancy Pelosi."

Spokesman Drew Hammill added in the statement that "it is very troubling that 60 Minutes would base their reporting off of an already-discredited conservative author who has made a career of out attacking Democrats."

The "60 Minutes" report used as its starting point Peter Schweizer's book on soft corruption. Schweizer is a fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank at Stanford University. But "60 Minutes" independently verified the information and also highlighted transactions of Republicans - Speaker of the House John Boehner and Rep. Spencer Bachus - both of whom deny using non-public information improperly.

We learn more daily about what Speaker Pelosi's House did for consumers as the cost of banking services rises, credit dwindles, and banking activity flees to more hospitable shores.  Her reforms of the credit card industry--after safely pocketing her stock market winnings--served to drive up costs and limit supply.  Yet her response is to say that her profiting through crony connections and by using her power to direct legislation is non-discussable because of good (to her mind) she has done, and because the source of the revelations is partisan.  As Gingrich might say, what's sauce for the goose...

Separately, thirty million dollars of the Democrat's $800 billion stimulus fund went to protect wetlands in Pelosi's district.

House Republicans are challenging Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s claim that the massive stimulus spending bill contains no pet projects after uncovering in the bill more than $30 million for wetlands conservation in her San Francisco Bay area district, including work she previously championed to protect the salt marsh harvest mouse. 

“This sounds like spending projects that have been supported by a certain powerful Democrat in the past,” said Michael Steel, spokesman for House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican. 

“It certainly doesn’t sound like it will create or save American jobs,” he said. “So can Speaker Pelosi explain exactly how we will improve the American economy by helping the adorable little” critter? 

A spokesman for Mrs. Pelosi, California Democrat, said the claim was “fabricated” by Republicans. 

“The speaker nor her staff have had any involvement in this initiative. This is yet another contrived partisan attack,” Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said. “Restoration is key to economic activity including farming, fisheries, recreation, and clean water.” 

The criticism of hidden pet projects, or earmarks, in the economic rescue comes as Capitol Hill leaders rush to finalize a roughly $800 billion package in closed-door negotiations. President Obama boasts the stimulus plan contains no earmarks since Congress technically did not use the earmark process for lawmakers to request and drop in specific spending items. 

However, much the legislation was written behind closed doors and Republicans question how the projects were chosen.

“One of the proudest boasts of Democrats supporting their trillion-dollar spending plan is that it doesn’t contain earmarks,” Mr. Steel said. “But it seems like powerful Democrats will still find a way to bring home the bacon.”

And, how!  Thirty million dollars for the salt marsh harvest mouse.  And, her response is to blame Republican partisans for bringing it to the public's attention.  Does Noman detect a pattern here?

To Pelosi, anyone who questions her is a partisan.  Personally, Noman doesn't care if the claim is contrived by Martians.  He'd like her considered answers to charges that under her leadership her Party larded troughs with nearly a trillion dollars of give aways doled out from behind closed doors while the American public was in a state of shock and the opposition party was effectively hand tied.

Investors Business Daily opines that Minority Leader Pelosi would be wise to drop her attack on former Speaker Gingrich given the back room machinations that it took to pass ObamaCare.

Moreover, Speaker Gingrich was vindicated in the Democrat's witch hunt by a source as unlikely as the IRS.  The vendetta served only to remove him from the helm of the Republican revolution, which, of course, was the main objective all along.  There is something about his combination of speculative and practical intellect that terrifies the Left, despite his obvious character defects.  What amazes Noman is that Newt Gingrich still terrifies Democrats to the point of their sicking their German Shepherd on him.

Pelosi sat on the panel that investigated Gingrich's alleged violation of federal tax law in using tax-exempt monies to fund Gingrich's allegedly political college course, "Renewing American Civilization."

After a 3 1/2-year ordeal, and a $300,000 fine paid to the House Ethics Committee for providing inaccurate information, the IRS finally ruled that the sponsoring organization, the Progress and Freedom Foundation, "did not serve the private interests of Mr. Gingrich" and was both apolitical and completely legal.

Gingrich, who had led the charge against another House speaker, Jim Wright, in 1988 for ethics violations, said the current threat shows just how politically motivated the ethics investigation of him was.

He notes that 83 of 84 ethics charges "were repudiated as false." The 84th was simply dropped in 1998. Gingrich acknowledged that his "one mistake was one letter by a lawyer that I didn't read carefully."

Pelosi helped ram through the nationalization of health care known as ObamaCare behind closed doors, telling us we'd have to pass it to find out what's in it. Perhaps she would like to tell us how ethical the Cornhusker kickbacks and Louisiana purchases necessary to get it passed were.

Noman wouldn't pay much attention to what Minority Leader Pelosi said if he didn't fear for his life, liberty or property whenever she opened her mouth.

But, he is thankful for her recent outburst, which gives him occasion to tinker with the Beatle's song "Sexy Sadie."  The sobriquet, "Nazi Nancy," first suggested itself to Noman as she unilaterally blitzkrieged the crisis-shocked American people with one legislative outrage after another.

Nazi Nancy should be sung to the tune of Sexy Sadie.

Nazi Nancy:

hoNazi Nancy what have you done
You made a fool of everyone
You made a fool of everyone
Nazi Nancy ooh what have you done.

Nazi Nancy you broke the rules

You laid it down for all to see

You laid it down for all to see

Nazi Nancy oooh you broke the rules.

One sunny day the world was waiting for a leader

She came along to scam on everyone 

Nazi Nancy the greatest of them all.

Nazi Nancy how did you know

The world was victim just for you

The world was victim just for you

Nazi Nancy oooh how did you know.

Nazi Nancy you'll get yours yet

However big you think you are

However big you think you are

Nazi Nancy oooh you'll get yours yet.

We gave her everything we owned just to sit at her table

Just a smile would lighten everything

Nazi Nancy she's the latest and the greatest of them all.

She made a fool of everyone

Nazi Nancy.

However big you think you are 

Nazi Nancy.

However big you think you are, Minority Leader Pelosi, it's only an illusion fostered by slavish media devotion.  In the real world, your Liberal self righteousness and utter disregard for contrary opinion gave rise to the tea parties, and the 2010 midterm Waterloo for your Party.  

Perhaps an even worse shellacking in 2012 will at last free the country from your grinning tyranny.