The republican presidential candidates are in Florida now, throwing punches at one another, making threats, and shifting course on immigration issues so fast it might give GOP voters whiplash. Former Speaker of the House and Pillsbury Doughboy Newt Gingrich appears determined to hold on to his tenuous lead, traveling from one end of the state to the other to toss around wild promises. In Miami, it’s regime change for Cuba (hard to see how that could go wrong); on the “Space” coast, it’s permanent bases on the moon by the end of a second Gingrich term. (What he probably means is that, by the end of his second term, the surface of the earth will resemble that of the moon, so the base issue will take care of itself.) It takes an ego the size of Gingrich’s – grandiose I believe is the proper term – to present arguments for re-election when one’s first primary campaign has barely gotten off the ground.
Gingrich’s grandiosity is wasted on these polite debates, though, and he knows it. That’s why he’s complaining so bitterly. When he gets a good shot in – “puts Juan Williams in his place”, as some in South Carolina have described it – and the crowd starts to cheer, you can see him begin to inflate like the Michelin Man. It is a wondrous sight to behold. This business of tamping down the audience’s enthusiasm is just, well… deflating for a veteran bomb-thrower like Gingrich. Perhaps this will give the GOP’s favored candidate, Romney, the boost he needs to edge out his corpulent rival. Damned liberal media! Newt told us it was all their fault!! Ah, the favored narrative… always a winner.
I love this red meat about Castro. For chrissake, guys! This stuff reminds me of Howard Phillips and his big, menacing map of Red China and scary cartoons about the People’s Army taking over the Panama Canal. It’s astounding to me that the Castro-bashing still resonates in present-day Miami, but I suppose surveys don’t lie. In any case, you’ve got Romney and Gingrich both imagining a day when Castro is in the grave, speculating on which imaginary afterlife landscape he will inhabit – the cloudy, white, feathery (if vaguely defined) paradise, or the strangely earth-like hell for which we have many concrete descriptions (including a useful floorplan from Dante). They might think for five minutes about the hellscape they would be consigning Cubans to in the event of regime change; something resembling Guatemala, I imagine. Not a favorable comparison, frankly.
And now Gingrich wants to conquer the moon – regime change goes trans-lunar. Should be a good race.
luv u,
jp
