Bullying Blowhard Newt Lacks Restraint to Be Real Conservative

Here's a taste of things to come for Newt from Romney ... and from Obama if somehow the troglodyte wins the GOP nomination.

Let's go wingnuts! Vote for Newt!

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The giddy Republican faithful in South Carolina barked "Newt! Newt! Newt!" as if they were at "The Jerry Springer Show" rather than a presidential debate, and he performed for them, huffing and puffing himself up like some gigantic, angry amphibian.

And when the bullfrog was finally full of his own gas, he turned and joyously thumped that squeamish TV reporter who had dared ask the obvious question:

Is Newt Gingrich — Republican presidential candidate and decider of who has the proper moral authority to lead America — in favor of open marriage, as was alleged in an interview by former Mrs. Newt No. 2?

Gingrich said that was a disgusting question, and the crowd cheered, giving voice to conservative desperation. The reporter asked the right question, but blinked and gulped anyway, clear signals that he didn't want any more. This inflamed the bully in Newt, and he bore down on his victim as a frog to a fly, the tongue a deadly bludgeon on national television.

The stage is where Newt lives, whether on the floor of Congress or some cable news set or the stump, and the GOP debate in South Carolina last week was the perfect habitat for the man, a platform for rhetoric and performance and anger, a place where he could show us how quick and dangerous he can be.

It was Newt's moment to show a desperate Republican conservative faithful that he could whomp a reporter, and by extension whomp the "liberal media," and by extension whomp its man President Barack Obama, who'd been swept into office largely on the babbling insistence of Beltway journalists that the corrupt Chicago Democratic machine could produce a reformer.

So Newt whomped and the crowd cheered, and there were ovations and whooping cries of "Newt! Newt! Newt!" and he showed some teeth in what was supposed to be a smile.

That's when I saw something oily moving around back there in his eyes and I began worrying that if this bullfrog becomes president, America may be doomed.

A few days before, he'd played a variation on the Angry Newt theme, when a voter asked whether he would bloody Obama's nose in a debate and Newt paused, and filled himself up again, and said, "I don't want to bloody his nose, I want to knock him out."

Knock him out?

Who's the tough guy?

That's when I realized that his mission isn't to lead the country as much as to satisfy his own rage. Newt doesn't want to merely win, he wants to destroy and remake the world. So he's not a conservative. He's a revolutionary. And the sound of his own voice is both sun and moon to him.

The common wisdom is that Newt did well for himself by thumping on the reporter, and indeed it may help him politically in the short run. He certainly knows how to take advantage of vulnerability, and while his theatrical and pious outrage may have helped his prospects, the proper question is whether it helps America as much as it helps Newt.

Those who don't know me will certainly condemn me as a liberal for saying this, but the crowd's reaction, the "Newt! Newt! Newt!" and the fist pumping are clear indications of the desperation conservatives feel these days.

I understand. They see what's coming, they fear the left-listing direction of government and the dreariness of an Eastern European-style socialist state, with the people bowing like frightened peasants when those with political power approach. Those of us in Illinois have lived in such a place for years now. It is a place where public office is handed down from parent to child as if it's the natural order of things.

Being a conservative is about restraint, but Newt is not about restraint. Newt is about Newt and what Newt wants when he wants it. The man who professes loathing of big government is pleased when big government brings juicy benefits. He might brush off questions about that $1.8 million from lobbying or whatever he says he did with Freddie Mac, but he took the money.

Newt wants reporters to ask tough questions of Democrats. That's fair. But he becomes almost violently angry if anyone dares ask him about what his appetites tell us about his own character, since Mrs. Newt No. 1 led to Mrs. Newt No. 2, who led to Mrs. Newt No. 3. Somewhere in between, he puffed himself up to hypocritically rip on the eternally despicable President Bill Clinton, declaring Clinton did not have the "moral authority" to lead.

"Grandiosity has never been a problem with Newt Gingrich. He — he handles it very, very well," said candidate and former Sen. Rick Santorum. "… Four years into his speakership, he was thrown out by the conservatives. … I served with him. I was there. I knew what the problems were going on in the House of Representatives when Newt Gingrich was leading this — leading there. It was an idea a minute, no discipline, no ability to be able to pull things together."

But what Newt offers isn't discipline and restraint.

Instead, he offers emotion. He offers anger. He offers Newt.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-met-kass-0122-20120122,0,941553.column