Will Howard Kurtz ask Chris Wallace why FOX News decided to make Newt Gingrich's new book their number one segment of the day? Then they followed it up by interviewing Laura Bush and proceeded into their wingnut panel discussion. Not one opposing view to Newt's movement conservative high jinks.
And about Gingrich's book: Newt's proclamation that President Obama is running a Nazi-style political machine that is as dangerous as Stalin and Hitler should be enough to drum him right out of his elitist DC Beltway bubble.
Wallace seemed upset that Gingrich went all wingnutty on President Obama:
Wallace: You also write this on the screen: "The secular socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did." Mr. Speaker, respectfully, isn't that wildly over the top?
Gingrich: No, not if by America you mean....Just listen to President Obama's language. He gets to decide who earns how much. He gets to decide when it's too much.
Wallace: We're not talking about any company. We're talking about companies that the government has put billions of dollars in...
Gingrich: No, no..he has said publicly and generically. Some Americans earn too much. So now he's going to decide that?
Wallace:No, he's not. He has said that some Americans earn too much.
What Gingrich is doing is slyly trying to defend the CEO fat cats and his chummy Wall Street elites who screwed up the economy and their companies while they raked in millions of dollars, but he doesn't come right out and say it.
Movement conservatives like Newt are very adept at talking around their far-out beliefs in a way that almost makes them seem reasonable. They know how to manage the language and play it like an instrument. His tone is muted, never going off pitch and always in control. That's their edge. Karl Rove does it as well.
Gingrich, who has changed his religion almost as much as his wives then uses God to justify his odious assertions about the President and what he calls his "secular-socialist machine."
Gingrich was a bit surprised, methinks, that Wallace called him out on his "wildly over the top" attacks on Obama and I think it's because Newt is parroting the exact same beliefs as Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and the Teas Partiers which have caused quite a bit of unrest for the GOP elders. And yet, Gingrich is one of the elders---never forget that.
Gingrich is a talented manipulator of the American people and he's the one that suffers no pain when the economy crashes and burns under conservative rule. It's the average working class Americans that feel the hurt.
Newt's argument frames the usual fear-mongering, boogie man beliefs that have been passed on for generations through the Republican Party. The "Commie threat" has been used for decades and was made popular by Joe McCarthy until he was ousted as a nut. But the College Republicans of the 80s--people like Jack Abramoff, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed--took the Soviet Union "spies have infiltrated our government" paranoia to the kind of heights that can only be described as downright delusional, coupled with a Robert Ludlum-hero worship syndrome. These guys read Russian spy novels and dressed up in army fatigues, flying around the world trying to embed themselves into the action, fighting against communism while supporting the South American Apartheid regime. And it's this mindset untethered by facts that Gingrich philosophizes on.
Gingrich: Democrats Want to Impose 'Secular-Socialist Machine'
Gingrich said that he stands by his argument that the "secular-socialist machine" represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, not in the sense of the immorality of those deadly regimes, but as a "threat to our way of life."
"The degree to which the secular-socialist left represents a fundamental replacement of America, a very different world view, a very different outcome, I think is a very serious threat to our way of life.
I have a lot of problems with the way the President has handled certain issues, as we've documented on the pages of C&L, but to say he's a threat to our way of life is cowardly and immoral and should exclude Gingrich from our political landscape.
Of course, in the Village, conservatives can say anything without consequences.