It is the latest abject humiliation for Mitt Romney, as yet another unelectable clown becomes the front-runner. It’s not often I agree with Paul Begala, but the Democrats must be somewhat aghast at their good luck. Check out the favorable/unfavorable polls on Gingrich assembled here. Republicans like him, but not without some severe doubts. But the general public really doesn’t. His best rating is a negative 3. More typical is a negative 16. Even Rasmussen’s white/GOP-leaning sample backs Obama over Gingrich by 6 points, with Pew and Quinnipiac showing Obama’s lead in double digits. His foreign policy team – breathlessly unveiled by Fred Barnes this morning – puts him in the neocon, pro-torture, “America-is-never-wrong” camp. Among the kinds of statements we can expect more of – get ready tonight for more “profound”s, “total”s, “completely”s – is the following drop of oil on troubled budgetary waters:
“The Congressional Budget Office is a reactionary socialist institution which does not believe in economic growth, does not believe in innovation and does not believe in data that it has not internally generated.”
The CBO is just a branch of the Congress that is widely respected for its scores for legislation and refuses to build into its calculations now-discredited theories about how cutting taxes increases revenues, among other such “conservative” innovations in math. To pick on the CBO as “socialist” is to attack, as Newt has since he first appeared in politics, yet another respected institution in Washington, the better to condemn them all. But note how even McCain’s leading 2008 economic adviser reacts to Gingrich’s nuttery:
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former CBO director and Republican, called the Gingrich allegation “ludicrous.” “I think if you parse that phrase carefully, he got one out of three right,” Holtz-Eakin said. “I do agree it is an institution. If you’re playing baseball, that’s a decent batting average.”
And what does it say that the Republican base, instead of rallying round Romney, or championing a man who could actually win the general election like Huntsman, chooses this blowhard as its latest avatar?
The new front-runner is a buffoon. The party is a farce.
(Photo: Former U.S. Speaker of the House and republican candidate for president Newt Gingrich speaks during the 2011 Republican Leadership Conference on June 16, 2011 in New Orleans, Louisiana. By Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.)
The Dish 