Atlanta Metro News

Conservative David Frum this morning on the downside of a decision to choose Rush Limbaugh as the Republican party’s answer to President Barack Obama:

On the one side, the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims. …

And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as “losers.”

With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence - exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we’re cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush’s every rancorous word - we’ll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.

Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment |

Gingrich the Phrasemaker on European socialism

Monday, March 2, 2009, 10:03 AM

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

As everyone learned last year, Newt Gingrich’s new and enhanced role in the Republican party is that of Chief Phrasemaker.

He’s the coiner of policies boiled down to bumper-stickers. Last year, it was “Drill here, drill now.”

Over the weekend, at the Conservative Political Action Committee event in Washington, Gingrich shaped the proper message for opposition to President Barack Obama’s plans to stimulate the economy.

This from the New York Times News Service — with a paragraph on Ralph Reed thrown in absolutely free:

It means declaring war, as Newt Gingrich, the movement’s guiding light, did here Friday, on Obama’s “European socialism transplanted to Washington” — a phrase fast seeping into the conservative lexicon. (Gingrich also deplored “the Bush-Obama big spending program,” a sign that former President George W. Bush, a onetime hero to conservatives, was being thrown overboard.)

It means wincing, ever so slightly, at the name of the messenger Republicans put forth to respond Tuesday to Obama’s address to Congress. “Um, you know, I think Bobby’s had better days,” said Ralph Reed, former executive director of the Christian Coalition, referring to Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. “But I thought the content of the message was great.”

The Washington Post’s online cartoonist is already having fun with Gingrich’s address.

On the same topic, Matt Bai of the NYT Magazine this weekend tackled the larger topic of Gingrich’s resurgence:

Newt Gingrich had to wait a little longer for his rehabilitation, but there are parallels between Nixon’s journey and his. It may seem inconceivable to those outside the party, the idea of this aging, white-haired holdover from the ’90s going up against the incumbent Obama in 2012. And yet, in Republican Washington, the idea is taken quite seriously. “If you were going to make a list of 10 potential Republican nominees, Newt would be on any list,” [Grover] Norquist told me. “He’s probably in most people’s Top 5.” Twice during the course of reporting this article, I sat down in Washington restaurants only to hear the people next to me speculating about Gingrich’s prospective 2012 campaign.

Worth noting is the fact that French President Nicholas Sarkozy rarely makes it into Gingrich’s speeches anymore. Two years ago, Sarkozy was a topic in nearly every address made by the former House speaker and Georgia congressman. Sarkozy, Gingrich said, personified the conservative revival that was possible in America.

But it seems that a link was broken when Sarkozy called for “a regulated capitalism in which whole swathes of financial activity are not left to the sole judgment of market operators.”

Like Bush, the French president apparently fell victim to creeping European socialism. Not that French tactics to beat the economic downturn don’t have some attraction.

One element worth imitation: The French government is offering free newspaper subscriptions to 18-year-olds. This will assure the continued employment of many aging journalists in that country.

Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment |