Today in the course of Human Events Newt Gingrich launches a spectacular assault on Karl Rove and Romney-strategist Stuart Stevens, the former of whom Gingrich accuses of being hostile to "the Republican tradition of freedom and grassroots small town conservatism":
No one person is smart enough nor do they have the moral right to buy nominations across the country.
That is the system of Tammany Hall and the Chicago machine. It should be repugnant to every conservative and every Republican.
That's stirring rhetoric, although it overlooks the whole point of politics, which is to win elections, which was precisely what Tammany Hall and the Chicago machine did. But of course Gingrich knows that. He just resents being overshadowed in the Big Idea department by the likes of W.'s brain.
Always the huckster, Gingrich fails to offer any specific alternative to Rove's smoked-filled rooms, but he does promise that "By this fall [Gingrich Productions] will have online courses on 21st century self government and politics."
Assuming a reductionism of either Rove's Tammany Hall or Gingrich's "grassroots conservatism"--which I can only interpret as an endorsement of the GOP primary system's status quo--I'm with Newt, for his advice shall hasten the demise of this wretched party. In all likelihood the GOP, as is, will be relatively safe in 2014, for rather obvious midterm-election reasons. But if the party heads into another presidential election year holstering the primary comedies of Iowa and South Carolina and the like, it could well finish what 2008 and 2012 started.
All this is, naturally, anyone's guess at the moment. If, however, I and a huge bundle of handicappers are correct about 2014--the electoral results of which would devastate the remainder of this president's second term--then the unreformed GOP will indeed have beaten Obama, but at a Pyrrhic cost (assuming, again, it remains unreformed).
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