Ergotism

Time will tell, but this little talk from Newt might be a clue. He’s setting himself up as the solution to “gay and secular facism.”

Here’s the thing. The Republicans have run out of credibility on being about small government and fiscal responsibility or fiscal conservatism or whatever they’re calling it these days. They blew up the budget and enlarged the government, and in all the bad ways too. Nobody believes them anymore about those issues. So now they’re stuck with War and Republican Jesus. And seeing how the war is unpopular, they’re putting any further imperialism on the back burner for a little while and they’re running with the banner of Republican Jesus. Newt mentions “Sunday School” in his little screed. Contrast it with the Contract With America, which is all about dismantling the government and not at all about theocracy.

Of course, Newt Gingrich is equally hypocritical to preach about imposing his “Sunday School” values on the country as Republicans in general are to preach about small government. The twice-divorced, thrice-wed Gingrich is really in no place to talk about the sanctity of marriage. The guy married his high-school geometry teacher and then divorced her when she got cancer to marry his then-mistress cum-second-wife, whom he then left for his new third wife. Sunday School indeed — more like As The Republican Turns. But as long as he mouths the words “born again” no one will actually care about that stuff. What the evangelicals seem to care about isn’t how you actually behave, but only which ideals you verbally claim. They don’t want results. They just need to hear the story, which makes it particularly easy for a campaigning politician, whose job it is to tell stories, to exploit them.