Dark Side Of America...

"It’s not that I am a good debater.
It is that I articulate the deepest held
values of the American people..."
- Newt Gingrich, last night

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

AUSTIN, Texas - For Newton Leroy Gingrich, the American people so far have been a relatively-small collection of Southern Rednecks quick to hoot and holler about food stamps, Gays, Blacks, religion and big government. Theirs is a dream long-dormant outside the living rooms of bigotry and racism. Newt Gingrich has tapped into this devil's veins, drawing, so far, the sort of blood transfusion that will only poison him.

Gingrich won last night's Republican Party primary in South Carolina, taking 40 percent of the vote and leaving former frontrunner Mitt Romney in his dust. Romney grabbed 28 percent, with the two other candidates, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul wresting 17 percent and 13 percent, respectively, from a partisan voter pool eager to turn back Democratic President Barack Obama next November.

It won't be Gingrich carrying their flag, however.

His victory, surprising as it was, is really just a reflection of the setting. You feed the dogs red meat in your neighborhood and they'll do your bidding. South Carolina? Old South, as in Old Racist South - the cradle of the ancestral remnants of that war fought between the states some 150 years ago. Southerners never forget that painful defeat. A few of them seem to think the South will rise again. Not with the serial adulterer Gingrich leading their pack. In sports analogies, South Carolina was Gingrich's "home field," and he took advantage, arriving a two-time loser in the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries, but fully knowing his next audience, all hometown racists would be willing to give him a needed victory.

The schedule goes on to Florida, where those residents take their turn at the ballot box on January 31st. Ahead of that, the "establishment" Republican Party will gear-up its drive to vigorously deliver Newt Gingrich the message: Son, you're not the guy.

Already, a 2012 party nomination process that was set to go Romney's way has turned into what should be a wild, free-for-all, with the to-date calm Romney going full-bore against his legitimized opponent Gingrich, a candidate who had been left for dead for weeks. Gingrich will not play elsewhere in the country like he played in South Carolina. Florida may give him a pat on the ass and push him down the road to the ensuing primaries, but the party will not let such a soiled candidate be its standard-bearer in the general election. He simply has too much baggage, beginning with his adultery, his three marriages, his forced ouster from the speakership of the House of Representatives for ethics violations and his feeding at the profitable trough of the government mortage companies, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, where he took millions in lobbying fees.

America may be down, but that speaks to the economy and not brains.

Americans can also spot a fraud a mile away. Newt Gingrich is George Wallace, Bull Connor, David Duke and Orval Eugene Faubus all rolled into one. His political tent is the KKK's tent, a circus the country will not support. Gingrich will go on playing to that crowd. It's all he's got. He'll keep calling President Obama the Food Stamp president even when he knows the program was the brainchild of Republican Bob Dole and that there were more program recipients under former Republican President George W. Bush than there are now. He has thrown that out to his supporters enough to make others know he won't discard the stupidity, and he'll never admit that the majority of food stamps recipents are Anglos, a point his southern audiences also ignore.

Gingrich's method is to alarm the Far Right wing of his party, consolidate that with promises right and left before realizing he needs to move toward the center if he's to compete in a national race. He'll do it, he'll pander to the moderate Republicans down the road if he has to. He's a politician who's lived and breathed Washington, D.C. for almost 40 years, yet he is running against the federal government. He'll bend to the middle by summer.

But in doing that, he will alienate the blood-thirsty Redneck base, those same rowdy people in South Carolina who rang his ears last night with "NEWT! NEWT!" Next time, when the rest of America get their shot at him, they'll be calling his name to hang him...

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