Why Newt Gingrich Will Never Be President
Author: Thomas Vincent posted on Thursday, December 8th, 2011 at 2:01 pm
Newt Gingrich will never be president of the United States.
My reasoning is simple:
1 Newt Gingrich is too intelligent to be president.
Republicans voters don’t trust Presidents that talk down to them or who come off as acting smarter than they are. Evidence? George W. Bush. In order to get elected he had to drop his rich elitist cloak and don the mantle of the “good ole boy” Texan. As a University professor who loves peppering his speeches with adverbs, Newt simply can’t dumb down his rhetoric enough to appeal to dumb and intellectually insecure voters.
2 Newt Gingrich is too unlikeable to be president.
The last time Newt got close to being president (as Speaker of the house) he pissed off so many people that even his own caucus voted to remove him. Again, republican voters seem to favor candidates like “W” who look like a guy they’d like to sit down and have a beer with. If you went out drinking with Newt he could probably quote you chapter and verse about how the bar should fire the janitor and hire some poor black kid so he could learn the “value of hard work.” But ask him about baseball or NASCAR and you’ll probably get a blank stare. The sad fact is, nobody likes Newt.
3 Newt Gingrich has too much baggage.
Two divorces – the second one while he was having an affair with his current wife – house censure for ethics violations, tax evasion charges. After a while even the most dyed-in-the-wool fiscal hawk has to admit, Newt has an image problem when it comes to honesty and trustworthiness. And while he may not admit to a drinking problem – like W did – he also doesn’t have enough money or media connections to make his baggage go away. Again, for the “values voters” things like marital fidelity matter.
4 Newt Gingrich is short.
It is an axiom among presidential campaigns that the taller of the two candidates usually wins. This is not always true but in this day and age of media blitzes and presidential photo ops, it’s harder and harder to make up for one’s, shall we say, shortcomings? Newt’s website lists him at 6′-0″. I don’t believe it. Compared with either Barrack Obama or Mitt Romney, he looks like a short, pudgy white guy who could really use some of John Boehner’s Quick Tanning Lotion. I think the only way Newt can overcome being height challenged is if he saws about six inches off of Romney’s legs.
5 Newt Gingrich doesn’t want to be president.
From the early fiasco of taking a cruise while the other contenders were out knocking on doors, to his continuing reliance on book signings to keep him in the public eye, Newt appears as a man who would rather continue giving lectures at 80,000$ a pop and raking in money as a high paid lobbyist and corporate shill than be President. I mean really, can you conceive of a Commander in Chief who puts meetings with Putin and Merkel on hold because he’s got a date at Barnes and Nobel? What’s he going to do when there’s rioting in the streets because people can’t even find work as school janitors… give a lecture at Watsa-Motta-U.?
Conclusion:
I can hear some of you out there whining: “If he’s not serious about running, why is are republicans giving him so much credence?” I have a theory about this. When it comes to defeating Barrack Obama republicans know they have an image problem. They are running against an established incumbent who was swept into office on a tide of popularity. While that popularity has waned some, in close elections, the incumbent almost always gets the nod. Thus the only thing they can do is present a bunch of wacko candidates who say wacko things, keep the republican meme of “don’t tax the for job creators” and position themselves so that when the “reasonable” one in the field emerges on top – Mitt Romney – all the republicans can breathe a sigh of relief and say “at least we didn’t get [fill in the blank]. So all Newt really is, is the latest Cain/Bachmann/Santorum/Perry: a stalking horse who will say outrageous things to keep people tune in to the “debates.”
It’s classic slight of hand. Listen to Newt try to reason that child labor laws are actually bad for poor kids. All the while, the corporatists in the House and Senate pass bill after bill designed to rip off the tax payer by reducing corporate taxes and regulations and passing the cost off onto you and me.
Trust me on this one. Come the election next year, Newt will be a distant memory.
Tags: 9gag, Certain Doubt, election, Gingrich, newt, Newt Gingrich, Obama, poltics, president, reddit, republican, Thomas Vincent, Vincent
