Newt Gingrich and Wolf Blitzer: Barking at the Moon

The January 26, 2012 Republican presidential debate questioning opened with a distracting squabble between Newt Gingrich and CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer, making both men look foolish. Newt and Wolf are perfect together but embarrassing for America.

Both men have outsized egos and don’t back down. Mr. Blitzer began his mindless onslaught by asking Mr. Gingrich a question which Blitzer had already answered. After stating that Mr. Gingrich had said that he was satisfied with the “level of transparency” of Mitt Romney’s tax returns, Mr. Blitzer immediately rephrased his statement into a question. Attempting to repeat his previous successes in bashing the media, Gingrich blasted the query as a “nonsense question.” The bickering went on for a good couple of minutes before Romney got into the act.

With surprising testicular fortitude, Romney accused Gingrich of not having the courage to explain his derisive statements about Romney’s finances. Mr. Romney then cogently defended American capitalism. The tactic was deftly executed, and Romney won the exchange. But the real winner was Rick Santorum, who, in his opening statement, was the first to passionately decry the personal skirmishes that have punctuated this campaign at the expense of critical issues relevant to all Americans.

Newt and Wolf’s dust-up was painful to watch. The audience didn’t like it one bit. Romney was uncharacteristically aggressive and ultimately uplifting, but the whole five-minute episode was a waste of time. I’d rather have heard about jobs, the economy, and national security instead of a non-issue sparking a three-way brawl.

Moreover, Mr. Blitzer, a veteran journalist, broke a cardinal rule of journalism: unless he’s narrating in the first person, a reporter should never make himself part of the story. Apparently Blitzer learned nothing from Gingrich’s previous confrontations with Juan Williams and John King.

Still, Gingrich deserves most of the blame because he could have easily dispatched Blitzer by saying, “You just answered your own question. Let’s move on.”

Newt later went off the deep end, proposing a lunar space colony that could eventually apply for statehood. Romney rightly pounced on that, saying that if someone in his company had proposed spending hundreds of billions of dollars on such a project, he would fire that person. The choice of “fire” was a mistake, given Romney’s unfortunate past usage of that verb, but the sentiment was right on. A nation with a multi-trillion dollar deficit has to get its house in order before it can even begin to contemplate such luxuries.

If you missed it, you can watch all 98 minutes of this spectacle on YouTube.

It is a sad commentary on American culture that CNN called its interviews with the candidates’ surrogates “CNN Postgame.” A presidential debate is not Monday Night Football and should not be billed as such.

At a subsequent event, Gingrich bizarrely defended his lunar proposal. His underlying rationale was to get kids interested in math and science. There are more cost-effective ways of doing that, Mr. Speaker. For example, why not give tax deductions to scientists, engineers, and mathematicians who volunteer to visit schools a certain number of hours each year to talk about their professions?

That bit about the moon colony applying for statehood after its population reaches 13,000 was just too much. And you’ve gotta love the part where Gingrich talks about his second term. The word “lunatic” comes to mind.

Recent polls indicate that Romney is enjoying a significant lead in Florida, and Gingrich is particularly weak among women. Speaking on the January 28, 2012 broadcast of the Monica Crowley Show , former Clinton White House pollster Dick Morris pointed out that the February primaries heavily favor Romney. They include a slew of states like Nevada (heavily Mormon), Michigan (Romney’s father was governor there), and Maine (Romney is strong in New England).

It looks like the Gingrich bubble is ready to pop. Hopefully the next deflation of this bloated Barnum will be permanent.


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