Newt Gingrich Brings Much Needed Comic Relief to his Candidacy

No One Can Read This Story Without Laughing Out Loud

The surge of Newt Gingrich in the polls for the Republican nomination for the Presidency has brought a round of scrutiny to the candidate that had been absent before this.  The reason it had been absent is that no one other than Mr. Gingrich and probably some but not all of his immediate family thought he had any chance to win the nomination.

Now Mr. Gingrich is among the leaders because the majority of Republicans, who do not want Mitt Romney to be the nominee have run out of other candidates.  Their preferred alternatives, Haley Barbour, Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie have all decided to take a pass and those who are running have failed the scrutiny test.  This leaves Mr. Gingrich who now must answer for his past positions, statements and behavior.

So Mr. Gingrich has put out a web site to deal with his past issues.  It is truly destined for the Political Humor Hall of Fame.

 Newt Gingrich has released a message for the party activists who will be crucial to his hopes of winning his party’s nomination: Those positions I once held that are now out of step with current-day conservative orthodoxy? I’ve changed.

Yep, there it is Republican voters.  Any positions Newt had that are not part of your conservative beliefs, he doesn’t hold them anymore.  And if it turns out there are some he holds today that are not part of your beliefs, why he will jettison those also.  Here is just s sampling, Republican voters, of what you are going to hear.

On his support in the 1990s for a plan to mandate that all Americans purchase health insurance, the Web site says Mr. Gingrich has “come to the principled conclusion that a mandate to purchase health insurance was unconstitutional, unworkable and counterproductive to lowering the cost of health care.”

See

the site asserts, he changed his position after observing a mandate in action in the health care overhaul enacted in Massachusetts by former Gov. Mitt Romney and after concluding that a national mandate would be unconstitutional.

But wait a minute, didn’t Mr. Gingrich present himself as a historian and scholar, able to get million dollar consulting fees for giving his “opinion as a historian” on things like mortgage backed securities?  How could a great historian not know something was unconstitutional when he was receiving millions in fees for promoting it?

As for another issue

Addressing more recent moves that have put Mr. Gingrich on the wrong side of some conservatives, “Answering the Attacks” submits that the former speaker, who is from Georgia, believes “it was a mistake to back Dede Scozzafava, the Republican nominee” in a 2009 special election for Congress in upstate New York, instead of her Conservative Party rival Douglas L. Hoffman.

Gosh, Mr. Gingrich could be called Mr. Republican, but it turns out he now says he was wrong to support a Republican nominee.  Most of us thought that’s what Republicans did, but if that position stands in the way of getting votes, well just abandon it.

Mr. Gingrich has been saying for a long time he is better than Mr. Romney.  We now know he means he is better at pandering and better at flip-flopping than Mitt.  That turns out to be true, but who amongst us would have thought that possible?