This "pretending to be George Washington on Twitter" game is actually one of the least embarrassing things about Newt Gingrich, of course. He was also the first Speaker of the House to be forced to pay a $300,000 penalty for ethics violations, he shut down the federal government because the president was rude to him during a plane ride, he left his first wife as she lay in a hospital bed recovering from cancer, and he left his second wife for one of the women he was sleeping with during his impeachment crusade against Bill Clinton. Never in his political career have his favorable ratings outweighed his unfavorables. And he keeps accidentally giving awards to porn producers and strippers.

But he is a dreamer! And we will hear about how he is considering this run for president for years, and no one will bring up all the terrible things about him, besides scumbag bloggers.

Forward men, forward!

[Illustration: Weekly World News]

Gingrich Communications has launched The Americano, a bilingual political news site aimed at Latinos that "will seek to make a profit from advertising." It is being run by Sylvia Garcia, his director of Hispanic outreach. To repeat: It is bilingual. You can choose to get your news in English or in Spanish, a choice that Newt Gingrich—the man whose company is launching this web site—believes is corrosive to our culture:

"Allowing bilingualism to continue to grow is very dangerous," Gingrich said in Atlanta. "We should insist on English as a common language. . . . That's what binds us together."

That's from 1995, when Gingrich was defending his massive cuts to bilingual education and support for English-only legislation. As recently as 2007, he repeated the sentiment, saying Spanish people should stop speaking the "language of living in the ghetto," i.e., Spanish, the language of The Americano, of which he is the publisher.

In fact, according to the site's "principles," the editors of The Americano "will..renew our commitment to American values, language and history as the prerequisite for U.S. citizenship." You can read that in Spanish here. So it's basically a web site for illegal immigrants. To yell at them.

[Via The Plank.]

Allison Viva, president of "adult entertainment studio Pink Visual," woke up this morning thinking that the Gingrich PAC "American Solutions For Winning the Future" was rewarding her for her impressive business acumen and American can-do spirit. Then someone from the PAC called her up and told her that she would not actually get to enjoy a private dinner at the Capitol Club with the former majority leader himself. Sad!

According to the notice from ASWF, should Vivas attend a private dinner scheduled to occur Oct. 7 at the historic Capitol Hill Club, she will "dine privately with Newt," who will then take the occasion to present Vivas with her "well deserved award" and pose for a photo with her.

The notice from ASWF also informed Vivas that Gingrich is "looking forward to finally meeting [Vivas] face to face – and get[ting] your thoughts on Cap and Trade and Obama's Tax Policy."

Vivas expressed her intention to use the occasion as a chance to educate the former Speaker about issues pertinent to her industry.

Yes, right, that's what everyone said, and so on.

If you watch The Daily Show you've probably noticed how guys like Bill Kristol, John Bolton, Next Gingrich and Mike Huckabee are booked as guests with regularity. Perhaps you've found yourself wondering, "Why the hell would these guys want to appear on The Daily Show?" I sure have! And now, thanks to Daily Intel's Jacob Gershman, we know why.

While the (conservative) movement professes a disdain for the "liberal media elite," it has made an exception for the true-blue 46-year-old comedian. "He always gives you a chance to answer, which some people don't do," says John Bolton, President Bush's ambassador to the United Nations and a Fox News contributor, who went on the show last month. "He's got his perspective, but he's been fair." Says Bolton: "In general, a lot of the media, especially on the left, has lost interest in debate and analysis. It has been much more ad hominem. Stewart fundamentally wants to talk about the issues. That's what I want to do."

Conservatives like Stewart because he's providing them a platform to reach an audience that usually tunes them out. And they often find that Stewart takes them more seriously than right-wing political hosts, who are often just using them to validate their broad positions, do. Stewart will poke fun, but he offers a good-faith debate on powder kegs - torture, abortion, nuclear weapons, health care - that explode on other networks. "Shepard Smith did the same discussion [on torture]," says (Neo-conservative Cliff) May. "He kept yelling me at me: 'This is where I get off the bus! Not in my name!' He wasn't arguing with me. It was just assertions and anger. That's not what Jon deals in."

So maybe there's hope that Stewart can book Sarah Palin as a guest! After all, Bill Kristol promised he'd try to get her to go on the show during his last appearance! Wouldn't that just be swell?!

Brewer seemed to agree with our contention that public figures, especially those who run around correlating a failure to grasp the basics of the English language to a life in the ghetto, should perhaps put a little more effort into their tweets like, you know, making sure that they're in line with the basic tenets of grammar.

Responding on his Twitter account this morning, Newt said the following:








Gingrich's tweets raised an interesting question in our minds—What's a bigger annoyance to a political figure...the internet or his wife?

Finally, Contessa, ever since you eviscerated Sarah Palin's personal goblin John Ziegler on the air last month, we kind of have a staggering crush on you. So call us or DM us on Twitter or something, okay?

Seriously, is it that hard for the supposed leaders of this country's conservative wing to craft a message composed of 140-characters or less without it looking as if it were written by a second grader? This is just embarrassing, though not near as embarrassing as when five term Republican Senator Chuck Grassley used his Twitter to drop this little nugget on humanity:

"Pres Obama you got nerve while u sightseeing in Paris to tell us 'time to deliver' on health care. We still on skedul/even workinWKEND."

Honestly, we don't think that even an "edit" feature would've helped Grassley out on this one. But somewhat to Gingrich's credit, he did rewrite this very tweet with the spelling errors corrected, but he still didn't bother to use proper capitalization or put a hyphen between "heart" and "warming" or to delete the hideously misspelled original tweet from his Twitter account. Delete the dang thing Newt! We do it when we mess up all the time.

via Bus Your Own Tray

Sad Republican strategist Mark McKinnon has been handicapping the Republican field over at The Daily Beast. So far, he's identified both Senator John Ensign and South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford as Ones to Watch just days before they admitted extramarital affairs. And then he called on both of them to resign. It is hard, strategizing for this bunch of losers! So let's look at the rest of his list and wonder what will be!

Haley Barbour: Barbour is McKinnon's new favorite, because he is the opposite of Barack Obama. He is a fat old white Southerner who used to be a lobbyist. So, as you can imagine, he will definitely help with that whole "GOP is only the party of old white Southerners now" thing. But McKinnon is pretty sure that the next election will actually be held on opposite day, which will definitely improve Haley's chances.

But there is a problem: he is a crooked lobbyist with crooked lobbyist children!

Tim Pawlenty: Tim is the Governor of Minnesota. He is a charming cipher. He is completely inoffensive. He would maybe convince Republicans that they could put some more upper midwestern states back in play.

But there is a problem: even being a charming cipher was not enough to net Pawlenty a majority of votes cast in either of the elections he won. And now he is retiring, rather than face possible defeat. Meanwhile, the state has gone completely broke. And he made a bridge collapse. Also he's on the road toward revealing some embarrassing personal secret: claiming he has nothing to hide and almost challenging people to dig something up.

Newt Gingrich: People have heard of him, but they have also forgotten why they used to hate him, mostly. He likes to pretend to be full of exciting new ideas for remaking the party. He is an elder statesman. He, uh, hasn't cheated on his wife lately.

But there is a problem: he's Newt fucking Gingrich.

Mike Huckabee: He's a charming, roly-poly former Arkansas governor with his own talk show on Fox. He used to be fat, then he got skinny, and now he is kinda fat again. He is friends with Chuck Norris. A lot of liberals find him surprisingly tolerable, and he is more than willing to charm them without losing his Conservative Christian Cred. He plays the bass.

But there is a problem: he says a lot of dumb shit and is hard to take seriously, especially now that he's doing his "Conservative White Male Oprah" thing at Fox.

Sarah Palin: She is really famous, and really good at getting on TV, and also she is a lady. She has those kids, and that husband, and a lot of people seem to think she is a wonderful lady. Also she talks funny, which appeals to millions of Americans who also talk funny.

But there is a problem: she is really fucking dumb and no amount of media training can ever make her appear confident and prepared, which is weird, considering her local news background.

Mitt Romney: He has money, and nice hair.

But there is a problem: he is a Mormon!

But that is not actually the best argument for Mitt. The best argument for Mitt is that, barring news that he secretly slept with Joe the Plumber, he basically already has this locked up.

This is how Republican primaries work: if there is a Republican President or Vice President who would like the job, he gets the nomination. If not, the guy who came in second in the last contested primary gets the nomination. (Unless it's Pat Buchanan.) This is the way they have done things since World War II. It means the candidate will be Mitt Romney (or maybe—maybe!—Mike Huckabee). All this John Ensign and Mark Sanford talk was bullshit even before they all took themselves out of the running by sleeping around.

But, you know, good luck to Haley Barbour.

The spasm of raw and overt white rage on the part of conservatives in reaction to Sotomayor's nomination has been widely noted. It's sad because it's racist and awful and depressing, but it's also sad because the Republican Party, which used to be undisputed masters of subtle and coded racial suggestion, has devolved into repeating obviously and conspicuously racist diatribes. They're actually saying out loud the things that they are thinking and saying to one another in private, which is never a good idea.

Lee Atwater, the Republican Machiavelli who engineered the infamous "Willie Horton" ads against Michael Dukakis in 1988, would be rolling over in his grave if he hadn't renounced his political tactics on his deathbed in 1991. Here's Atwater explaining in 1981 how a pro uses racism in a national political campaign:

You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff.

It's called "dogwhistle" politics, and it only works when dogs are the only ones that can hear the whistle. In the Sotomayor case, the dogs are the increasingly contracting Republican base of aggreived southern and exurban whites who resent dirty Mexicans. But when Newt Gingrich says Sotomayor is getting a pass because she's Puerto Rican, or the National Review says she's a foreigner because of the way she pronounces her name, or unnamed Republicans on the hill wonder how her love for strange Puerto Rican food will affect her judicial temperment, or Rush Limbaugh calls her a "reverse racist," or Pat Buchanan says she will hurt white males, or Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) says she belongs to the "Latino KKK"—they're just whistling. We can all hear them. And, as Atwater said, it backfires.

But Republicans used to know that. The GOP used to be so proficient at the dogwhistle that nonracists would tie themselves into knots trying to unmask Republican attacks for what they were. The Willie Horton ad; Jesse Helms' "white hands" ad, in which a pair of white hands crumples up a rejection notice saying a minority has gotten the job he applied for; Ronald Reagan's Cadillac-driving welfare queen—these were calibrated to walk up to the line of "nigger, nigger, nigger" and stop just short of it. They retained a shred of plausible deniability. That's not to say that the GOP of the '80s and '90s never engaged in overtly racist messaging. It's just to say that they were really good at the coded ones when it suited them.

The Republican opposition to Sotomayor, on the other hand, is shouting "Puerto Rican, Puerto Rican, Puerto Rican!" Their fatal mistake is in openly insisting that Sotomayor's heritage is the reason she got where she is. Gingrich didn't just say that her remarks about considering her ethnicity in her judicial decision-making are troubling, or even racist—he had to add that the only reason no one's calling her out on it is that she's Puerto Rican and a woman. The National Review's John Derbyshire didn't wonder about her position on affirmative action—he said she was "blessed by Providence with the precisely correct right race-gender two-fer for the moment."

Gingrich's retraction probably signals the end of the Sotomayor racist feeding frenzy. But if Atwater were still around, he would have been writing memos urging GOPers not to make fun of her name, but to instead ostentatiously pronounce it in as foreign-sounding a way as possible and then sheepishly apologize if they get it wrong. He'd be telling them not to utter the words "Puerto Rican," but to find a current case involving English-only legislation and wondering what her take would be on it. He'd be telling them not to talk about strange foods, but to find a way to bring up illegal immigration. Or to talk about being tough on crime. Or forced busing. State's rights. All that stuff.

The idiot-liar, Ms. Governor Sarah Palin, was supposed to headline the joint NRSC/NRCC Republican fundraiser, this June. But because she is hiding in Alaska still, where no one can hear her say stupid lies every time she opens her mouth besides polar bears and penguins, it turned out that that was a "miscommunication" between "her political team" (the party hacks) and "the governor's office" (her husband and people she went to high school with and one of those polar bears).

So they replaced her with the next best thing: Newt Gingrich! Everyone loves Newt, because most people have forgotten how much they hate him.

Isn't this sad, actually? Their hopefuls are a guy who quit congress in disgrace ten years ago and the loser VP candidate from their last losing ticket. Was Jack Kemp busy that weekend?

Over at New York's Daily Intel, they can't decide if it's the mid-'90s (Dow at 6,500, Newt and Rush are back!) or the early '80s (leggings and unemployment!). But you are all thinking like Dr. Manhattan's dumb girlfriend, with your linearity. It's always been the 80s and 90s and it always will be!

What we're experiencing right now is what physicists call "The Butterfly Effect Starring Ashton Kutcher." Someone is throwing us all backwards and forwards through time in order to right past wrongs. And, as in that film, these attempts just keeping making everything worse. Which is why, instead of "Speaker of the House," we are dealing with "Presidential candidate" Newt Gingrich:

Gingrich and his wife "will look seriously and we'll probably get our family totally engaged, including our two grandchildren, probably in January, 2011, and we'll look seriously at whether or not we think it's necessary to do it," he said, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

"And if we think it's necessary we'll probably do it," Gingrich said. "And if it isn't necessary we probably won't do it."

"I think it's conceivable that by 2012 you could have a second Contract for America," the former Speaker added.

Noooooooooooooo!!! 1.21 gigawatts! It's the Libyans!!

Well, Peter Feld called it last week. He tried to warn us.

So we're all just stuck in this time loop, like that Next Generation episode where the Enterprise kept exploding, and our last hope is that our android president can send a message through his positronic brain giving us some clue as to how to avert the same catastrophes over and over again.

(This maybe has something to do with why Hillary Clinton got Russia a giant reset button today?)

Newt used to be the Speaker of the House, and he engineered the Republican Revolution in 1994 and by 1998 he'd resigned in disgrace because his brilliant plan to campaign entirely on LET'S IMPEACH BILL CLINTON was not actually very popular, especially after he cheated on his wife (not the wife he divorced while she was recovering from cancer surgery, that was his first wife).

Now 10 years and the Bush era have gone by, with Newt remaining quiet, but in this Republican leadership vacuum only he and Rush Limbaugh have any cred with anyone, because every elected Republican is more or less a joke.

Unlike the bomb-thrower Rush, Newt likes to build his reputation for smarts with impossibly boring and wonky (but nice-sounding) projects like a plan for "air-traffic modernization" involving space computers and the health care records computerization thing that is now an official Project Worth Caring About name-checked by the president. See, he is an ideas man! A wonk!

But those are the window dressing for what Newt is actually all about, which is Stunts. Stupid stunts instead of governing, or reform, or anything, really. This is the nihilism he pretends to decry in the "margins" of his party, but it is his bread-and-butter. The federal government shut-down. His proposal, in this piece, to suspend ALL TAXES for A YEAR instead of passing a stimulus bill. Remember "drill here, drill now, pay less"? That was him! It was also a bald-faced fucking lie! These are political ideas you put forth to get elected, not so actually solve problems once you are in charge. It is impossible for Newt to distance himself from the "base-rallying" shenanigans of the Bush years when they were just his own brilliant political ideas put into action in the grandest scale possible.

And, Matt Bai, we have always thought you covered Democrats in a particularly obnoxious and condescending way (and not only when they actually deserved it), so it is odd to see you accepting all of this completely 100% wrong nonsense at face value:

As Gingrich explained it to me back in November, just after the election, what he had been preaching to Cantor and other House Republicans was actually more radical than that. Gingrich, who likes to reduce the world to binary options, saw two basic paths for Obama: either he was going to cater to interest groups and his Congressional wing, or he was going to take a more centrist, more reformist approach to governing.

If he chose Door No. 1, then Republicans had to propose a thoughtful, alternate agenda of their own. "Screaming ‘No!' is just not a strategy," Gingrich told me. But he said he was betting that Obama would take the second approach - that he meant what he said about leaving the old doctrines behind and intended to govern in a way that might fundamentally realign American politics. And if that were the case, Gingrich reasoned, not only would it be politically unpalatable to stand in Obama's way, but chances were he would soon face serious fractures within his own party and would need to create a broader coalition of partners to get his initiatives through the Congress.

In other words, Gingrich wasn't suggesting to Cantor and the others that they should simply pretend to like Obama well enough. He was telling them that if Obama was going to move far enough in their direction, their best play - and maybe their only play - was actually to team up with him on legislation if they could.

Yes, and then Obama selected door number 2 and Newt led the charge to vote "no" on everything en masse and, in doing so, they didn't "find their voice" so much as enable the president to ignore them as obstructionists and proclaim that he gave it a shot but those dead-enders won't listen to reason.

So good luck saving the party, Newt.

John McCain, you'll recall, had a very loyal wife who eagerly awaited his return from six years in a Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp. Unfortunately, a terrible car accident left Carol McCain both shorter and fatter than the swimsuit model she had been when McCain married her. Said to be appalled by her appearance, McCain started seeing other women. He left her for a rich 25-year-old (his current wife!) after buying Carol a beach house, which turned out to be kind of a cruel gift to a woman with bum legs.

The thing is, Carol McCain blames herself for the end of the marriage, and supports her husband's political campaigns. She and others had an easier time forgiving McCain's behavior because of all he had been through in the war and the presumed emotional toll of that experience.

Edwards will not get such leniency, although it will probably noted that his life has not been without significant pain — not only is his wife battling cancer, but Edwards lost his only son Wade in a car accident in 1996, when the son was in high school.

Newt Gingrich has garnered even less sympathy for his treatment of Jackie Battley, his high school geometry teacher and first wife. As detailed in Salon in 1998, Battley bore Gingrich two daughters, put Gingrich through graduate school and stood by him over the course of two losing Congressional campaigns. So of course Gingrich had a bunch of affairs and insisted on working out his divorce from Battley while she was in the hospital recovering from uterine cancer surgery.

Gingrich, of course, went on to lead the first Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 40 years, serving as speaker for half a decade. McCain will lead the Republican convention in Minneapolis this September. And Villaraigosa has been mentioned as a possible Democratic candidate for California governor.

And those are all guys who actually left their sick wives for other women. John Edwards' career might actually be totally fine! Oh, except for the love child thing — no one else has actually taken it that far. And the kid will make it hard for Edwards to hold together the marriage. So, actually, nevermind, John Edwards is still totally screwed.

As an added bonus, Gingrich is gracing Second Life with his presence on September 27. American Solutions, an advocacy group helmed by Gingrich, is renting out the virtual front of a pretend U.S. Capitol for workshops.