Really, Newton?

Really? Really?

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I was laughing as I was hearing this. He sounds like the petulant "bad boy" in high school who just stole the annoying rich guy's (aka Mitt Romney's) lunch money... Which may not sound like much, until we realize that annoying rich guy's lunch money is enough to take a whole pack of hungry teens to Morton's!

Of course, never mind that Newton himself has become a very rich man... And is advocating a tax system that slashes his own taxes. Fellow Catholics are calling on Newton and Ricky Santorum to stop "perpetuating ugly racial stereotypes" of poor people. He really did use a form of populism to win South Carolina... But it was an ugly kind of populism centered on ugly racial stereotypes and rampant xenophobia.

Ironically enough, Newt Gingrich rode this wave of anti-establishment populism to win South Carolina despite his tax plan that wildly favors the top 1% over everyone else, as well as his endorsement of Rick Perry's crazy claim that Social Security is "unconstitutional". Funny enough, for all of Newt's (and all the other GOPers') past attacks on Ron Paul, he now seems to be co-opting a whole lot of Ron Paul's extreme libertarian views (and xenophobia) to remake himself as a "populist".

Apparently when G-O-TEA base voters compare and contrast this to Mitt Romney's flip-flops on just about everything, they're choosing Newt... And to a lesser extent, cherry picking the policy positions of "Tea Party Ideological Grandfather" Ron Paul. With Newt, they can "have their cake and eat it, too" with his embrace of neoconservative demands for more wars everywhere, total destruction of the American social safety net as we know it, and a bizarre far right twist on populism that "Mr. 1%" Mitt Romney just can't pull off. Maybe the media pundits really did "misunderestimate" Newton's ability to give "tea partiers" exactly what they want, regardless of how ideologically incoherent we see it.