November 14, 2011--Newt Time

It is not a good that the only thing I could find to watch on TV Saturday night was the Republican candidates' foreign policy debate. It's even less of a good thing that the one who came across best was Rick Santorum. The same Rick who worried out loud that if gays are allowed to marry--men with men and women with women--that the next thing they'd want to do was marry their pets.

There he was anchoring one end of the row of candidates while Jon Huntsman occupied the other. I figured out, with Romney planted in the middle, that Rick and Jon were still hovering in single-digit land.

I thought watching the debate would at least be good for some laughs. I was sure Jon Stewart and Steve Colbert had half their staffs working Saturday night as hilarious material was sure to tumble off the screen, irresistible material for their Monday night monologues.

But it turned out to be quite a disappointment--gaff free with even the other Rick, the one from Texas, managing to remember his lines.

Santorum had the best answer to the daunting question about what to do about Pakistan--our "ally" where very bad guys, including Bin Laden, are harbored with the full support of the country's military and ISI spy agency. The same country that has at least 75 functioning nuclear weapons and the long-range missiles to deliver them. The same country that receives at least $3.0 billion in U.S. aid every year.

While the other candidates postured manfully (including Michele Bachmann who pulled herself up to her full five-feet-two) about how tough they would be--zero-base budgeting Pakistan (and all other countries who receive foreign aid) forcing those on the U.S. dole from Egypt to Pakistan to "demonstrate every year why they should get even one cent from American taxpayers."

The reporters asked each in turn to answer a totally unimpressive question--"Do you view Pakistan to be a friend or foe?" All but Santorum said "foe," with Romney, knowing the inclinations of the GOP base he is desperate to pander to, straining to come off as the most macho, most belligerent. You could almost sense his eagerness to send in Special Ops troops to capture the Pakistani nukes and, while we're at it, bomb Iran back to the Stone Age.

Santorum, though, said, "Pakistan needs to be our friend." For at least two reasons--first, because of all those nukes; second, because our aid is not primarily planeloads of hundred dollar bills (that's what we send to Afghanistan to bribe tribal leaders) but rather weapon systems that are manufactured in the U.S.A. So in effect he was conceding that a lot of American aid--most of it military equipment--is really about American jobs. He didn't put it quite this way, he too knows his audience, but isn't spending taxpayer money on the manufacture of jet fighters in California and then sending them to Islamabad a stimulus program?

But no matter, they moved on to talk about the effectiveness of the surge in Afghanistan and I noticed then that on Romney's left was Herman Cain and on his right, Newt Gingrich. I hadn't see any polls for a few days and assumed their placement was based on new data that showed Newt in either second or third place.

How could this have come about? Wasn't he standing next to Jon Huntsman just last week? And cozied up with Rick Santorum two debates ago?

While trying to concentrate on the answers about the surge, I googled the latest polling information and, yes, there was Gingrich inching past Cain.

I guess the accusations against Herman make the fact that Newt is a serial sexual harasser (though he does tend to marry those he fondles) appear of less concern to evangelicals concerned about "family issues." I also guess that Newt's conversion to Catholicism is less abhorrent to many fundamentalists because it is less of a problem than Mitt's Mormonism. At least Gingrich is a Christian.

I suppose Michele Bachmann's ignorance about American history masks the fact that self-styled historian Newt Gingrich makes up his version of history so that it fits his ideological agenda. And I guess Herman Cain's chief of staff's playing perhaps illegal hanky-panky with Koch brothers' Americans for Prosperity PAC money makes us forget the hundreds of thousands Newt owes Tiffany's for his third or fourth wife's diamonds and pearls.

Then of course, because we are aware that Romney amassed hundreds of millions in personal wealth by taking over companies and then firing hundreds and at times thousands of workers, this by comparison makes Gingrich's money-making scams seem penny ante.

So it may now be Newt time.

He's played a patient game, building a reputation among Tea Party members by attacking the media at every opportunity, while waiting for his opponents one-by-one to self destruct. Self destruct in ways that clear the moral and ethical path for an otherwise very compromised former Speaker of the House who, by the way, was forced to step down because he was sanctioned for "tax improprieties" by the the very House he was supposed to lead.

Incidentally, he was the only Speaker in history to have ever been disciplined for ethics violations. 83 of them! There's that danged history again.