Newt. Again.

by Matt Bai - February 25, 2009 - New York Times

It is not likely that an article that made it in to the New York Times would in any way be a positive article for Americans as opposed to socialists. It is clearly designed to portray Barack Obama as a moderate. It covers the period right after the election when I started to become enraged at my party due to its adopting the ridiculous idea that pretending Obama was not a socialist was a good strategy. Newt Gingrich was one of the advocates of that strategy.

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.

I was outraged that anyone would think that opposing socialism was simply a myopic attempt to obstruct. I never bought the idea that Obama was the moderate he pretended to be. I have read Alinsky. His pretense at moderation was a con and Newt was among a great number of Republicans who bought in to the con. I guess in all his reading Newt missed Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. Perhaps if he had read it he would not have been deluded into thinking that Obama was ever going to be moderate.

Obama's sky high ratings are partially due to the constant early days reference to anything he did as moderate by Republicans, as if they could woo this hard core socialist into a moderate governing posture by being nice to him. To the independents that were nervous about their votes, the Republicans gave them confidence they had not screwed up with their vote. The problem is that independents are among that large part of the populace that only listen for a short time, make up their minds, and then tune out politics for a couple of years. At a time when it was critical, Republicans assured the American people that Obama was moderate. Now it is too late to say anything different and be heard.

Obama gave the Republicans no chance of working together by proving through his actions he was never going to be a moderate. Obama made the so-called stimulus bill a monstrous swerve left. Even though many papers, among them the New York Times (as repeated in this article), made the argument that disagreement was simply "obstructing" what was needed for our nation.

This is a very long article, that delves into what Newt is doing and attempts to set him up as the best Republican candidate for President in 2012. Just as the Times worked hard to get McCain as the candidate for 2008, they will abandon Newt in a second once he has the nomination. If he was running against Obama, I could vote for Newt. However he is far from being a good choice for anyone among us who believes in individual freedom. Newt would accept socialism in a minute if the American people wanted it. To him it is not an issue of principle but of governing. Newt will support anything that the majority of people support.

Even his contract with America proved that.