Newt In Action

This morning at an unassuming art gallery in Florence, SC, Gingrich continued his attacks from the debate last night--at which, his presenter said, "Newt KICKED BUTT."

Newt: "the audience spontaneously started standing and applauding," and he described watching the wave grow from the back of the huge lecture hall to the front.

The same lines worked well for this morning's much smaller but still pretty fervent crowd.

In addition to the "food stamp president" charge, he declared that "No American president should ever again bow to a Saudi king," and that there's a big difference between "a Saul Alinsky radical" and a candidate (himself) who "believes in the AMERICAN Declaration of Independence, the AMERICAN Constitution," etc. (emphasis in original).

Having never watched the Newtster in person before, I have to say he is more formidable than I imagined. On TV he sometimes comes across (to me, anyway) as a bit of a blowhard buffoon. But this morning he was focused, firm, and very aggressive in a way that played well to a group of voters determined to, as one questioner put it, "bloody Obama's nose." (Newt corrected the metaphor: "I don't want to bloody Obama's nose," he said, "I want to knock him out." Big cheer from the crowd).

Newt promised that if he wins the nomination, he will challenge the president to "seven three-hour debates" with no moderator. He won't need to use a teleprompter himself, Gingrich said, though he suspects that Obama will. "If you had to defend Obamacare," he asked rhetorically, "wouldn't you want a teleprompter?" If Obama refuses to debate, he said, he will follow the president everywhere he goes, rebutting Obama's every speech with one of his own.

Seeing him work this morning made me wonder if the White House really does rub its hands together in glee at the thought of running against Gingrich. I'm not convinced many people remember or care about his scandals from earlier decades, and he would undoubtedly provide a riveting performance against Obama.