Newt Gingrich's dreamy mission impossible

NEWT GINGRICH is driven by the demon of One Notion Under God. So on Wednesday, he will announce his candidacy for president and tell us why his impossible notion of occupying the Oval Office should make more sense to the electorate than anybody else laboring with the Republican brand these days.

Hooray for Newt for his wonderful impersonation of Crazy Guggenheim. In an act of historic self redemption, the guy has thrust himself into the swamp to prove that at 67 he can still rise above the muck of adultery and a reprimand by his congressional colleagues in 1997 for serious ethical violations. To make sure that he got the message, he also was fined $300,000!

But that was more than a decade ago, folks. Since then, he assures us that he has found God, to whom he regularly pays his respects and promises us that he is saved by moral cleansing. In one of the most absurd explanations of his philandering days the New Newt said that he was so driven by his intense dedication to his work ethic that he detoured some of his energy into his sex life. He has now become such a family man that he and his third wife are never more than an elbow apart.

As he sets forth on his next mission, he doubtless will recall that at least one of his colleagues rushed to his defense after he was reprimanded. That was uttered by another pure-of-heart congressman, Tom DeLay, who was heard to complain: "The highest possible standard does not mean an impossible standard no American could possibly reach."

DeLay's Cha Cha Danse Macabre

DID YOU happen to see the photo of a beaming Tom DeLay grasping the hand of a twirling bare-midriffed Cheryl Burke as they cha cha-ed on Dancing with the Stars? My reaction: Cheryl, do yourself a favor now and wash your freakin' hands!

The curse of Moses Cleaveland

• MORE THOUGHTS AFTER HOURS OF YARD WORK:

• A friend who is a Cleveland sports fan raises troubling questions after each loss, among them: What is it about Cleveland? A... It's the Moses Cleaveland curse! When the surveyors drew up the first maps of the settlement founded by Cleaveland, they dropped the "a" from his name. Horrified, he cast an eternal curse on the place. Or something like that. Won't make any difference whether Quinn, Anderson or Kosar is the quarterback. Moses was here first.
• As the White House hopes for a public option in health care continue to vaporize, I'll have to repeat my theory that Democrats have no guts, and Republicans have no conscience. The second part of that is that Republicans take no prisoners while Democrats willingly allow themselves to be the prisoners.
• Now that former congressman Dick Armey is making the rounds with his bloated Texas-size ego guiding the narrative of Tea Parties, he would seem to be a perfect dance partner for another Texan, Tom DeLay, in a record breaking 20 second marathon on the ballroom floor. What is it about Texas?
• Imagine how much better life would be if all of the things promised by the TV commercials were really true. Even half-true!
• Pity the poor company executives who are giving up choice seats for themselves and clients at baseball games because they don't want anybody to think that they are wasting big dollars on corporate excesses. Seems a rather strange sacrifice to me since millions of corporate dollars are being wasted on the .221 hitters in the dugout.

DeLay dancing with stars in his eyes, etc.

GRUMPY ABE'S THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY:

• After watching the painful evolution of a health care reform plan, I have concluded that there may be some things on Capitol Hill that money can't buy. But offhand, I can't think of any...
• Now that a desperate audience seeking TV world has invited Tom DeLay, a scoundrel of the first rank, to appear on Dancing with the Stars, may we next see a guest appearance by Sarah Palin on Jeopardy? I would pay to see Rush Limbaugh as a pole dancer at Tony Soprano's Bada Bing. Hokier than DeLay on Dancing with the Stars? I think not.
• How many more national sponsors must Glenn Beck lose before Fox owner Rupert Murdoch, always the bottom-line guy, decide to replace him with old Frankenstein movies to lighten up the fare?
• Wednesday evening's Tea Party on the Riverfront Mall in Cuyahoga Falls will doubtless have a lot of fussn' about government and taxes in general. As I have mentioned earlier, it is billed as "non political" even though Mayor Don Robart and a legislative candidate, both Republicans, are featured speakers. But considering how much federal and state money has touched down in the city, it might be unwise to complain too much about some of the hands that are feeding the Falls. One example: a $750,000 "neighborhood stabilization" grant from Uncle Sam. Well, as Nikita Khruschchev was fond of saying, "What's mine is mine, and what's yours is negotiable."

Grassroots? Where are the roots?

Derided by elitists as  phony, the tea-party movement is spontaneous..." - Karl Rove

A FEW NIGHTS ago   I had dinner with a  fellow who said his paycheck is a bit healthier these days because of the tax cuts arriving via the Obama Administration.  He said others in his company had experienced the same benefit. No one was prepared to make a down payment on a new yacht or a Lear jet, but all had more dollars  in their pockets.  Would anybody deny that these income tax cuts embraced all middle income taxpayers from California to New York? 

Well, yes. Indeed, if you listened to the rants on tea-party day, the President's policies are drenching all Americans with steep federal tax increases.   Karl Rove, a political survivor whose wallet will never deny him a good meal enhanced by a job with the Fox megaphone,  insists America is entering a new phase when the common folks aren't going to put up with runaway "tax-and-spend government".    Republicans like the sound of tax-and-spend because it has been around on their calling cards since the days of Herbert Hoover. Meantime, Republican presidents have spent and spent.  Or didn't they tell you that? 

Rove and his cohorts, who slammed us with eight years of George Bush,  are in denial.  They have no options left but to tell us, when the occasion calls for it, that Thursday is Saturday and Monday is Wednesday, and the dark spot on the moon is a wayward cow. Now they are selling "spontaneous " tax revolts that would be quite agreeable to winning elections for their brand of conservative Republicans down the road.   

Spontaneous?    For Rupert Murdoch's Fox News,  such imagined impromptu tea bagging was such a seductive thought to rabble-rouse that the  station's incendiary talk show hosts sold it endlessly to their  audience  with the vigor of those bombastic used-car commercials.  Joining the "grass-roots" assault on the White House was an old pro at this sort of nonsense:  Dick Armey, the former Texas congressman who is now the head of an outfit called FreedomWorks, another of the right-wing enterprises that confuses patriotism with Wounded Knee.  

All of the old crowd were out there sellin' their wares:  Newt Gingrich, whose curse we must bear because he has yet to find a job that will get him entirely out of the way; Phil Gramm, an inspired deregulator, a vice chairman of UBS (which is being investigated for serious tax fraud)  and a super-rich Texan, who got his share of income as a senator from oppressed taxpayers;  Tom DeLay, another discredited Texan  who smiles painfully when  Chris Matthews toys with DeLay's loopy invasions of reality.    

If there were anyone big enough to lead a fragmented McParty these days, he or she would promote a series of Smart Parties around the country that would begin with the premise that nothing is working for the GOP's good these days, so maybe it ought to consider something more sensible as the loyal opposition.   At the moment it is nothing more than a composite of silly free-lancers on the right who have kidnapped the GOP as their own private plantation where they grow peculiar ideologies from barren soil.  A party cannot survive with the wealthy alone.  

So be alert when you see grassroots as the key to the party's revival.  If  the tea parties were the domain of the future look of the party - white Obama-haters with Hitler-Obama posters - the slugs have eaten the roots and converted the lawn into a rollup carpet.  

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