Has the GOP Establishment Doomed Itself?





I suspect that the mainstream media has a lot more to do with the creation of Newt Gingrich as viable candidate / monster than does the GOP. The right-wing media certainly helps - Palin stopped being a threat pretty much the moment they shifted their cameras shifted away from her, and Donald Trump's brief surge ended the moment the media shifted its attention elsewhere.

By perpetuating the legend of Newt for the past fifteen years, by having him on countless shows, treating him like an elders statesman, flattering him with praise of his intellect and ideas, the mainstream media perhaps has created a different sort of monster - one that has enough clout to keep some cameras directed at him even if people like Murdoch and Ailes would prefer to shut him out. One who is more difficult to attack, because the first question likely to emerge from a sudden condemnation is, "Wasn't this the guy you said, only last year, was the only guy in the Republican Party with good ideas, the guy the party should follow? (And here's the clip.)"

Republican leaders share responsibility because of their complicity in the reinvention of Newt, and it as more beneficial to have an ostensibly brilliant pit bull publicly chew the leg of the Democratic Party than to remind the public of Gingrich's faults and weaknesses. But even so, but for the media's effective choice to do the same thing, I think Gingrich would by now have been long forgotten.

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