Reader Chris responds to my earlier post about former GOP House leader, and uber-conservative, Newt Gingrich telling the Republican party to leave Obama alone, and stop trying to link him to Illinois governor Blagojevich.
Thanks for that post about Gingrich's comments on Obama. That one threw me for a loop. We all know the guy is evil, but unfortunately he’s not stupid. If he does the right thing, it’s always because he’s up to something.
I’ve been mulling this around, and then it hit me – a couple of weeks ago, right after the election, Gingrich launched that broadside against gays and secular radicals. I thought at the time that he might be looking at the Prop 8 vote and planning to try to peel Black and Latino social conservatives away from the Democratic ticket. God knows they’ve tried it before, but I think he felt like they have solid proof this time of how to motivate black voters to vote as conservatives.
This is the second time he’s been in the news in the last couple of weeks, and on reflection, this actually fits into that.
If he’s going to make a play, especially in the Black community, the one thing that would turn them off, perhaps permanently, would be something like the Blago-linked attack on Obama. Everybody knows it’s bullshit, and likely will be proven to be.
Let’s lay a little side bet – watch for attacks on Obama, or his appointments, that highlight “liberal” social values that don’t play well in black churches. Especially anything involving us.
I’ll bet you he’s also trying to think of a way to play off the fact that Obama is the son of an African foreign student – not someone who has come out of the typical African American experience.
At the end of the day, though, I don’t think Gingrich will run for President himself – he’s positioning himself to broker who does.
