Please don't fib to Newt

For a politician who claims to possess a cosmic superiority in debating skills, with which he would crush the diabolically devious Kenyan imposter in the presidential square-offs, Newt Gingrich has offered the most peculiar excuse for his poor debate performances last week.

Asked, simply, "What happened?" by ABC's Jake Tapper, the former speaker threw up this defensive, explanatory barrier: "I was amazed."

Amazed, that is, in the sense of being stunned, stupefied, staggered. Amazed in the sense of a speechlessness rendered. Amazed in the sense of being stopped, shut down, swept savagely into a crippling silence.

The Great(est) Debater amplified his sense of helplessness:  

I'm standing next to a guy who is [giving] the most blatantly dishonest answers I can remember in any presidential race in -- in my lifetime.... And, you know, he would say things that were just plain not true.

Well, that left me stupefied. Isn't exposing an opponent's blatantly dishonest answers -- utterances that are "just plain not true" -- a rather elementary, or, as Newt would put it, fundamental part of live, on-stage debating? The world's great(est) debater actually confessed that his Achilles' heel consists of ... being fibbed to? Just lie to Newt and watch his rhetorical offensive crumble?

So it would seem. And that's according not to me, but to Newt.

Oh, the world's great(est) debater also mentioned this little tidbit of political insight: "You cannot be president of the United States if you can't be honest and candid with the American people."

Ergo, Barack Obama would have never become president of the United States had he not all along been honest and candid with the American people. Ergo II, Barack Obama could not possibly be the diabolically devious Kenyan imposter that the world's great(est) debater says he is.

Or so it would seem. And that's according not to me, but to Newt.

Comments

[AnneJ]

Since when does Newt Gingrich care one whit about his own inconsistencies. If you point them out to him, he just says you are lying when you repeat what he says. I don't know, he and Mitt Romney are beginning to make my head spin, and I must say that even though I have always enjoyed listenting to President Obama's speeches, listening to him now is like a fresh cool breeze from the ocean on a hot and stagnant day. Oh please let him be reelected!