Quotes of the Day: Noonan, Will, Brooks, and Gerson take down The Newt

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The campaign to destroy Newt Gingrich, or at least his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, is well underway.

It's coming from renegades like Ron Paul (who's obviously acting on his own), Capitol Hill establishment types like Pete King (who's obviously playing his part in a more organized campaign), Romney surrogates like Chris Christie (who's obviously doing his pal's bidding), and, of course, from big-time conservative pundits who can see clearly that Newt, an unprincipled egomaniac, would be a disaster for the GOP. For example:

Peggy Noonan: "He is a human hand grenade who walks around with his hand on the pin, saying, 'Watch this!'"

George Will: "There is almost artistic vulgarity in Gingrich's unrepented role as a hired larynx for interests profiting from such government follies as ethanol and cheap mortgages."

David Brooks: "[Newt] has every negative character trait that conservatives associate with '60s excess: narcissism, self-righteousness, self-indulgence and intemperance. He just has those traits in Republican form."

Michael Gerson: "Gingrich's language is often intemperate. He is seized by temporary enthusiasms. He combines absolute certainty in any given moment with continual reinvention over time."

Can you smell the fear? Can you sense the panic? If conservatives of this caliber are going after Newt with such aggressiveness, it's only because he's become such a formidable frontrunner, and because he's gaining such momentum that he may very well be approaching the realm of inevitability.

Diamonds (and lousy former presidents) are a hack's best friend

By Distributorcap

Ronald Reagan Film Festival

By Distributorcap

In honor of the Gipper's one hundred years (and of his eight years of horrendous policies poisoning this planet), we have the first centennial Ronald Reagan Film Festival. Forget the No-doz, bring Thorazine.

No doubt, Peggy Noonan is very, very happy today

By J. Thomas Duffy

Likely, it's a multi-orgasm day.

Her beloved Gipper, back up on the, well, the little, on-line screen.



John Meroney has a great post up, over on The Atlantic;

Ronald Reagan and James Dean: Rare Video From 1954

Today, it's an astonishing, even eerie, scene: the icon of modern American conservatism, whose rise to political prominence was galvanized by the cultural rebellion of the 1960s, fighting off an attack-at-gunpoint by the quintessential modern American rebel. But when "The Dark, Dark Hours" episode of General Electric Theater aired live from Hollywood on December 12, 1954, Ronald Reagan and James Dean were just two actors yet to find the roles that would define them.

No one has seen this episode in the decades since; the kinescope has been locked away, until now. My friend Wayne Federman, a writer for NBC's Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, unearthed the broadcast, condensing it from its original 23 minutes (without commercials) into the six-minute version you see below. (Federman is planning a retrospective of Reagan's television career for next year's Reagan centennial.)

[snip]

A decade before Reagan's political career took off, with a nationally televised speech supporting Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign, and months before Dean started filming Rebel Without a Cause and Giant, both of these Midwesterners seem to be rehearsing future roles—Reagan as the happy warrior who could, in a moment, turn fierce ("I am paying for this microphone, Mr. Green!") and Dean as teenage angst writ large ("You're tearing me apart!").

[snip]

Less than a year after this episode aired, Reagan was a major primetime presence whom millions tuned in to see each week. Dean was a tragic, what-might-have-been figure, dead at age 24 from an automobile crash.

Go check it out, and play the video, it's a hoot.


Bonus Peggy Noonan Riffs

Peggy Noonan, Next Stop, Willoughby!

It's All Junkies and Guns, Says Peggy Noonan

My Ronny Can Do Anything ...Or; "Oh Ronny, If Only We Had Your Steady Hand




(Cross Posted at The Garlic)

For a minute, I thought Peggy Noonan was coming out against Gitmo

By J. Thomas Duffy

Jesus, I thought, Peggy Noonan is slamming The Commander Guy, the Shadow President, and all the other dwarfs, finks, phonies and frauds of The Bush Grindhouse.

The Gipper's Groupie is against torture!

" ...uncorked an act in which he, in the words of various news reports the next day, performed "faux oral sex" featuring "S&M play," "bondage gear," "same-sex makeouts" and "walking a man and woman around the stage on a leash."

Oh, wait a minute ...

No, she isn't.

The single biggest problem this country is facing today is Adam Lambert!

Somebody that knows her, make an intervention.

Get over there and take the wine and pills out of the house.


Bonus Riffs

Steve Benen: NOONAN LAMENTS 'THE ADAM LAMBERT PROBLEM'

Sady: Red-Blooded Americans “Assaulted” by Dancing Gay Dude on TV

Steve M: SURELY THERE ARE SOME GENITALS WE CAN BLAME FOR ALL THIS




(Cross Posted at The Garlic)

She's not a Hockey Mom with Lipstick ... She's Emily Litella!

By J. Thomas Duffy

We referenced this in our post yesterday.

During the VP Debate Thursday evening, the Republican Candidate for Vice President ended her exercise in delivering talking points by quoting, in her final statement, the ol' Gipper, former President (well, he had the title, anyway), Ronald Reagan;

We have to fight for our freedoms, also, economic and our national security freedoms.

It was Ronald Reagan who said that freedom is always just one generation away from extinction. We don't pass it to our children in the bloodstream; we have to fight for it and protect it, and then hand it to them so that they shall do the same, or we're going to find ourselves spending our sunset years telling our children and our children's children about a time in America, back in the day, when men and women were free.

Unlike her running mate, Mommy Moose can't pull out the POW-POW-POW card, so, you go next best, and wave that flag, high and proud, using the forum of the nationally-televised debate to shake a good dose of jingoism all over us.

A Frank Capra moment ...

Brilliant!

However, there's only a slight problem with it.

Either the Wasilla Whiz Kid didn't research, and put this together herself (by all accounts of her, that's extremely doubtful), or the Rove Rats in the Dead Campaign Express just pulled it off the World Wide Web and threw it in, believing, as we noted above, end the night waving, verbally, at least, Old Glory.

The problem is Reagan, how, and what he was using that quote for.

The Gipper was rallying the Right Wing troops, jingoistically hamming it up, as part of Operation Coffeecup, to defeat the advent of Medicare.



Reagan was paid by the American Medical Association to make a recording, inveighing against Medicare!

From Larry DeWitt's "Operation Coffeecup: Ronald Reagan’s Effort to Prevent the Enactment of Medicare";

In order to maintain the illusion of spontaneity, the AMA did not announce the existence of Operation Coffeecup or publicize the Reagan recording. The record was to be used, campaign organizers cautioned, only in the groups meeting under the controlled conditions of the informal coffees. Under no circumstances, recipients of the record were warned, were they to permit commercial broadcast of the recording.

(You can go here to listen to the YouTube of the Reagan "Operation Coffeecup" recording)

From Paul Krugman today;

When did he say this? It was on a recording he made for Operation Coffeecup — a campaign organized by the American Medical Association to block the passage of Medicare. Doctors’ wives were supposed to organize coffee klatches for patients, where they would play the Reagan recording, which declared that Medicare would lead us to totalitarianism.

You couldn’t make this stuff up.

I am a bit surprised, Palin, being young, and at a college, didn't pull out the "Ask not what your country can do for you, But ask what you can do for Country First - because, you know, John McCain is the only one in this campaign who can say he would stoop so low as to have me exploit Ronald Reagan and JFK in the same evening, just for the purpose of sucking in a few more votes ..."

Or, maybe, pull up Eisenhower's "Military Industrial Complex" speech, and lift a few passages from that, if only to wink one out to the home base.

Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.

Add a few lines about the son in the Army, and the flags would practically wave themselves.

Ya Betch'ya!

I can't wait to see what Peggy Noonan does with this.

Being the #1 Gipper Groupie, she must have turned even a ghostlier shade of white when she heard Palin dropping the Gipper's' words.

The Stumblin' Bumblin' John McCain Campaign, who she has already dissed in public once, now appropriating the brilliance of Ronald Reagan, for a cheap political stunt?

"How dare they do that to my beloved Ronnie!"

(And you don't want to mess too much with the Nooner ... She's got connections with that that old Iran-Contra gang, and they have the resources to make it look like it was a wolf in a helicopter that does the shootin' of certain nitwits that dare use Ronnie like that.)

It's fascinating, how these people actually work at, go out of their way, to make themselves look ridiculous.

Palin's not a "Hockey Mom with Lipstick" ...

She's Emily Litella!

Can we expect a press release coming soon, succinctly saying "Never Mind"?


Bonus Palin "Brilliant!" Riffs

Wonkette: COMMUNISTS AMONGST US - Palin Quoted Reagan Calling Medicare Communism

John Aravosis: Is Palin against Medicare?

Jonathan Chait: Palin Channels Reagan

Attaturk: Know what you’re quoting

Saturday Night Live - Weekend Update: Emily Litella on Puerto Rico

Gilda Radner - Emily Litela: Substitute Teacher




(Cross Posted at The Garlic)