Monday, January 30, 2012

Is It Hypocrisy If You Don't Try To Hide The Double Standard?

I am trying to figure out if Newt really is a hypocrite. His two decade long support for a federal individual mandate is well known. It was well-known before he got in the race. It was already well-known when two videos surfaced of him praising Romneycare. It was already well-known when he defended it on Meet The Press early in his campaign. And now we have a video of Gingrich (down below), once again, defending the individual mandate in May 2009 a few brief months before it became socialism. Gingrich has to assume that everyone knows he is full of crap when he pretends like he thinks Obamacare and Romneycare are awful, no?

What Gingrich offers is more important to conservatives than consistency: Gingrich offers rhetoric. Yes, it is rhetoric that doesn't match anything that he currently believes, but it is angry and intense. The logic is not hard to follow.  There really are only two explanations for why some in the Republican base think Gingrich is the more conservative option: either they are too stupid to realize that Gingrich contradicts everything that he says or they know and they don't care because his rhetoric channels their irrational anger. If Gingrich really is trying to deceive conservative voters it is only because he believes they represent the first option. And if that is the case, it really shows the great contempt that Gingrich has for his base of supporters as well as the chronic misinformation that the conservative media complex has bestowed upon their audience.

As misinformed as the base may be about so many issues, I have a hard time believing that there are great swaths of Gingrich voters out there who really are in the dark about Gingrich's love for "must carry" health insurance. The more likely explanation is that they simply don't care. As long as Gingrich gives The Others (read establishment, media, Romney, Obama, Democrats, intellectuals, empirical evidence) the what for, the angry mob will continue to overlook his blatant double standards. They feed off of rhetoric, because rhetoric in their minds is the essence of conservatism. Coincidentally, rhetoric also is the essence of talk radio, but never mind that.

So, no, Newt Gingrich may not be a hypocrite because he is not really trying to deceive anybody. He and his supporters know full well what they want.

In a related story, one of the reasons why Gingrich likes Romneycare so much is because it has been largely successful as this new research shows.

2 comments:

Alan said...

I think I've figured it out. Limbaugh and Palin and Co. won't endorse Newt because they know he's an awful candidate, but they don't want Romney, so they say "Let the process continue." In secret, they are aiming for a brokered convention where they will finally be able to draft a candidate to their liking.

That ain't gonna happen. They are going to have to accept Romney in the end, and they will end up eating crow because Romney will become President and he will be a very good one at that.

Did anyone hear Limbaugh's outrageous allegations today that Romney is somehow involved in redistricting Allen West out of office? Limbaugh has become worse than pathetic.

Terrye said...

Alan...the blogger at Legal Insurrection came up with that ridiculous nonsense about Romney trying to redistrict Allen West out of a job..apparently he thinks his listeners are stupid..and maybe they are. In fact Allen West endorsed Romney, so I guess that makes him part of the establishment too.

The truth is there has been a new map drawn up and no Republicans are happy about it, but it came about after a vote made by Floridians themselves..and of course the legislature will try to change it and the courts will get involved. I got the impression from the paranoid guy over at Legal Insurrection that this is part of a plot by the establishment {lead by Romney} to deprive true conservatives of their seats..blah blah blah and of course it is based on something that was said by someone who is supposedly a supporter of Romney but who has nothing to do with the process..whatever, these people go to more and more bizarre lengths to hang crazy stuff on Romney. They are nuts.