Jonah Goldberg applies his wit and expert analysis to a new National Review Online column analyzing a potential showdown between Republican presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney.
It’s quite a matchup. Romney has been brutalized for having too little personality, Gingrich for having way, way too much. Romney looks like the picture that comes with the frame. Gingrich looks like he should be ensconced in royal velvet as he gestures at you with a half-eaten turkey leg in one hand and a sloshing goblet of wine in the other. Romney seems terrified of fully committing to any idea. Gingrich speaks as if he just text-messaged with God.
Gingrich would have everyone believe he is the winner of the anti-Romney mantle not merely by default but by hard-won effort and a well-deserved reputation for conservative steadfastness. Many in the media, meanwhile, think that since Gingrich is taking the slot once held by Palin, Bachmann, Cain, and Perry, he is a conservative of similar stripe. And many liberals think that since they hate him so much, he must be really right-wing. (They made the same mistake with Richard Nixon and George W. Bush, both of whom were far less ideologically conservative than their press clippings indicated.)
The reality is more complicated. For starters, it’s not altogether clear that Gingrich is that far to the right of Romney.
Gingrich’s record — political and rhetorical — is so vast and diverse, there’s plenty of evidence to build almost any narrative you want. He’s said some of the most bombastic right-wing things of any mainstream Republican in our lifetimes, but he’s also reached across the aisle more frequently than far-more-liberal Republicans would ever dare.
