A Note To Newt...

Just saw Newt Gingrich on Hannity, and I have a bone to pick with him.

First, I'd like to say that I have been beating the drum for a Gingrich Presidential run since at least 2006, and to date, the man has disappointed. At some point, I don't know exactly when, I came to the conclusion that Speaker Gingrich must have been biding his time, perhaps playing rope-a-dope until the time was just right for him to throw his hat in the ring, all the while creating that 'Ground Game' thingy and going through the process of setting up the rationale (I believe they call it 'Creating a Message') for eventually running that all successful candidates must complete before the first vote is even taken.

Yesterday, I picked Gingrich as perhaps the best hope of unseating the Obamatard for the GOP in 2012. Although I have already admitted a favorable bias towards Gingrich, I'm pretty certain that I did my best to not let that cloud my opinion. I'm still convinced that Gingrich would stand as a stark contrast in terms of policy against Obama, and I'm bet-a-lung-on-it sure that Gingrich is the more intellectually deft, the more experienced and temperamentally-prepared of the two.

Then Newt showed up on Hannity tonight -- and pissed me right the fuck off.

If Newt Gingrich were my girlfriend, I'd dump him in the same way that I would dump a chick who let me pick up every check, demanded at least five dates before I got a peck on the cheek, expected gifts and doors held open for her, and then wouldn't put out.

If Newt Gingrich were my gardener, I'd have the most beautifully-tended flower beds in the neighborhood, but my front lawn would be choked by 5' tall grass, and probably have leopards hunting from within it's cover.

If Newt Gingrich were God, the first Chapter of Genesis would have taken seven months -- not days -- and he would probably have rested every weekend.

Watching Newt Gingrich's decision-making process is like watching old people fuck; there's a lot of very slow and deliberate movement, not much action, and it's questionable as to which comes first -- the broken hip or cardiac-arrest-upon-orgasm.

Glaciers move faster than Newt Gingrich. So to the Post Office, Union Workers, Galapagos Tortoises, Three-toed Sloths, and Sheila Jackson-Lee's thought process. My bowels move faster than Newt Gingrich.

You know, one of the very real criticisms of Barack Obama is his seeming inability to make a decision about anything. This should come as no surprise; in his abbreviated stay in the Senate, Obama never decided anything, preferring to vote 'Present' on the order of 200 times. On those rare occasions when Obama does make a decision, the process is almost guaranteed to be protracted and that stalling process is pretty much the result of Obama getting too much input, hearing too many opinions, weighing too many options, considering far too many variables.

For democrats, delay, procrastination, indecision, clutter, obfuscation, is all part of the illusion of The Great Man of History tragically 'wrestling' with the 'problems of the day', and the 'Burdens of the Oval Office', which when juxtaposed against black-and-white photos and tinny music is supposed to represent the idealized vision and drama of 'Leadership', but it's really a mental handicap.

People who behave this way usually have a serious problem with confidence. Not making decisions is the first indication. Going through a laborious and overwrought process in which all of your attention is focused the on details -- no matter how small -- is the second indication. People who can never have enough input, can never stop considering putting more and more variables into the decision-making process are not being decisive; they're simply collecting or creating more excuses to not make any decision whatsoever.

While we certainly do not want a Chief Executive who makes hasty, and poorly thought through decisions, neither do want one who dithers over the process, or who burdens himself with too many options. We want, we need, someone to lead. The process of leading requires that the Leader make decisions, surely with the best available information and facts at his command, but not burdened by the fear that the pettiest detail and remotest possibility will always be that one thing you forgot that finally bites you on the ass.

I can understand why President Obama is burdened with this particular handicap; he came into office, I think, never having expected to have won in the first place. His experiences in life never prepared him for the reality of having to make the sort of decisions a President in his predicament has to make (to be fair, I don't what sort of experience, short of the battlefield, can prepare you for that sort of thing). I don't think he ever put his name on a piece of legislation while in the Senate, never voiced an opinion until he was certain he knew how it would be received, and he never held a private-sector job in his life. I'd even go as far as to say that Barack Obama is probably the poster child for the mollycoddled-advanced-beyond-his-abilities-all-shortcomings-get-papered-over-socially-promoted-Affirmative-Action-Achiever.

The First Lady probably lays out his clothes for him in the morning.

Newt shouldn't have these problems. He's been in the political brawls, he knows how the system works, he's won elections before; he should know what he has to do.

Why he doesn't just get off his ass and do it is the question I would like to see answered. This hemming and hawing is beginning to make Obama (and even some of Gingrich's potential GOP competition) look like Pericles or Augustus, by comparison.

Leaders lead. They display, and then instill in their followers, a feeling of Confidence. They don't tinker with 'exploratory websites', they don't dance around questions that require direct answers. They certainly don't dither until the very last second, and then not pull the trigger...without at least being obligated to explain why they didn't act. They lead. They do.

Shit or get off the pot, Newt. You've got a deer-in-the-headlights opponent who's so far in over his head that he probably cries himself to sleep. He's a man who doesn't have the moral courage to call anyone a terrorist, or the balls to step up and support the enemies of totalitarianism around the world. His second-in-command would lose a game of 'Jeopardy' to most inanimate objects, let alone Watson. Someone has to take the bull by the horns here, and if we have to depend on a candidate selected (by mere process of elimination) by the retards over at FreeRepublic -- because the alternative is seen as indecisive and slow to act when it's called for (you can never be 'conservative' enough for that lot unless you frog-march the gays to the ovens, and kill the abortionists with a gilded Bible) -- we're going to get another 4 years of the Postracial Hammer-and-Sickle Treatment.

Don't make me look like a douchebag, Newt. That's a reason for a fistfight in these parts.