The Jig is Up

For years on Xmastime I've written that the GOP has demanded its base be willing to be treated as if they're not only children, but stupid, ignorant children, and at every turn I've been met with howls of indignant "you're not giving the Regular American enough credit, you're some sort of liberal elitist who thinks anyone not living in NYC is a Neanderthal dum-dum!" derision.  REPEATEDLY, I've tried to point out how insulting GOP politicians have been, only to be met with scorn about my "condescension."

And now today we hear from an exhausted Conor Friedersdorf, not exactly a liberal commie pinko like myself, who finally has to pull the curtain up on the act and reveal that yes, Newt Gingrich counts on his supporters to be as bafflingly stupid as possible in order to further his own agenda:

Yes, I know, you remember Gingrich as the man who conceived of the Contract With America. But there's a lot more to him than that. This is a D.C. insider who thinks you're dumb enough to believe that he got paid $1.6 million from Freddie Mac for his services as "a historian"; a man who ridiculed Freddie publicly after privately working to advance its favored policies; Gingrich still expects you to believe his disingenuous claim that he never engaged in lobbying for special interests; he is a man who tried in a televised debate to pretend that he hadn't supported an individual mandate in health care, only to be successfully called out by an opponent; he is even someone who tried to tell you, with a straight face, that the breakup of one of his marriages could be blamed partly on how passionately he felt about America (he had an extramarital affair).  

The very Americans who are so noble in their "American-ness" are the ones who are being exploited, and it's people like Newt Gingrich who are laughing at them, not me.