Character Dheela Hai

I have sympathy as well as admiration for Newt Gingrich. Let me start with the admiration bit first. If you have read enough Agatha Christie, her famous Hercule Poirot, uses a French expression sometimes, called ‘mot juste’. It means the ‘perfect word’; the word that describes a situation perfectly is called ‘mot juste’. For example, if you are describing the quality of having an amazing gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, incredible guts and 'presumption plus arrogance’, then the ‘mot juste’ to describe it would be the Yiddish word ‘chutzpah’. Now I hereby bestow a new phrase to the French language. It is ‘personne juste’, or the ‘perfect person’. If you want to point out a person that exemplifies a particular quality or who embodies a particular word then it is ‘personne juste’. And Newt Gingrich would the ‘personne juste’ to describe the word ‘chutzpah’. This guy is on his third wife, second religion and first presidential campaign. I don’t know if I have mentioned this before (:)) but Newt was boinking his second wife-to-be while his first wife was battling cancer, all the while pompously and sanctimoniously trying to Impeach Bill Clinton for being unfaithful (at least ‘orally’, as the story goes) to his wife. This guy practically invented the Republican attack machine with blessings from the likes of Lee Atwater. While he was the speaker of the House in the 90’s, he made negative campaigns the staple of his diet. For this guy to pompously pledge a ‘positive campaign’ and expect the others to follow his dictum is chutzpah of high caliber. And such chutzpah is to be admired, even if grudgingly.

Now let’s come to the sympathy bit. Gingrich started his Iowa campaign in a spirit of brotherly love for his fellow Republican contenders. Newt didn’t attack Romney at first even though Romney was the anointed torch-bearer of the GOP establishment. (This was inexplicable to the presumptuous ex-speaker. How could a Massachusetts Mormon moderate be the choice of the Grand Old Party? This was like Pandavas making ‘Shikhandi’ the commander of their forces in the Mahabharata war. Shikhandi was considered half a man because he used to be a woman in the past life. Romney is considered not-even-half conservative because he used to be almost a liberal in his past life. When maharathis (great warriors) like Newt were available for this American Kurukshetra, why would the GOP settle on a mere conservative-by-convenience instead of the original conservative like Newt?). The mischief was first started by the Romney camp when his super PAC, sensing a potent danger from Newt in Iowa, saturated the airwaves with vicious negative ads against Newt, attacking his ideological and other minor (!) indiscretions. And now when Newt’s campaign returned the favor with interest in South Carolina by attacking Romney’s vulture capitalism, the GOP stalwarts were throwing hissy fits and lecturing Newt on being an irresponsible Republican? This is like the Hindi song ‘main karun to sala, character dheela hai’. Loosely translated, the song complains that ‘everybody does hanky-panky but if I do it, people question my moral fiber’. Newt gets my sympathy for being tarred and feathered by the so-called right wing establishment for the same sins that they conveniently overlooked when committed by the Romney campaign.

While the establishment Republicans were busy accusing Newt of having a ‘dheela character’ (dheela = loose or questionable), the real conservative Christian evangelical voters (CCEV’s ) of the Bible belt have always been questioning Romney’s ‘dheela’ conservatism. They understand, innately, that Romney is just another Obama with a different skin color (and a different religion, to boot). And these CCEV’s would be going against their grain and everything that the Bible stands for (or so they think) if they let the political expediency of winnability against Obama dominate over the real conservative roots of a candidate. And they are sick and tired of the corporate Republicans taking them for a ride for all these years. They prayed for Mike Huckabee in 2008 but the corporate Republicans favored John McCain. They favored Pat Buchanan in 1996 but the corporate Republicans foisted Bob Dole on them. And what was the result? A Democrat won in both instances. CCEV’s have realized that it is futile to try to win an election by anointing a RINO (Republican in name only). If the internecine warfare between Santorum, Perry and Gingrich could be avoided, they would find the real NotMitt to defeat the Mitt who is trying to impersonate as a NotMitt.

Disclaimer 1: I am NOT equating the Republicans with Pandavas in the analogy of Shikhandi, lest anybody gets ideas that Obama is Duryodhana, or worse, that the 5 remaining jokers in the pack (Romney, Santorum, Paul, Newt and Perry (oops, he dropped out as I am typing this)) are Pandavas or worse still, they are all secretly married to Michelle Bachmann. 

Disclaimer 2: I am NOT equating Newt with Salman Khan in the ‘character dheela’ analogy. Salman has much better tastes in women.