Newt and the politics of resentment

Howard Schweber, professor of American Studies, writes that  
the embrace of Newt by the evangelicals and the Tea Party seems improbable only because conventional wisdom has been looking at the wrong factors.

Newt would seem a colossal misfit for evangelicals and their moral values because his life has violated so many of those values.   We tend to forget how much they love a Bad Boy who repents and comes into the fold.  And Newt has played that card beautifully -- simply stating it, not overdoing it.

[Of course, those of us who remember a couple of years ago when he went on TV with one of the evangelical gurus and confessed and got his blessing.  It seemed cheap and tawdry, even while sounding pious.  But in recent memory, Newt feigns humility -- a great act.]

He would also seem not to be a good fit for the Tea Party and their anti-Washington sentiment, given that Mitt has been the quintessential player, often crossing into territory that is anathema to the Tea Party crowd (health care, environment, lobbying, Freddie Mac, plus his wealth gained by capitalizing on his former governmental positions).

What is being overlooked, however, according to Schweber, is that Newt is putting forth a politics of resentment.   Here in his words:

"So what is going on? Simple. Gingrich does not share the evangelical or the Tea Party voters' values -- he shares their resentments. He resents the media ("elites"), the rich (the leadership of his own party), the Democrats (educated people), people who live in big cities (liberals), and of course, Obama, just as they do.

"Gingrich and his supporters do not oppose Obama, they resent the fact of his existence. He will speak for his constituents by articulating their resentments in more strident, more combative, more articulate terms than they can themselves, which is why they find him brilliant. . . . but he does much more -- he tells them that their nastiest, darkest, angriest, most irrational self-indulgent justifications are 100%, absolutely right."

Beyond the resentment, there is a sense of paranoia that Gingrich captures:

"The worldview is Manichean: Obama's economic policies are not mistaken, he is deliberately trying to make Americans poorer. Obama's foreign policy is not misguided, he is deliberately trying to surrender America to foreign powers. And Obama is not merely not one of the people, he wants to destroy American culture. It is a perfect expression of what Richard Hofstadter called "the paranoid style" in American politics. . . .

"And that's why these voters don't care that Gingrich was a Washington insider, or has a record on family values that would give pause to one of the Borgia popes. It's why they don't really care that he contradicts himself, or says crazy things. They want crazy. They want to hear their anger and resentment made into a national platform. They are the victims of an evil conspiracy -- no one plays the victim better than Gingrich when cornered . . .

"They don't really care what Gingrich says he will do, or whether it makes sense, or even whether they would approve of his policies or benefit from them. They are filled with resentment  . . . .  [and] only Newt has captured the key emotive element that drives the Republican core this year: resentment. The hard right core of the Republican Party is filled with resentment, and they have found just the man to let us all know about it."

 I'm afraid that I have been wrong on several counts about Newt and the possibility of his winning this thing.   First, I under-estimated his new-found capacity to contain his more outrageous impulsiveness and his ability to sustain control of himself.  Second, I missed this point that Schweber is making -- that the conservative base will overlook all of Newt's baggage in favor of the strong, demagogic leadership he is offering for their deep resentments.

Assuming that the drawn-out primaries will so damage both Romney and Gingrich that neither seems a viable candidate against Obama, then the question is this:   Will the Republican establishment push for a brokered convention and try to bring in someone fresh, like Jeb Bush or Mitch Daniels or Chris Christie -- all of whom have been declining to run but might be drafted.   (Please don't let it be Guiliani, though.   I can't stand months of that grin.)

Ralph