Newt Gingrich at his former home.
Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign may not literally be over, but it might as well be. He's already laid off much of his staff and cleared his schedule, and this week's bounced check in Utah only added insult to injury.
With this in mind, the former Speaker is taking stock of his failed effort, and has identified a culprit: Fox News.
"I think Fox has been for Romney all the way through," Gingrich said Wednesday during a meeting with Delaware tea party leaders, according to RealClearPolitics, which was given access to the private meeting. "In our experience, Callista and I both believe CNN is less biased than Fox this year. We are more likely to get neutral coverage out of CNN than we are of Fox, and we're more likely to get distortion out of Fox. That's just a fact." [...]
During Wednesday's meeting, Gingrich had also accused News Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch of perpetuating the network's slanted coverage of the 2012 race.
"I assume it's because Murdoch at some point said, 'I want Romney,' and so 'fair and balanced' became 'Romney,'" Gingrich said, according to RealClearPolitics. "And there's no question that Fox had a lot to do with stopping my campaign because such a high percentage of our base watches Fox."
Gingrich, it's worth noting, was a paid political analyst for Fox News before launching his national campaign.
Indeed, let's also keep in mind that Rick Santorum, who was also a paid political analyst for Fox News, also complained bitterly about the network's support for Romney, noting he had to go up against "Fox News shilling for him every day."
Eric Boehlert had a good take on this: "Like a classroom filled with favorites used to being the center of the teacher's interest, the GOP candidates this season, flattered nonstop for years on Fox, suddenly found themselves competing for the channel's attention and fighting for kingmaker Roger Ailes' affection. Was it inevitable that the incestuous primary process played out on Fox would produce hurt feelings and bruised ego? Yes. Was the spectacle yet another reminder that Fox News has transformed itself into a purely political entity? It was."
The irony of the larger story is rather rich. Guys like Gingrich and Santorum are generally delighted to see Fox News play the role of a political actor, influencing election outcomes and directing Republican viewers through predetermined narratives, but apparently like it far less when they're the candidates and they're not benefiting.
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Hoist on his own far right petard. Tough luck, Trailer Park Trash Boy. Go take your t.s. card to the chaplain and I am sure he will punch you for it.
Newtie is just demonstrating yet again the value of that age old cliche - The is no honor among thieves! -Kevo
Honor, like oil, is fungible for Republicans.
Do I hear an opening bid? World Net Daily? Free Beacon? Regnery Publishing? Hello. . .
There is substantial reason for the rebels inside the GOP to revolt against the thumb of Murdoch and big money Pacs. But Santorum did not complain about the influence of money against him. There is rich fuel here for a firestorm.
Journalists need to ask GOP figures amongst the disaffected if they would support reforms (of citizen's united controls, or of a counterweight to Fox).
Don't forget that CNN is now owned lock, stock and barrel by ALEC member Time Warner as is TMZ.
You play with fire, and you get burned. Seems appropriate to me.
Real, God-fearing, American Patriots don't watch FOX anyway.
No... wait. That's not right.
in an added irony, media matters studied all the gop candidates fauxnews appearances between june 1 and january 22 and newt was on the most....
from their report
Newt Gingrich (12 hours and 14 minutes over 85 appearances), Rick Santorum (nine hours and 23 minutes over 85 appearances), Herman Cain (11 hours and six minutes over 73 appearances), Michele Bachmann (nine hours and three minutes over 73 appearances), Ron Paul (about eight hours and 40 minutes over 81 appearances).
Romney made 40 appearances that added up to 7 hours and 40 minutes.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201202270003
This truly is rich, a classic case of "Hello, pot? It's kettle!"
What is puzzling is exactly why Roger Ailes decided to pick a favorite among the four semi-finalists, and why Romney. They all kow-towed to Fox - as you noted, two of them were on Ailes' payroll before becoming candidates - and each of the four was equally adept at hewing to the Gospel According To Fox News. Rick Santorum came closest to being the social conservative that Fox has always loved (never forget Bill O'Reilly's "Tiller the Baby Killer" meme that played at least an indirect role in the doctor's assassination). Newt Gingrich has the gravitas that Fox pretends conservatives repsect. Yet Mitt Romney, the chosen one, was frequently criticized for being too liberal by Fox when he was governor.
Noot! Noot! and Santorum have only themselves to blame here. Roger sent all his wanna-be Presidents very clear signals regarding his intent last year. Huckabuck and (gasp) Palin listened. What shoul;d bother Noot! Noot! is that Sister Sarah was smarter than he was
Ailes is a master of the art of the possible. A pragmatist. There is no way he'd ever throw his network behind a candidate that has NO CHANCE of ever getting more than 20% of the popular vote.
It's just math. The dude makes long term plans for world domination, and tends to avoid exercises in futility.
Sure, Newt, it's Fox News that sank your battleship. Whatever gets you through the night. Couldn't have been your bat@!$%# crazy ideas or complete incompetence could it? Naaa, It musta been those libtards at Fox.
Noot - if the best you can get from anyone is "neutral coverage," it's a bit of a clue that you're not going be the next POTUS, isn't it?
WATB Newt
Newt took a dump where he eats. He's going to have to do a lot more seminars to pay his campaign debt, now. I'll bet he'll be popular at the convention.
"...Fox News has transformed itself into a purely political entity..."
Transformed? When was it ever not a purely political entity?!
Really newt? You never guessed that during ALL that time , just because they could, all those really, really rich guys just threw away or lit fire to all that money just simply BECAUSE they could. You never suspected everyone BUT Romney was just a role player? If your ever in this position again maybe you should listen to Nancy.
I ca'nt believe Gingrich dropped a Newt-tron bomb on Foxsnooze.It could'nt happen to a nicer network. How dare Fox choose a guy like multi-millionaire Romney over a check bouncer like him?
Ok, Newt has officially "jumped the shark"...
Too funny!
Poor Newt! I wonder who he's madder at - Fox News or himself - for not figuring out that rich guys ALWAYS stick with rich guys!!!
When is Newt's hard cheese television special? I guess it will have to be on public access when he gives up the campaign. Wow, burning the bridge to nowhere isn't doing him any good now!
It was the same with Megyn Kelly (I don't care enough to google the proper spelling but I'm sure there's a misplaced Y in it somewhere) and the maternity leave argument.
Also Juan Williams being the only guy with any sane opinions about Obama and becoming the defacto defender of Obama as a capitalist or the sole person talking about the racism...
They all love Fox's politics, they find them VERY fair and balanced, until the network displays an unfair imbalanced opinion against their opinion... idiots, all of them.
And to be fair, Gingrich gets the same balanced coverage on MSNBC as the other candidates-- they're ALL identified as stupid, awful human beings who aren't fit to run a White Castle much less the country.
You know, irony would be a lot more fun if the blowhards had any sense of it themselves.
It's like, you havea big rich wonderful buffet with all these many types and flavors of irony (I am a creature of postmodernism, after all), and those who created and placed the items on the table for your feast are so consumed with blindered earnestness at the inevitable contradictions within their own authoritarian relativism that they are apparently blithely unaware of what a delicious feast they have provided.
Apparently. It is hard to believe.
But this is what was birthed with the Newt-class of scorched earth Republicans. There is no bridge they will leave unburned in their single-minded pursuit of a warlike goal of a permanent GOP majority, to the point that they regularly get hoisted on the horns of dilemmas they created, by making so many laws and rules with special cases and provisos that favor them when they are in power, but also favor their enemies with the same cronyist bias, when they are not in power.
They have no concept of not being in power, of losing. Did they really fail to see this circular firing squad coming?
Or is the whine and victimized outrage just a standard rhetorical trope, to be used against any opponent who isn't with "us" so he must be against "us."
And the rhetorical whine of outrage is not a "thing" in and of itself. It isn't paired with action, or policy, or even a real position. It is just posturing in the closed cable news world that elevates a relatively toothless rhetorical act to the level of "thingness," even if the rhetorical action could not even remotely create any real consequences or perform any real act of persuasion of anyone who didn't already agree with it.
It just goes a little something like this, "Wah wah wah." Let's give Newt some sad trombones on the way to utter irrelevancy, eh? Play him out, stage right.
Newt and his scorched earth colleagues stacked the deck in our Public Commons and small-d democracy to favor his positions, and when he's on the outs in the Commons, he whines because the deck is stacked against him?!
Dude, you BUILT that stacked deck.
Such a rich feast. But must we dine alone? Can't we open Newt's eyes to his own apparent ignorance of irony?
We are talking about the guy who NEEDED to impeach Bill Clinton for having an affair with an intern WHILE he was having affairs himself. Those eyes will never be opened.