The Republican Presidential Race: National Review Mauls Gingrich

The Republican Presidential Race: National Review Mauls Gingrich

National Review, the county’s premier conservative magazine, wacked Newt Gingrich with a big stick in its December 31 pre-Iowa vote issue.

The magazine featured on its cover a zany cartoon of Mr. Gingrich on the moon with a lead line above its masthead – “The Editors: Against Gingrich.”

There are four feature articles on Mr. Gingrich, all cripplingly critical:

“’How Speaker Newt Balanced The Budget’ (and why president Newt would not)” by Kevin Williamson; “‘Amnesty Again’ (Gingrich’s plan would reward criminals and make the law arbitrary)” by Kris Kobach; “‘Some Shade Of Green’ (The former Speaker has a longstanding love-hate relationship with environmental reform)” by Jonathan Adler; and perhaps most devastating, “‘The Gingrich Gestalt’ (You take a dubious record. You take some wacky ideas, you take a narcissistic personality…)” by Mark Steyn, more politically astute than the late Christopher Hitchens and just as dangerous.

Together the articles do not represent, shall we say, a vote of confidence by the editors of National Review.

Here is Mr. Steyn belaboring Mr. Gingrich:

“Unlike the niche candidates, he offers all the faults of his predecessors rolled into one: Like Michele Bachman, his staffers quit; like Herman Cain, he spent the latter decades of the last century making anonymous women uncomfortable, mainly through being married to them; like Mitt Romney, he was a flip flopper, being in favor of government mandates on health care before he was against them, and in favor of big-government climate-change “solutions” before he was against them, and in favor of putting giant mirrors in space to light American highways by night before he was agai… oh, wait. That one he may still be in favor of. So, if you live in the I-95 corridor, you might want to buy black-out curtains.”

Most of Mr. Gingrich’s moles are prominently displayed in the issue, days after Mr. Gingrich, pummeled by negative ads, plummeted in the polls.