To the editor:
George Bush II made a big deal out of being a war-time president, but Newt Gingrich has gone him one better: Newt's a war-time candidate! In numerous speeches, Gingrich claims that war has been declared against Christianity. Who started the war? The Secularists, a melange of "Them," mostly big-city intellectuals who, according to Gingrich, hate religion and oppose the sanctity of marriage, which is now — at last! — one of Newt's big passions. "They" are led by the pseudo-American-in-chief, Barack (psst: Hussein) Obama, who, according to Dinesh D'Souza (of one of Newt's intellectual heroes), is channeling his "philandering, inebriated African socialist (father), who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anti-colonial ambitions, (and who) is now setting the American agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son." (By the way, I'm not kidding, Newt has actually said repeatedly that he believes this "analysis.")
The core of Gingrich's campaign strategy seems to be to sound continuously a tribal dog whistle that only "Real Americans" can hear, one that convenes the faithful to take back the Judeo-Christian nation from the dependent, profligate and libertine secularists who are demonically undermining it. (Let's not discuss Founding Fathers like Thomas Paine, who absolutely hated organized religion, or Ben Franklin, who doubted that there was a historical Jesus, or Thomas Jefferson, who so questioned the accuracy of the Gospels, he wrote his own version of the Bible.)
While his reversals in Florida and elsewhere have slowed Gingrich's momentum coming out of South Carolina, he can still win the nomination. If he does, my prediction is that Gingrich will raise the threat level posed by Islamic extremism — admittedly a really scary and dangerous bunch — to a fever pitch. His eloquence about the Islamists will translate into a very potent call to arms both domestically and internationally. The argument will be that only a "real American" like Newt can confront these "foreigners" amongst us and abroad.
A few weeks ago, Mitt Romney's love of "America the Beautiful" made some headlines. He finds it stirring, and it is a beautiful song. If Gingrich gains more traction, I believe we'll discover that he has a favorite song too ... "Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war/With the cross of Jesus, going on before." He's already signaling that a Newt presidency will be full of religiously inspired military crusades.
Gingrich is better educated and more articulate than most of his fellow travelers on the hard Right. He is Sarah Palin with a Ph.D. As Sinclair Lewis' book about populist demagoguery, "It Can't Happen Here," warned in 1935: It is only our eternal vigilance and our willingness to fight the politics of exclusion, fear and division that keeps America free and democratic.
Michael Sales
Newburyport
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