Gingrich Beats his Chief Rival … Oh, and Romney

By Mr. Curmudgeon

Well, well. It looks like the Republican nomination for president isn’t quite in the bag for Mitt Romney. Newt Gingrich won 40.3% to Gov. Romney’s 27.9% in South Carolina’s Republican primary. Whom does Gingrich have to thank for this dramatic turnaround? The media, that’s who – ABC and CNN to be specific.

In an interview with ABC News, Marianne Gingrich, Speaker Gingrich’s ex-wife, alleged that her ex-husband asked for an open marriage. During the GOP presidential debate hosted by CNN last Friday, moderator John King asked Gingrich, “Would you like to take some time to respond to that?”

“Every person in here knows personal pain,” responded Gingrich. “Every person in here has had someone close to them go through painful things. To take an ex-wife and make it – two days before the primary – a significant question in a presidential campaign is as close to despicable as anything I can imagine.”

“As you noted, Mr. Speaker, this story did not come from our network,” said King defensively. “As you also know, it is a subject of conversation on the campaign. I'm not – I get your point …”

“John,” said Gingrich zeroing in on the media’s spokesman for that evening, “it was repeated by your network. You chose to start the debate with it. Don't try to blame somebody else. You and your staff chose to start this debate with that.”

Then Gingrich delivered the coup de grace. “I’m sure they’ll [the media] probably get around to Senator Santorum and Congressman Paul. I am tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans.” The South Carolina audience responded to Gingrich with thunderous cheers and applause.

When President Obama chose Van Jones as his “green jobs” Czar, not much was made of his background by the mainstream media. Then Fox News host Glenn Beck did a series of broadcasts that documented Jones’ co-founding of a Marxist organization in San Francisco. In short order, the embarrassed Obama was forced to ask Jones to vacate his administration post.

In a New York Times Op-Ed, Jones lamented the loss of power by network newsreaders like Walter Cronkite, describing them as the “old gatekeepers” of the American conversation. According to Jones, this loss weakens “democracy’s defenses.” In other words, the old Marxist likes the way information is disseminated in places like Kim’s North Korea, Castro’s Cuba and Chávez’s Venezuela. Alternative media makes it difficult to control public opinion and, more importantly, provides alternative views for alternative opinions.

The last gasp of the “old gatekeepers” was the presidential election of 2008. The media didn’t make much of candidate Barack Obama’s association with the radical Reverend Jeremiah Wright. In fact, the folks at the conservative website The Daily Caller uncovered e-mail exchanges between leading members of the mainstream media proving an active conspiracy to limit the damage done to Obama and to coordinate attacks on Republicans to distract easily distracted Americans; this group, known as JournoList, was founded by the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein.

In an e-mail to his JournoList pals, David Ackerman, national security correspondent for the Washington Independent and frequent guest on CNN and MSNBC, wrote:

“If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes them sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.”

The ABC interview with the former Misses Gingrich, and its use as the first topic for discussion in Friday’s GOP debate by CNN’s John King, was designed to make Speaker Gingrich “sputter with rage,” overreact and self-destruct. Gingrich certainly provided the rage but used it as an articulate indictment of the “elite media” for “protecting Barack Obama.”

That means Republicans, at least the party’s conservative base, is seeking an articulate, passionate leader who can take on what talk-radio host Michael Savage calls the “government-media complex.”
The media generated controversies over sexual harassment charges leveled at Herman Cain, Mitt Romney’s taxes, the Santorum’s expression of grief after losing their newborn son, and Gingrich’s divorces and affairs, are an early indicator that the government-media complex is, and remains, the primary disseminator of Obama campaign opposition research.

Cain sputtered and dropped out of the race. Romney is in the grips of a sputtering jag. Gingrich, on the other hand, is on the attack. And the elite media and their protected Barack Obama are understandably worried.