c*****r
发帖数: 8227 | 1 南卡初选之后两天，各路媒体评论家终于回过神来，意识到Newt的胜利的历史性意义。
时势造英雄！特摘录一篇，希望对大家从新认识这位前议长有所助益。
这篇文章中，作者把Newt称作右翼的“切·格瓦拉”（Che Guevara),我觉得非常贴切！
It's the Insurgents vs. Establishment in the GOP
Mitt Romney, welcome to John Boehner's world.
Both men—one the presidential candidate just stung in South Carolina, the
other the speaker of the House—are fairly conventional leaders attempting
to ride herd on a restless Republican Party that seems more interested in
insurgent leaders. Let's just say they are having limited success.
That's the real lesson of South Carolina's Saturday primary, where Newt
Gingrich, the Che Guevara of the right, always interested in leading a
rebellion, smashed Mr. Romney, the Harvard M.B.A. interested in carefully
calibrated, data-driven change. The South Carolina story—and the story
going forward from here—isn't so much Newt vs. Mitt as it is the insurgents
vs. the establishment.
In fact, that has been the story of the Republican Party since the tea-party
uprising began in 2009. The drama now will play out anew in the remaining
Republican primary calendar.
The tea-party movement sprang up spontaneously among Americans angry at
deficits, debts and joblessness, but it took root within a Republican Party
whose members were angry at the party's failures in the latest presidential
election year and skeptical of those in the lead. Whether the Republican
Party co-opted the tea-party movement or the movement co-opted the
Republican Party is a question that can be debated endlessly, but the fact
is that Republicans and tea partiers hitched up for the 2010 elections.
This occasionally proved frustrating to a party establishment that
discovered it couldn't control the uprising. Party leaders, for example,
didn't want tea-party favorites Christine O'Donnell in Delaware and Sharron
Angle in Nevada to be the GOP nominees for Senate seats, and for good reason
. Both lost very winnable elections and helped cost Republicans control of
the Senate.
But elsewhere the tea-party movement brought a shot of populist anger and
energy to the party and led to a takeover of the House and the ascension of
Mr. Boehner to speaker.
What Mr. Boehner has discovered, however, is that the House Republican
freshmen who rode in on the tea-party wave aren't much interested in taking
orders from party leaders, including him. Particularly on negotiating a
deficit deal with the Obama White House and extending a payroll-tax cut,
they have, in fact, defied the speaker. Many House freshmen believe they
represent a party that is, down among the ranks, angry and uninterested in
what Washington considers reasonable compromise, and they act accordingly.
That is the mood that emerged in South Carolina's primary and the rejection
of Mr. Romney, so clearly the establishment favorite and the kind of
experienced and competent figure who likely would be sliding easily to the
nomination in another year. Even the support of Gov. Nikki Haley, herself a
tea-party favorite in 2010, wasn't enough to change the antiestablishment
flow.
Most likely, the pivot point came in the first South Carolina debate,
sponsored by The Wall Street Journal and Fox News, when Mr. Gingrich angrily
confronted questioner Juan Williams on a question about poverty and race
and declared, "I'm going to continue to find ways to help poor people learn
how to get a job." The audience cheered, and many party regulars seemed to
have found the angry messenger to match their mood.
It isn't just the improbable rebirth of Mr. Gingrich and his victory in
South Carolina that illustrates this mood, however. In some ways, the
remarkable breadth and depth of support for Rep. Ron Paul illustrates the
dynamic just as well.
Mr. Paul is just as much an antiestablishment figure as Mr. Gingrich,
perhaps more so. And he and his libertarian message of slashing the size of
the federal government are finding a much more welcome reception this year
than they did just four years ago.
In the three nominating contests held so far—Iowa's caucuses and the
primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina—Mr. Paul has won well over
three times the number of votes he did in 2008. The one thing you know for
sure about Mr. Paul is that he hasn't changed his message to fit the times,
which tells you the times have changed to meet his message.
So where do things go from here? First, the terrain improves for Mr. Romney
after conservative South Carolina. He'll also surely do more to get in front
of the antiestablishment mood, likely by reminding voters that, for all his
anti-Washington rhetoric, Mr. Gingrich is the one who actually has lived in
Washington for 33 years.
Second, you can be sure that the party establishment will be doing all it
can to portray Mr. Gingrich as a flashy but ultimately flawed messenger, the
kind of candidate who would, like some of those failed 2010 tea-party
candidates, make Republicans feel good all the way to defeat.
You can also be sure that Mr. Gingrich, ever the rebel leader, will relish
the fight. |
|
