Paul Begala: 'Newt Gingrich Would Be a Godsend to the Democrats'

Because you probably don't pay much attention to Newsweek or the Daily Beast, you likely didn't know former Clinton adviser Paul Begala is now a columnist for the combination of these failing so-called news organizations.

Demonstrating exactly why the merger of these two perilously liberal outlets appears to be a financial bust, and why he fits in so perfectly, Begala on Monday published a piece entitled, "Newt Gingrich Would Be a Godsend to the Democrats":

Perhaps the day has finally, belatedly, blessedly arrived when the Republican Party has found the transformational, revolutionary figure it’s been pining for. Perhaps the GOP has awoken to the charm that was always there: the constant use of “frankly,” the know-it-all historical references, the grandiosity, the bombast. Perhaps Republicans have found the fresh face they feel they need—in a 68-year-old man who first ran for Congress in the Nixon administration.

Or perhaps not.

More likely the Gingrich surge is just the latest Republican tulip craze (count the pedantic historical references I use in Newt’s honor!)—with Newt simply serving as the latest vessel for the ABR movement: Anybody But Romney.

With writing like this, it's hard to imagine Daily Beast/Newsweek is having a hard time finding readers. But I digress:

Newt could go down in history as having contributed crucially to reelecting two Democratic presidents. During Bill Clinton’s 1996 campaign, Gingrich perfectly served in the role of villain. Facing a moderate Republican war hero, the moderate Democratic non-war hero was in a bind. Demonizing Bob Dole was going to be somewhere between difficult and impossible, though Lord knows I tried. (I still cringe when I think about the time I said Dole looked like he wanted to club a baby seal.)

But Newt was a godsend: within weeks of the 1994 GOP landslide—before he’d even taken the speaker’s gavel—Newsweek’s cover dubbed him “The Gingrich Who Stole Christmas.” When he whined about his seat on Air Force One coming home from the funeral of the assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the New York Daily News’s cover featured Newt in a diaper with the headline “Cry Baby!”

While Dole was looking for ways to avoid a government shutdown, Newt was looking for ways to cause one. He overplayed his hand so terribly that Clinton was able to draw a line in the sand like Col. William Barret Travis. Newt’s intransigence allowed Clinton to show resolve, and the Comeback Kid was reelected by relentlessly attacking what his ads called “Dole-Gingrich.”

Not really, for what leftwing shills like Begala intentionally disregard is that blaming Gingrich for Dole's failure in '96 is like blaming Abbott for Costello's weight problem.

The reality is that Gingrich's battles with Clinton his first two years as Speaker ushered in ten more years of Republican control of the House, an immutable fact the Left all seem to conveniently ignore.

But this is the typical Gingrich-bashing by folks like Begala who feel the need to find a silver lining - no matter how dishonest - in the dark cloud of Democrat Congressional failures following the '94 Republican takeover.

Most importantly, what lies beneath the surface of all these Gingrich attacks is the fear liberal media members have of President Obama having to debate the former House Speaker.

No matter how they bluster and puff up their chest, each and every one of these so-called journalists knows full well the former history professor would carve up the current White House resident like a perfectly cooked Thanksgiving turkey.

This would be their worst nightmare, which is why they all feel the need to attack the intellectual capacity of a man with a Ph.D. and 25 books to his credit.

As for Begala, readers are advised that the only office he ever held was Students' Association president at the University of Texas. According to Alcalde, the alumni magazine, Begala actually lost to Hank the Hallucination, a comic strip character in the school paper. The arrogant CNN contributor eventually won in a run-off.

Nevertheless, isn't it delicious that initially more of his fellow students supported a comic strip character over him?