Gingrich, plus Santorum, Darth Maul, Gary Johnson, and William Lloyd Garrison

If all goes according to plan, you should be able to hear me talk about political matters on Alan Nathan’s radio show this evening in the 6:35pm segment.  An hour later, you can join me at Shorty’s on Madison and 28th and tell me what a great job I did.

It’s interesting to keep track of politicians who’ve fought enough that it seems unlikely they’ll patch things up and work in the same administration afterwards.

I doubt a President Romney would use Perry for anything (assuming Perry were useful for anything), but it wouldn’t shock me – whereas Gingrich seems to be in gleeful bridges-burning mode.  And most of the other candidates treat Paul as if he’s toxic, but he stuck up for Romney during a wave of anti-Bain comments from other candidates, and Romney might yet throw him a bone at the convention because of it.  I think libertarianish Perry and Bachmann might have been even nicer to Paul if they’d prevailed – and, for what it’s worth, Gary Johnson openly calls his impending Libertarian Party run an effort to have Paul’s message “play in stereo.”

On a similar note, though the smart money’s still on Romney, it’d be fascinating if Gingrich became the nominee and had to proceed without the support of most of the major conservative opinion-givers (but the endorsement of a few former candidates, including Cain recently).  National Review, for instance, is on record saying Gingrich is utterly unfit to be president.  And how could that not get cited by Obama if Gingrich made it to the general election?  “Gingrich’s own philosophical allies, from National Review to Weekly Standard,” etc., etc.

Of course, there’s a part of me that almost starts rooting for him at that point.  And it would be sweet to visit the permanent lunar colony.  It may be unfortunate timing that there’s a movie about Nazis on the moon coming out in two months (and then, unfortunately for Romney, a major summer blockbuster about a millionaire businessman having to fend off an entity called “Bane” out in July, incidentally, by which I mean The Dark Knight Rises).

One thing Gingrich has going for him, I think, is the fact that his (third) wife Callista’s age is so ambiguous.  She’s only forty-five, whereas he’s in his sixties, and I suspect those socially conservative GOP primary voters would be even more inclined to think “home-wrecker” every time they saw her if it were obvious just how much younger she is.  (Republican primary voters are the sort of people who like Rick Santorum, after all – and, by the way, for good or ill, Facebook stats recently revealed that Santorum voters are especially likely to like the right-wing band Madison Rising who I wrote about in New York Post recently.  ) 

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On the downside, poor Gingrich (along with Reagan/Knute Rockne) is mocked in Phantom Menace (in theatres in 3D this week) in the form of the villain “Nute Gunray.”  If you were obsessive enough to want to know how that character fits into every other event in the history of the Star Wars universe, by the way, you could check this alarmingly thorough timeline.

Speaking of Star Wars, I notice that the longtime Hollywood swordfighting trainer Bob Anderson passed away last month, having worked with everyone from the Darth Maul actor to Errol Flynn.  He called Antonio Banderas (as Zorro) the best natural talent he’d ever worked with.

In other movie news, it’s now reported that they’re proceeding with a second Atlas Shrugged movie despite the well-deserved critical and box office

defeat of the first film.  I suppose I’ll see the second out of sick curiosity, but well you might ask: WHO WATCHES JOHN GALT?

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If I were Santorum, especially after his sweep of three states last night, I’d certainly argue I was the only real conservative in the GOP race, vs. liberal Romney, progressive Gingrich, and libertarian Ron Paul (though I’m losing interest in slow, gradual political solutions such as conservatism as rapidly as I lost interest in the plague of recent TV dramas about some slowly unraveling, perplexing mysterious event of great impact that happens in the first episode but takes several seasons to comprehend – as William Lloyd Garrison said, “Gradualism in theory is perpetuity in practice”).

I’ve pretty much resigned myself to Romney being the GOP nominee (and predict he sweeps the three states remaining prior to Super Tuesday), but these results from a PPP poll of 700 voters last month, asked how they’d vote if the election were held then, must hearten libertarians and alarm Republicans.  You do the math, non-libertarian Republicans (and then consider voting for Ron Paul to avoid this problem):

Barack Obama: 47%


Mitt Romney: 40%


Gary Johnson: 7%

I don’t know if it’s time to “immanentize the eschaton” (maybe that should be the job of a Catholic like Santorum or Gingrich), but I’m about ready to immanentize the Singularity, anyway.  (Some sort of anarchist/high tech social revolution would be more truly progressive than forcing the Catholics to distribute birth control, anyway.  Some sort of shakeup seems due to be born.)