The Economist
Newt Gingrich and foreign policy
Brilliant nonsense
Dec 8th 2011, 17:03 by Lexington
YOU have to hand it to Newt Gingrich: he's a great performer. Yesterday he wowed an audience at the Republican Jewish Coalition in Washington, DC. It was all there: a cascade of historical allusions, lots of dates and references, citations of Camus and Orwell, and political gimmicks galore. He now promises that if Barack Obama does not accept his challenge to seven three-hour presidential debates in the Lincoln-Douglas tradition, he will follow the president's every speaking engagement next year, four hours later, to put his own view. There was the usual grandiosity: Judeo-Christian civilisation, it seems, has morally disarmed itself in the face of the coming decades of "long war" with radical Islam. He promised to appoint the pugnacious John Bolton as secretary of state. No more Mr Nice Guy, appears to be the message Mr Gingrich intends to send the world. In short, he was in fine, confident, demagogic form. Like others, I've been guilty of underestimating him.
As for the substance, that's a separate question. It was depressing for this long-time watcher of the Middle East to watch one Republican candidate after another heap completely uncritical praise on Israel and set the Palestinians' grievances and aspirations entirely at naught. I am an ardent supporter of Israel's right to exist, but the Palestinians need a state too, and helping them to statehood is the only way for Israel to earn acceptance in the region. Meanwhile, as I argue in my print column this week, the actual situation in the wider region is highly precarious.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/lexington/2011/12/newt-gingrich-and-foreign-policy
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