Sent by a religious conservative friend:

His confidence in the myth of his own unassailable goodness led him to destroy that myth. What a sad thing. What a human thing. RIP.

A stray thought this Sunday morning: That the conflict among Republican voters between Gingrich and Romney is a conflict between the vitality of faith and the coolness of reason.

Newt is many things,  but the one thing he is, above all, is vital. To say he represents the heart of contemporary conservatism is not to render a positive judgment on his figure, as the term “heart” would normally imply. It is rather to say that he represents much of what is instinctive to conservatives (that is to say, to people who call themselves conservative, because Gingrich’s temperament is about as far from conservative as one can be). Pat Buchanan used to speak of a “conservatism of the heart,” by which he meant a conservatism of instinct, not of the rationalizations of right-wing sophisters. Gingrich represents a crass vulgarization of Buchanan’s view — unlike Buchanan, there is nothing about Gingrich that would challenge Washington’s status quo; his claim to be a rebel and an outsider is, like so much about him, a theatrical pose.

Nevertheless, he really is a politician of intense vitality. Contrast that with Romney, who cannot convince anybody, except maybe his children, that there is a case for him outside of cold rationality. Romney is not a cold fish, certainly, but he cannot convince anyone that the vitality one sees in him is anything but manufactured. His denunciations of Obama, and his nationalistic rhetoric, sounds like so much earwash. Gingrich, by contrast, may be a fraud, but he’s an authentic fraud. The case for Romney is based on two beliefs: 1) that he would be an able manager, and 2) that however tinny his heart, he is the only GOP candidate who has a reasonable chance of beating Barack Obama.

I still think both things are true of him. But who gets out of bed on Sunday morning to go hear a business professor lecture on management technique? I suppose American politics will always going to be about striking a balance between heart and head, between faith and reason. Sometimes these things balance out, sometimes they don’t, but in the age of television and mass democracy, charisma is a necessary element of national leadership. This was candidate Gore’s problem, this was candidate Kerry’s problem, and this is candidate Romney’s problem. This is not candidate Gingrich’s problem, though it’s obvious that the charisma that excites conservative voters repels everyone else equally.

The strength of the man of faith is his conviction that his faith tells him how the world ought to be, and that if he believes strongly enough, and acts on that belief, he can will the world of his dream into reality. His weakness — an inability to perceive the flaws in his worldview — is inseparable from that strength. I can easily imagine how the Republicans who are breaking for Newt love him because he articulates what’s in their hearts — and how the strength of those passions are blinding them to the facts that what they perceive as a rational description of our current political situation is in fact far more informed by the subjectivity of faith than they grasp. Barack Obama is not a popular president, nor a particularly able one, but most Americans don’t think he is a Kenyan Marxist whose re-election will consign America to the ash heap of history. If you believe that Obama is the devil, then you don’t want to send an academic theologian up against him, but rather a fire-and-brimstone prophet — even if, given actual political conditions outside the bubble, it means taking your party off the cliff like a pack of Gadarene swine.

George F. Will said on ABC this morning that Mitt’s problem is not his Mormonism or his finances, but his “Romneyness” — that is, the plain fact that he can’t personally connect with voters. Matthew Dowd added that Romney “cannot sell himself as an authentic, competent conservative in this field.”

That’s really it, isn’t it? People just flat-out don’t like Romney. I share that distaste, but it’s still hard for me to grasp that GOP primary voters dislike Romney so much that they would prefer to vote for a candidate, Gingrich, who would almost certainly lose against Obama. Daniel Larison:

Romney can be a dishonest demagogue, but Gingrich is the one who thinks (or pretends to think) the “Kenyan anti-colonialist” theory about Obama makes sense. Many Republicans are unenthusiastic about Romney, but far more people nationwide can’t stand Gingrich. Romney has a record of trying to have things both ways on many issues, but as far as I know he has never been on both sides of a major issue within the same month. Gingrich has that unfortunate distinction. Gingrich isn’t going to be the nominee. The Republican primary electorate can’t be that stupid.

I dunno. SC exit polling showed that Gingrich won far and away among primary voters concerned about electability. This explodes the main rationale for Romney’s candidacy. Do these voters really live so deeply inside a bubble that they can’t see how repulsive Gingrich is to mainstream voters? Is it a South Carolina thing, or is this something general among GOP primary voters? Florida will tell.

I’ve had a bunch of friends over to dinner tonight, and just got the news from South Carolina. Holy cow, Gingrich went all Muhammad Ali on Romney tonight. That’s not a victory, that’s shock and awe.

Romney and the GOP Establishment have to be messing their britches. Oh, though, to be David Plouffe tonight, facing the possibility of running Obama against the man of whom George F. Will said:

Gingrich’s unsurprising descent into sinister radicalism — intimidation of courts — is redundant evidence that he is not merely the least conservative candidate, he is thoroughly anti-conservative. He disdains the central conservative virtue, prudence, and exemplifies progressivism’s defining attribute — impatience with impediments to the political branches’ wielding of untrammeled power. He exalts the will of the majority of the moment, at least as he, tribune of the vox populi, interprets it.

Atop the Republican ticket, Gingrich would guarantee Barack Obama’s reelection, would probably doom Republicans’ hopes of capturing the Senate and might cost them control of the House. If so, Gingrich would at last have achieved something — wreckage, but something — proportional to his swollen sense of himself.

Some of my readers are distressed by the addition of Noah Millman to our blog stable here at TAC, because Millman isn’t a conservative. On his new TAC blog, Noah writes, of his hiring:

Their other point was that they were not aiming for a magazine that spoke with one voice; they preferred, frankly, a cacophony if that is what a lively a spirited debate produced. And while I suspect I will often – perhaps usually – disagree with my interlocutors here, I have tried to make a habit of engaging with those with whom I disagree, even with those whose premises or conclusions I find strongly abhorrent. Indeed, I feel like an enormous amount is gained merely by coming to agreement on what those premises and conclusions really are. In my politics these days, I am functionally a liberal, and I may wind up as TAC’s house liberal, but I hope if that turns out to be the case that it turns out to be a good thing to have a liberal in the house.

Finally, I should say something about how my own history relates to my presence here. I spent the bulk of my adult life as a functional neoconservative. I also spent the bulk of my adult life working in the more rarefied regions of the financial sector. In the wake of the Iraq War and the financial crisis and subsequent recession, I have come to have serious qualms about both associations. I am now extremely critical both of the foreign policy views I used to hold and of the industry in which I used to work. I’m fairly aware of the critical arguments from the left. This magazine is the natural home of critical arguments from the right on these two issues. If those arguments are good, I want to lend my support to them. If those arguments are lousy, I want to make them better. Either way, that’s a reason for me to be involved in this magazine’s project.

A few things. First, I wasn’t involved in Noah’s hiring, but I’m glad he’s aboard. I’ve read him for years, and he’s a marvelous writer. Secondly, it should be news to TAC readers that the magazine will publicize the arguments of liberals when we think liberals have a good argument. Glenn Greenwald’s stuff has appeared here, even though he’s a hardcore liberal. But if he’s making sense on civil liberties, from a conservative point of view, then why shouldn’t we give him a platform? One of the most frustrating things about the dead end contemporary conservatism finds itself in is that it has become more about tribalism and identity politics than re-examining first principles in light of changing circumstances. In other words, it has too often become about militant assertion, not deliberation. That Noah is more or less a liberal who feels comfortable around conservatives, and who can articulate his arguments in terms conservatives can relate to, makes him not only a useful sparring partner — I expect to spar with him on issues related to social and religious conservatism — but also a writer through which some open-minded liberals can approach conservative ideas.

Noah has said that he’s for gay marriage and “not an immigration restrictionist.” Those are two points of contention he has with me, and with many of our readers. So what? I’m far more pro-Israel than most TAC writers, but you wouldn’t know it because I don’t often write about foreign policy. The point is, nobody at TAC has set any restrictions on what I can or can’t write about, or the line I’m supposed to take. I think that makes us stronger. As a matter of editorial sensibility, TAC resists the idea of a party line. It might appear to some as an absence of principle, but I think rather it reflects a real interest in debate and discussion, and a frustration with the quality of that discussion in so many quarters on the right. Noah says that he worked in high finance on Wall Street and was a fervent Iraq War supporter, but the Iraq disaster and the economic crash made him a strong opponent of Wall Street and the foreign policy views he used to hold. I too was a big Iraq war supporter, and the main reason I didn’t take antiwar arguments — even those made by this magazine — seriously was because I was in thrall to the epistemic closure common to conservatives. One lesson I’ve learned from having seen my error on Iraq was the folly of not listening to arguments that my side doesn’t want to take seriously. Though he is a social liberal, those are two very serious points of agreement between TAC’s general conservatism and Millman’s liberalism, and suggest avenues of productive exchange between right and left.

Why is this bad? When I wrote “Crunchy Cons,” a number of its harshest critics objected that I gave aid and comfort to liberals by saying good things about environmentalism and criticizing some aspects of capitalism. Of all the reasons to object to the content of that book, those were the stupidest ones, reflecting a mindless attitude in which the only principle worth defending was pissing off liberals. That kind of conservatism is pretty common today, and, in my view, it’s a big problem for conservatives. To the extent that in Noah, we have a thoughtful critic of conservatism, one who understands and respects conservatism, even though he doesn’t share all our values, it can only make us more thoughtful and, ultimately, more persuasive.

Besides which, as much as it distresses a traditionalist like me, the younger generation is heavily on Noah’s side on the gay marriage issue. I look forward to friendly arguments with Noah about religious liberty, gay marriage, and related topics, because we social conservatives are going to have to get used to defending ourselves and our views in a culture growing increasingly intolerant of our stance. It’s hard to have this discussion with many liberals, who think we’re a bunch of bigots who don’t deserve anything but defeat. I doubt very much Noah is that kind of social liberal; we social conservatives should be grateful to have him as an interlocutor.

Anyway, when it comes to blog-reading, I’m more interested in a thoughtful, challenging discussion than I am with marching in lockstep with the tribe. So, welcome, Noah!

John Podhoretz tweeted the other day that it’s bizarre that Mitt Romney has been running for president for this long, and still hasn’t figured out how to talk about his wealth without sounding evasive and jittery. True. I still think Romney is the strongest remaining candidate the GOP could field against Obama, but after Thursday’s debate, it’s disturbingly clear that Romney believes he’s got something to hide. I’m not saying that he’s done anything illegal — there’s no evidence of that — but simply that he thinks that there’s something about his finances that embarrasses him, or rather, the potential disclosure of which gives him the jits.

Even if it’s nothing, Romney’s inability to defend himself credibly on allegations and insinuations surrounding his wealth has to make Republicans increasingly worried about him as their standard-bearer this fall. Obama is going to eat his lunch on this stuff, because he makes it so easy. Gingrich laid into him about this stuff in the SC campaign, and he didn’t have a good rebuttal. Nor did he go after Gingrich directly on his sleazy finances (e.g., the sweetheart $1.6 million influence-buying consulting deal with Freddie Mac). It’s hard to figure.

Again, I still believe Romney stands a much better chance of beating Obama than any of his GOP primary rivals do, but this money thing, and his tepid campaigning against Gingrich, who is about to humiliate him in South Carolina, has to be freaking the GOP establishment out.

UPDATE: Romney’s trouble with the money issue isn’t all that mysterious to Daniel Larison:

The point is that he is a pro-bailout corporatist oblivious to the problems of decreasing social mobility, income stagnation, and rising income inequality. Romney’s wealth by itself isn’t the issue. It is the substance of his stated views on these and related issues that provokes negative reaction, and he has no response to this except to accuse other people of envy and accuse them of engaging in class warfare.

John Mark Reynolds, the conservative Christian philosopher who teaches at Biola, has a powerful column about marriage, civilization, and Newt Gingrich. Excerpt:

Newt Gingrich was disciplined and removed from his high office by conservatives for his grandiose personality. He was a political roué, unable to control his political urges or ideas. He was sent packing to the political morgue, but now the roué returns from the morgue to murder marriage.

Only a grandiose man who believes words are more important than deeds could think he would get away with that in the long term. His party is left defending him when it should be examining better people: the political roué does not care.

Perhaps marriage should be redefined or perhaps, as Pope Benedict claims, this will end civilization. In any case, the grandiose man is the last man we need leading the discussion.

Newt Gingrich is unfit for public office.

Note well that JMR is not so much declaring Gingrich unfit because he cheated multiple times on his wives, but rather because he is a staggeringly undisciplined hypocrite who will harm the cause of defending traditional marriage. It’s like asking Snoop Dogg to be a Just Say No avatar.

UPDATE: Good to see that NRO’s Rich Lowry and Mark Steyn are not impressed by Newt’s theatricality. Steyn calls Newt’s calculated debate outrage over John King’s question “cheap manipulative ersatz indignation.” I especially agree with NRO’s Mike Potemra. Mike credits the Gingrich surge in SC to:

…the strange and unhappy specific mix of intellect and emotion among those supporters. Their intellect tells them that Newt’s behavior was wrong, because it is in direct contradiction to their own values. But the subterfuge of turning it into a hate-the-media issue taps into a preexisting deep well of resentment, and encourages the emotions to override the intellect — the feel-good response defeating and drowning out the basic values that the same people would, in more sober moments, consider paramount. Does this embarrass the social-conservative cause, as Betsy Canfield Hart says? You bet.

And please, no tiresome nonsense about hardy-har-you-claim-to-be-a-Christian-but-you-hypocrite-you-don’t-forgive-Newt. Maggie Gallagher had the right idea on this: It’s not really about forgiveness, it’s about trust.

Sorry, I accidentally edited out the text before posting the first time. Let’s try that again.

My new TAC colleague Noah Millman  adds his own theory to the Southern freakery thread. Excerpt:

Not being a Southerner, I can’t comment on Rod Dreher’s post on freak-toleration from direct personal experience. But I suspect part of what he’s seeing is the difference between a hierarchical society and a conformist egalitarian one, the difference between hierarchical Louisiana and conformist Iowa being somewhat similar to the difference between hierarchical (and famously eccentric-tolerating) England and conformist Sweden. A hierarchical society depends for its stability not on the notion of everybody being the same but on the notion of everybody knowing his or her place. And you can make some kind of a place for just about everyone. The question then is whether people will tolerate being kept in their place by others when it starts to chafe.