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Support for Gingrich Is Support for The Quintessential “Establishment” Republican

James Poulos describes the thinking of pro-Gingrich conservatives: The concentration of anti-establishment conservatives around Gingrich shows what many of them now plainly admit: the stakes are high, and they are willing to risk spectacular defeat. Opting instead for a slow, humiliating political death is no choice at all. I’m not sure that the term “anti-establishment […]

James Poulos describes the thinking of pro-Gingrich conservatives:

The concentration of anti-establishment conservatives around Gingrich shows what many of them now plainly admit: the stakes are high, and they are willing to risk spectacular defeat. Opting instead for a slow, humiliating political death is no choice at all.

I’m not sure that the term “anti-establishment conservative” means anything when it encompasses the likes of Palin, Cain, and Perry. If there are conservatives who think that backing Gingrich is a way to stick it to the powers-that-be in their party, they have already been defeated. An “anti-establishment” protest that makes Gingrich its standard-bearer has zero credibility. It isn’t just that Gingrich and his recent record embody virtually everything that many conservative activists loathe, but that he is winning some of them over by using the most superficial cultural and rhetorical cues available. Conservative Gingrich supporters are at a point where their identity politics and policy-free pseudo-populism have become self-parodying.

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