"Somewhere Swirling in There"

Chee-zis Louise. Pompous Windbag, Dictionary Definition thereof:

Washington Monument, Newton Leroy Gingrich & Callista Bisek Gingrich

Newt Gingrich — flush with pride over new polls showing his left-for-dead candidacy now leading the pack — is letting his healthy ego roam free again, littering the campaign trail with grand pronouncements about his celebrity, his significance in political history and his ability to transform America.

“I helped lead the effort to defeat communism in the Congress,” Gingrich said this week on Sean Hannity’s show

“I’m going to be the nominee,” he informed ABC News while in Iowa.

“I was charging $60,000 a speech and the number of speeches was going up, not down,” Gingrich said in South Carolina, explaining why he didn’t actually need his consulting fee from Freddie Mac. “Normally, celebrities leave and they gradually sell fewer speeches every year. We were selling more.”

“The degree to which I challenge the establishment and the degree to which I’m willing to follow ideas and solutions to their natural consequence without regard to Republican or Democratic political correctness makes me probably the most experienced outsider in modern times,” he told Radio Iowa.

Even descriptions of his wife Callista fall prey to aggrandizement: “She actually describes herself as being a cross between Nancy Reagan and Laura Bush with just a slight bit of Jackie Kennedy tossed in and I think there is, somewhere swirling in there, the model Callista would like to live up to.”

We suppose the Friends of Newt can chalk this up to POLITICO's well-known leftist bias & the baseless assertion that The Left is most scared of a Gingrich-Obama debate (PLEASE DO NOT THROW US IN THE BRIAR PATCH!) but what the hell?

Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond dismissed criticism about the speaker’s self-regard, saying his boss is speaking the truth about the nation’s problems.

“Newt Gingrich has been against the status quo in Washington since he first arrived from Georgia,” Hammond said. “Many times he’s the first to point out a dumb idea and say, ‘here’s how to fix it.’ And in many cases, he uses the words ‘dumb idea.’ “

Bonus peep at GOP strategy:

“Yes, ‘Bad Newt’ is emerging again,” said GOP strategist Alex Castellanos. “He refers to himself as a celebrity, when voters despise Washington’s arrogance and he knows that was one of McCain’s most effective assaults against Obama. He dismisses charges of corruption by telling us he’s too successful* to be tempted, when he’s just seen what happened when Rick Perry declared he was “insulted” by charges that he could be bought for only $5,000.”

Arrogant indeed. That any of the Republican candidates think they're qualified even to run for the Presidency is arrogant beyond belief. As is their condemning Washington from their Washington homes & offices.

But, he added, “So what? The rule in politics is that if you tell voters what they already know, they remain where they already are. You have to give voters new information to change how they react to candidates. We already know ‘Bad Newt’ is undisciplined, even, reckless and has an inflated sense of self-worth. And Gingrich is leading in Iowa. A lot of ‘Bad Newt’ is already built into the front-runner’s stock price.”

The options for conservatives, Castellanos added, are dwindling.

Horse racing now, but who sees any of the remaining clowns emerging from the dust & making a comeback? There can't possibly be a swell of Santorum can there?

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*How'd he make all that money again?