Get Behind Newt

And do it before he gets behind you.

Newt Gingrich. Stephen Voss/Redux

More of the inevitable: They're flocking! The flocking party & ideology of principle & family values, that is.

It’s a conundrum, he says, that many others are also grappling with. "Maybe the guy in the race that would make the best president is on his third marriage," he says. "How do we reconcile that?"

One senses him trying. "I see a lot of parallels between King David and Newt Gingrich, two extraordinary men gifted by God, whose lives include very high highs and very low lows," Deace says. David, after all, committed adultery with the ravishing Bathsheba, then had her husband killed, among other transgressions. The Bible makes room for complicated, morally compromised heroes. Now Christian conservatives, desperate for an alternative to Mitt Romney, are learning to do so as well.

In recent years, his writing and speaking have become increasingly religious and even apocalyptic, limning a great world-historical show-down between the forces of Christian civilization and those of what he calls "secular-socialism," which weakens society, allowing for the spread of radical Islam.

"A country which has been, since 1963, relentlessly in the courts driving God out of public life shouldn’t be surprised at all the problems we have, because we’ve in fact attempted to create a secular country, which I think is frankly a nightmare," he said at the FAMiLY Leader debate. Most of his audience surely knew that 1963 is the year the Supreme Court banned prayer in school.

[...]

"People know him, but they don’t know everything about him," says Perkins. "They will in the next couple of weeks, and we’ll see how well he can withstand that type of scrutiny." Still, he acknowledges, anxious anti-Romney conservatives are eager to coalesce behind someone. "The bench is getting kind of shallow," he says. "The only candidate left that has not been out in front is Rick Santorum, and time is short."

Blah blah blah & in conclusion — Wait! Santorum still has a shot? Last creep standing? Let him peak at election time in Ioway & New Hampshire!

Stab from the past: Remember these guys?

From The NYT.