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Gingrich's favorite two words
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| Parent(s) |
Book
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| Contributor | RP |
| Last Edited | RP Jun 02, 2010 12:56pm |
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| Category | Review |
| Author | Steven Levingston |
| News Date | Wednesday, June 2, 2010 06:55:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | How many times can you say secular socialist in a single breath? If you’re Newt Gingrich, you can’t say it enough. Secular socialist. Secular socialist. Secular socialist. Secular socialist. Gasp. It’s the repetition you hear coming from the pages of the former House speaker’s new book, “To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine.” Huff! There it is again.
How many times can you drum that double-scare into a four-page introduction? If you’re Newt Gingrich you mix it up: the nounal form -- secular socialist; the many adjectival variations -- secular-socialist ideology, secular-socialist machine; secular-socialist Left. Newt tries them all. All told, secular socialist pops up 11 times over the four pages. Just so you don’t forget.
Why all the repetition? If it were only repetition, we could write it off as just the drooling that comes from intoxication by one’s own language. But the repetition signifies something worse for Newt and the party he once led: a slumping toward simplicity. No matter the inanity of the language, if you say it enough – to the point of a thumping in the head – people will eventually believe it, or so the hope goes.
If Gingrich were once, as he has believed himself to be, the intellect of the GOP, he is now indistinguishable from other simpletons of extremism. It’s a shame for a man who is loaded up with college degrees: bachelor’s, master’s, Ph.D and has been a college professor. In his mania to attract the noisy fringe, he has lost all pretense to reasoned analysis in favor of incendiary rhetoric – the Nazi statement should be evidence enough but the book abounds in other examples. Barely five paragraphs in, we read: “America as we know it is now facing a mortal threat.” And not so long after that: “Time has not run out, but it is running short. It’s up to those of us who love our country to save America from the destructive, irreversible transformation that the Left have in store for us.” |
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