newt

The context and content of Newt Gingrich's appearance in New Orleans gives me the feeling that he is the most serious contender for a 2012 GOP run for the presidency.

He is highly intelligent. I have great respect for intellect. (Hmmm ... I wonder if other Republican primary candidates would ridicule him for being a professor? All high 'n mighty in his smarty-pants elite school. A student of history? Who needs that in a president! He's not one of us!)

My feeling, though, is that if Newt Gingrich wins the 2012 GOP slot and runs against Obama, it will be a tough race. I really don't see any other serious Republican threat out there. A lot of noise with nothing in the cranial cavity except for the lizard brain. Gingrich, on the other hand, has a complex mind. He doesn't need to expend much effort in order to whip up a frenzy, but he is not a two-dimensional character like Bachmann or Palin : he has real ideas, ideas that he doesn't need to mention yet. I'll bet a lot of those ideas would disappoint some of his supporters and surprise many of his opponents.

If Gingrich wins the presidency - whether in 2012 or at some later time - he will run far-right but I believe that he would govern close to the center. He is, after all, an intelligent man. Far too smart to try to govern along the far-right line. The far-right's platform is as impractical as that of the far-left.

The center is where it is because we are a representative democracy. The nutters on one side achieve a sort of balance with the nutters on the opposite side and we end up somewhere in the middle.