Joe Scarborough has a pretty scathing opinion piece in The Politico, in which he doesn’t hold back against his former leader:

The same man who once compared himself to Napoleon (and grandly told his lieutenants that he was at “the center of a worldwide revolution”) now grabs cheap headlines by launching bizarre rhetorical attacks. 

The same politician who once saw himself as a latter-day Winston Churchill — sent by God to save Western civilization — now gets rich off political hate speech.   

These days, Newt Gingrich’s modus operandi is to smear any public figure who fails to share his worldview. His insults are so overblown and outrageous that after the rhetorical dust settles, the reputation most damaged is his own. 

I really want to agree with Joe on this, and I do hope he is right, but I’m not as optimistic. As I’ve stated before, we live in a society where throwing verbal jabs and cutting down other people is quality entertainment. Add that to the inability of Americans to separate entertainment from real life and it’s the perfect fuel for people like Newt to launch the most outlandish attacks possible.

Let me expand on this. Politics is boring. I’m talking real politics, not the “reality show” politics we have today. Sit there and listen to candidates debate tax rates, foreign policy or government spending and you have a recipe for a major snooze fest, unless you are some big wonk. I’ll give the Republicans credit here in that they realized that and have seized upon making politics interesting. The Democrats are slowly catching up, but the Republicans are way ahead in the “shock factor”. Think of Sarah Palin and “palling around with terrorists”, but it started way before that. It’s Frank Luntz politics all the way – coming up with catch phrases and zingers that grab the attention of ADD America. Newt is seizing on that too, and that’s why I have to disagree with Scarborough. Hopefully I am wrong and he is right, but the only way for that to happen is if we change our society as a whole.