The biggest single threat to the strategy to sell Newt Gingrich to Republicans as a conservative is the truth. This week, Marianne Gingrich broke her silence and decided to tell America what the real Newt Gingrich is like. …

ABC aired the interview on NIGHTLINE Thursday evening and her charge that he sought an “open marriage” with wife, to include his mistress. Gingrich wanted this accommodation with his wife only to avoid another messy divorce which would expose him for the serial philanderer that he was. Her statement that “Newt Gingrich lacks the moral character to serve as President,” is an absolute truth.

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World Affairs Brief, January 20, 2012 Commentary and Insights on a Troubled World. Copyright Joel Skousen. Partial quotations with attribution permitted. Cite source as Joel Skousen’s World Affairs Brief (http://www.worldaffairsbrief.com)

THIS WEEK’S ANALYSIS:

Here Comes Newt, Again

Debt Ceiling Games

Europe Turns to the IMF for Next Bailout

Russia Warns Against Attack on Syria

SOPA Debate Not Over

Paul Proposes Repeal of NDAA

Drones Over America

HERE COMES NEWT, AGAIN

It’s hard to tell why the Powers That Be (PTB) seem so desperate to topple Mitt Romney as the frontrunner. Although not an insider, Mitt has taken every possible position the establishment wants—he has a neocon foreign policy, is in favor of NDAA and he has even hinted at using the dreaded VAT tax to solve the deficit problem. Only Gingrich could be worse than Romney and that is why the PTB are working overtime to create yet another phony surge for the former Speaker of the House who betrayed conservatives in 1994 due to his secret globalist ties. If they can get him a win in South Carolina they will try to keep him on a roll in Florida and beyond.

Sarah Palin showed her subservience to the PTB yet again this week by endorsing Gingrich, but Gingrich’s ex-wife is making good on her threat to derail his bandwagon with a no-holds-bar killer interview with ABC news exposing Gingrich’s hypocritical dark side. The network attempted to delay airing this devastating indictment until after the South Carolina primary, but a leak forced them to air it Thursday.

As Jon Huntsman and Rick Perry end their campaigns, the establishment is betting everything now on Gingrich or Santorum. Earlier, the kingmakers asked Perry to continue his campaign even after his poor showing in Iowa, not knowing who they would or could try to resurrect against Romney, but now they want him out so the manipulable voters in SC are not split between 3 false conservative—only two. That way Gingrich or Santorum has a better chance at coming out with a win above Romney’s numbers.

Right now, they are pushing for Gingrich more than Santorum, even after the first phony surge for Gingrich failed. This headline from the AP is emblematic of the typical media theme: “Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is drawing big, enthusiastic crowds and fending off new attacks from GOP front-runner Mitt Romney while reveling in a strong debate performance and a nod from tea party favorite Sarah Palin.” Palin’s endorsement is bound to become the second most stupid thing she has done since joining John McCain.

Ever wonder why we’ve had so many debates this election cycle? In a normal election year, we’d be lucky to have 3 or 4. Now they come almost twice a month, and this week we got two in a week! Of course, they are all run by establishment news machines that have a clear agenda—to promote the latest “flavor of the month” candidate surging against Romney, and evade or embarrass Ron Paul. The first half hour is always spent showcasing whoever they want to promote. These always get the first softball question designed to make them to shine. Ron Paul always gets the token or quirky questions to make him look bad.

Ron Paul is clearly as much of a target of the hosts in these debates as Mitt Romney. The PTB may not want Romney but they can control him if he wins. Ron Paul is the only candidate who is a complete threat to establishment control in government. FoxNews.com, the supposed conservative TV network news made a blatant attempt to evade even mentioning Ron Paul in its Monday debate analysis. Steve Watson of Infowars.com has the story:

“The dirty tricks campaign against GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul reached new heights during the South Carolina debate last night, with virtual exclusion from the first 40 minutes of the program, poisonous questions in the second half, and a cringe inducing situation during the post debate analysis where Fox pundits were forced to admit that Paul had completely wiped the floor with the other candidates.

“During the post debate commentary, Fox reporter John Roberts blatantly excluded Paul from the charts and graphs he presented representing feedback from viewers. The results of Twitter surveys on which candidate had most accurately answered questions and who had performed the best were displayed with Ron Paul’s name nowhere to be seen.

“Almost one hour later, Roberts was called upon to go over the results one more time, after floods of complaints from viewers asking why Paul had been left out. ‘John, you caused a fury in my world.’ Fox anchor Harris Faulkner began. ‘You left off Ron Paul.’ she added, before Roberts attempted to slime out of the fact that he had totally excluded Paul from his results tally by saying that because Ron Paul won by huge margins in every category, it was unnecessary to report on it!

“Roberts then went through each debate topic again with Paul added to the graphic. As he explained the result Roberts downplayed and skipped over Ron Paul’s figures in every category, causing Harris Faulkner to interject. ‘John, can I stop you right there because I’m getting real time feedback.’ Faulkner said. ‘Ron Paul did not just do well, he did the best from that chart. I just want to be fair because people are watching for this.’ she added.”

“The fact that Ron Paul was the outright winner of the debate was remarkable, given the fact that the moderators had done their utmost to exclude, smear and misrepresent the Congressman earlier in the night. The opening portion of the debate was exclusively reserved for Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum [see what I mean about promoting the establishment favorites first?] to attack frontrunner Mitt Romney in an atmosphere that more resembled The Jerry Springer show than a coherent political debate.

“Refraining from joining in with such pantomime ridiculousness, Ron Paul patiently waited to be addressed by the moderators… and waited… and waited. Indeed, during the first 40 minutes Ron Paul was only asked one question, and that was about ‘scathing attacks’ on the other candidates in campaign ads [as if the others weren’t doing that]. Paul succinctly noted that he believed pointing out legitimate flaws in the other candidates voting records was fair game.

“As the exclusion of Paul continued, it even triggered a commercial break discussion between the Fox political panel about how Paul was being sidelined. Analyst Ed Rollins commented, “I thought Paul placed second in New Hampshire and was effectively second in Iowa – but they’ve got him standing way over on the side. [Even the placement of candidates on the stage is scripted]”

“When Paul was finally asked further questions, they were so leading and laced with underlying venom it defied belief. With almost every question the Congressman had to begin his answer by correcting the moderators for grossly distorting his position on multiple issues.

“Firstly, Paul had to once again explain that there is a significant difference between ‘defense spending’ and Pentagon waste, and that he is not about to decimate military funding, as the moderators suggested. Paul said to thunderous applause. ‘I want to cut military money. I don’t want to cut defense money,’ Paul said. ‘I want to bring the troops home.’”

The contrast between the Washingtonian principles of Paul and his neocon counterparts is vast. Conservatives were horrified as Romney proudly answered that he would have signed the NDAA giving government authority to indefinitely detain people aligned with al Qaeda and even said they don’t have rights. He pontificated upon the old neocon propaganda about “violent jihadists” having declared war on us, and that’s supposed to justify losing our civil liberties.

This growing skewed philosophy of terrorism justifying all manner of government power was illuminated by William Grigg in his latest column at Freedominourtime.com: “Santorum, who is regarded by some misguided conservatives as a champion of the pro-life cause, warned those who doubt that the U.S. government would assassinate civilian scientists should take heed to the way it treats American citizens designated enemies of the State: ‘When people say, `You can’t go out and assassinate people’ — well, tell that to al-Awlaki….We’ve done it. We’ve done it to an American citizen [he bragged].’

“According to Newt Gingrich – whose General Urko act drove the assembled Republicans into a simian frenzy of bloodlust – it is ‘irrational’ of Paul to insist that there are limits on the government’s powers of discretionary killing. Elaborating on that idea in a January 18 interview with South Carolina pastor Kevin Boling, Gingrich asserted that Dr. Paul’s insistence on applying the Golden Rule to foreign policy demonstrated that he had absorbed the ‘anti-American, self-hating attitude of the American Left.’

[…]

While Palin endorsed Gingrich, numerous South Carolina legislators came out for Ron Paul as the Denver Libertarian Examiner reported: “3 Conservative Senators, [including] leading SC State Senator, Tom Davis (R-Beaufort) endorsement on Sunday, collectively send a very big message to the people of South Carolina and the US by coming together and giving a combined endorsement that immediately propels the Ron Paul campaign into ‘serious contender’ status.”

The biggest single threat to the strategy to sell Newt Gingrich to Republicans as a conservative is the truth. This week, Marianne Gingrich broke her silence and decided to tell America what the real Newt Gingrich is like. Her interview was with ABC and they have been trying to bury the story ever since. Fortunately Matt Drudge got wind of it and is trying to shame ABC into airing the interview:

The Drudge report: “Marianne Gingrich has said she could end her ex-husband’s career with a single interview. Earlier this week, she sat before ABCNEWS cameras, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. She spoke to ABCNEWS reporter Brian Ross for two hours, and her explosive revelations are set to rock the trail.

“But now a ‘civil war’ has erupted inside of the network, an insider claims, on exactly when the confession will air!.. A decision was tentatively made to air the interview next Monday, after all votes have been counted. Gingrich canceled a press conference on Wednesday to deal with the matter. ‘He believes that what he says in public and how he lives don’t have to be connected,’ Marianne Gingrich, Newt’s wife of 18 years, explained to ESQUIRE last year.”

ABC aired the interview on NIGHTLINE Thursday evening and her charge that he sought an “open marriage” with wife, to include his mistress. Gingrich wanted this accommodation with his wife only to avoid another messy divorce which would expose him for the serial philanderer that he was. Her statement that “Newt Gingrich lacks the moral character to serve as President,” is an absolute truth.

The Open Marriage charge was brought up in the debate last night, giving Gingrich a chance to give a loud denunciation of the media. Gingrich has used this technique before with great success. Conservative audiences are rightly angry with media bias, and so switching the attack from himself to the media always generates applause. But he perjured himself in the end with a flat out denial that the conversation ever too place. If South Carolinians believe Gingrich over his wife after seeing that interview, then there is little hope of them making the right choice.

Romney made a major tactical mistake by acceding to demands to show his tax returns, even though delaying such to a point if and when he gets the nomination. No person ought to do this on principle. Tax returns are way too private for individuals of wealth to be forced to reveal. He should have taken the high ground and said no–it’s a private matter. I am personally glad that Romney was able to structure his income to fall under the capital gains tax rate of 15%. Deriding him for that is simply building more class warfare in the US.

Only Ron Paul got it right on taxes during the debate. When asked “What is the appropriate tax rate Americans should pay?” Romney said 24% and Paul said 0%. In other words, abolish it.

Contributions should be revealed, but even those are confusing and misleading. OpenSecrets.org provides profiling of where contributions come from for each candidate. Conservative pundits have made much about the fact that all the big banks and investment firms have backed Romney. Wait, but they are also backing Gingrich, and Santorum—everybody but Ron Paul.

But even that doesn’t tell the whole story. While Romney’s campaign for 2012 lists $376k from Goldman Sachs, this isn’t donations from the company itself, it’s from individual brokers. Goldman brokers gave Obama $1,2M during his campaign, so you have to compare the candidate’s numbers side by side to get the full story.

It is also noteworthy that employees of the big banks, big corporations, and big investment houses back all of the establishment candidates, and Congressmen, whether Republicans or Democrats. But they don’t support Ron Paul. He only gets contributions from the little guy. That should tell you who they don’t want and who we should be voting for.

But on other issues, Romney had no high ground to retreat to. The latest charge is that Romney accepted Federal pension bailouts for a steel company that went bankrupt during his tenure at Bain Capital. The bankruptcy triggered the federal pension insurance fund to kick in. He also got an $10B debt forgiveness decree for Bain Capital just as he entered the firm. All of this makes Romney’s denouncing of federal bank bailouts a bit hypocritical.

[…]

The Third Party question continues to plague the establishment. One subscriber wrote, “Will Ron Paul remain [within] the party confines, apply his capital leverage at the convention or bolt and go as an Independent/Libertarian? If he exercises the latter, the pundits generally agree upon a Ross Perot scenario1992. But this time around Ron Paul actually stands a solid chance to become the next President on a third party ticket.”

In an honest election, this would be true. Ron Paul’s core support is now above 20%. The Republican support is only 27% of the nation, and Democrats hold only 31% and many of them don’t vote. That means in a three-way race, for the first time since the Whigs lost their status as a major party, we have the opportunity to bust the two party system wide open. So don’t pass off lightly that an independent candidacy would be suicide. The ire of a substantial minority of Americans is so hot against the establishment, that this may well be our greatest opportunity to stage a political rebellion.

Related:

Joel Skousen: GOP WARMONGERS EMERGE IN CNBC DEBATES | Gingrich’s Unprincipled Life: “…he threatened her: ‘If you ever tell anybody about this, I’ll say you’re lying.’”