Gingrich: My Team Walked Out Due to "Strategic Differences"

See, it was my strategic vision that we should work for my candidacy for president.

But my team felt the proper strategy was to work for Rick Perry's candidacy.

A quote from Gingrich, still pitching this as a struggle of the Outsider Grassroots against the Insider Establishment, in which he is... dreadfully miscast.

“There is a fundamental strategic difference between the traditional consulting community and the kind of campaign I want to run. Now we’ll find out over the next year who’s right,” Gingrich told reporters in a video recorded by ABC News.

This really isn't fun. I have always liked Newt a fair amount. But the Titanic just emailed me to say, "That's a shaky, shaky launch. Whoo! Douchechills."

Something about Gingrich's manner of speaking bothers me. First of all, when he makes a statement, he usually begins, "Look."

"Look, it's not any secret that the Washington Power Establishment feels threatened by a genuine grassroots transformative candidacy."

Then, at the end, he usually adds an intonation-rising coda, usually of the type "And that's just common sense."

Or: "And the American people understand this."

Like: "Look, this is what we're going to be seeing, the threatened establishment undermining a determined revolutionary. (Rising intonation.) And the American people understand this."

The other thing is that he tosses in buzzwords like "fundamental," "transformative," etc. These are the sorts of words you see in a blurb for an Alvin Toffler book (and, if I recall right, Gingrich was a big fan of Toffler). His speech is always studded with Futurist buzzwords. And I often find My Ears Glazing Over because, well, too many adjectives, and too many of the same kind of adjectives.

Like:

"Look, when a transformative figure promising truly revolutionary change to the fundamental conception of the core principles of ordered Constitutional liberty, the Washington Power Brokers are naturally going to react in fear. And that's just common sense."

I'm more of tangible, gut guy. I like Anglo-Saxon-derived words for their immediacy and tangibility. I tend to not like the abstract, Latinate-through-the-Norman-Invasion words.

Just saying. Just a preference.

And the American people understand this.

Ah, Yes. That Is A Strategic Difference. Commenters, whose names I don't know but whose genitals I have all seen, inform me that the key strategic difference here is that the staffers wanted to be paid, and Gingrich didn't want to do enough to bring in money in order to pay them.

I have had numerous strategic disagreements like that in my time, generally involving landlords, or banks, or car financing companies.

Look, these people have to understand I'm a truly tranformational figure, with a fundamentally different concept of the idea of "repayment," and of course they feel threatened when confronted with a grassroots insurgency challenging their bizarre, frankly unamerican fetish of timely payment.

And that's just common sense.

posted by Ace at 04:13 PM

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