GINGRICH: THE HONEY BADGER CANDIDATE

AMERICANUS MELLIVORA CAPENSIS



To fully appreciate this blog post, you should first view the YouTube.com video on honey badgers...here ==>  video.

Assuming your stomach is strong enough to get through the video, it is hard not to admire the sheer tenacity of the honey badger, whose native home is Africa and parts of Southwest Asia.  The honey badger is, as they say, bad-ass.  Some wildlife biologists have classified the honey badger as, pound-for-pound, the most ferocious creature on earth.  Even in defeat, it will often inflict so much damage on its rival that both will die when the fighting is over.  Its hard not to see similarities with our current political conflict between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.


In about one-in-three presidential elections the American electorate is treated to what I call a "honey badger candidate."  This is a candidate that can summarized by one simple motto:  "Either you die, or we both die."  In 1992, it was Ross Perot and his prey was George H. W. Bush.  In 2000, it was Ralph Nader and his target was Al Gore.  And, in 2012, the Republicans are blessed to have their own honey badger candidate, Newt Gingrich.

Newt Gingrich will probably not win the Republican nomination, and Mitt Romney probably will.  But just as a honey badger will attack and eat a highly venomous snake like the puff adder, even at the risk of losing its own life in the process, such is the dynamic we now see in the Republican nomination fight.  Newt is not the kind of man to put up a good fight, concede defeat, and then stand on the dais at the Republican convention with his arm around Mitt and endorse his formal rival for president.  Nope.  It's just not in his DNA.  He will fight for this nomination until he wins, or they both lose.

Contrast Gingrich with Hillary Clinton in 2008 who had a much better chance at winning her party's nomination.  Yet, even after all of the cynical dissembling and sometimes petty accusations that transpired during the Democratic nomination race (much of it coming from Bill Clinton), Hillary did not bring down her party's nominee.  She was always going to get in line behind her party's candidate, even if her heart wasn't completely in it.  That is not how the 2012 Republican nomination will end.

Yes, Gingrich will eventually concede.  Once Romney has the delegates, there is not much else he can do.  And Newt will not mount a third party candidacy (which is entirely possible with the "other honey badger candidate" in this race, Ron Paul).  To do that would be counter to Newt's primary motivation which is to vanquish a man he believes is merely posing as a conservative in order to win the Republican nomination.

In Newt's world, it is not the opposition candidate (Obama) that most threatens the political balance of nature.  After all, conservatives need Democrats like Obama to draw their contrasts and to justify their existence.  Obama serves a purpose.  He makes their brand of conservatism relevant.  Romney does not.  Instead, Romney is the ultimate existential threat.  And Newt knows that.  And that is why Newt will allow for only one of two outcomes in 2012:  either he wins the Republican nomination, or both he and Mitt go down together.  There is no other acceptable outcome for a honey badger.


GLOBAL WARMING:  GEORGE CARLIN'S "EARTH PLUS PLASTIC" ROUTINE


Regardless of your opinion regarding global warming, it's hard not to laugh at the late-George Carlin's classic bit on the subject.  His view was so offensive at the time that members of his own audience started to turn on him during the middle of the routine (if you listen close enough at the 1:48 point, you can hear people yelling back at George).   Nonetheless, regardless of your point of view on global warming, sit back for just a moment and enjoy one of our country's great comic geniuses:

GEORGE CARLIN ON GLOBAL WARMING