Decoder: Newt Gingrich’s Recent Comments About President Obama

Newt Gingrich: Moonlights as a scarecrow. (Image by Pete Souza.)

Newt Gingrich: [President Obama] is not like Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton was an Arkansas, Southern Baptist, sort of understood middle Americans. While he had some Yale overtones of being liberal, the truth is Bill Clinton was quite happy to move to the right.

Decoder: What’s funny is during the 1990s, I called Bill Clinton an “enemy of normal” and painted him as a radical, a socialist and an extremist. So I was either lying about him then or I’m lying now. Also: If I thought Bill Clinton was really a middle-of-the road guy, why did I spend so much time trying to force him out of office? That kind of makes it look  like I’m a partisan windbag who’s not to be trusted.

Newt Gingrich: The people [Obama] appoints are more radical than he is and less competent.

Decoder: Hillary Clinton, Janet Napolitano, Kathleen Sebelius and Sonia Sotomayor all seem like competent and reasonable people, but I disagree with them philosophically so I have to label them as radical rather than intelligently argue the issues.

Newt Gingrich: [President Obama] is a disaster. His principles are fundamentally wrong.

Decoder: My principles are the right ones. Like, remember how I used to lecture everyone about family values? All three of my wives agree that it was the right thing to do.

Corncobs: Newt keeps us safe.

Newt Gingrich: It’s fair to say that by February the groundwork will have been laid to consider seriously whether or not to run [for President]. I’ve never been so serious.

Decoder: It’s fair to say that I threaten to run for President every six months or so because I love my ego very, very much.

Newt Gingrich: I think likable is a word you have to think about a lot. If people believe their country is in trouble, they want a captain of the lifeboat, they don’t want a fraternity brother.

Decoder: Even I know that I’m a hateful, hypocritical, lying sack of crap. I’m just hoping things get so bad that it won’t matter. Maybe if there’s a plague of frogs or an apocalypse.

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