R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.

WASHINGTON -- Ah, yes, Newt Gingrich did in the last days of the Florida primary precisely what I predicted he would do. He hurled wild charges at Mitt Romney that suggested Newt was losing his grip. He charged Romney with lying and falling into the hands of George Soros and Goldman Sachs, and he did this while seeking the Republican presidential nomination!

Newt quoted Soros as saying, "We think either Obama or Romney's fine, but Gingrich, he would change things." Citing Goldman Sachs' profiting from the bailout, he linked the Wall Street firm to anti-Gingrich ads, filling in the dots: "Those ads," he averred, "are your money recycled to attack me." On Sunday, he suggested that Rick Santorum drop out of the race and support him. Santorum had left the campaign trail to be with his desperately ill daughter. That is the kind of grace we have come to expect from Gingrich, who, by the way, supplied no evidence of Goldman Sachs' or of Soros's aiding Romney.

Newt lost support in his last week in Florida because conservatives gave him a closer look. Sure we loved his one-liners singeing the tail feathers of the Liberal media and politicians. Yet, we have to put someone up against President Barack Obama who can win. Moreover, we have to put someone in the White House who can govern. With Newt we would be explaining his gyrations every few days during the campaign. And in the unlikely event that he should win we would be spending the next four years apologizing for his extravagance. I did it once before in the 1990s, and I can tell you it was a thankless task.

As I wrote last week, Newt is a 1960s generation kid. Allow me to elaborate. That generation -- my generation -- was the most ballyhooed generation raised in the 20th century, and it was -- at least in politics -- a failed generation. Gingrich, the Clintons, Al Gore, and the rest of the 1960s hustlers began their political careers in college when they were the first generation to actually believe that student government was on campus to govern. The weak Liberal administrators went along with them and gave them a say in the running of their universities. The universities have yet to recover. Yet, beyond the damage they did to the universities was the damage they did to themselves. They became the most self-absorbed generation of narcissists ever heard of. From their student government days to their days in national politics they all lived out a fantasy. Now it is over. It would be eminently fitting if Romney won the presidency and set the country on course in 2012. He is from the normal half of that generation, a man who was a student in the 1960s and afterwards a businessman, until he had secured his fortune and entered public life in middle age. By then the Clintons and Newt had been supping at the public trough for years.

The unreported aspect of last week's story of the conservative writers and politicos turning on Gingrich was the role played by the Episodic Apologists. They are the media types who have been covering for the Clintons for years. They have high hopes for the Clintons' talents. Then they are crestfallen by one of the Clintons' scandals: the pilfering of the White House, the last-minute pardons, Monica Lewinsky. Then their high hopes rekindle anew. They were loath to report my attack on Newt as being the Republican's Bill Clinton, but they jumped at the "conservative Establishment's" attacks on his veracity and his other wayward traits.

Yet, Newt's failure is part of a larger failure, the infantilism of the 1960s generation. In his narcissism, impulsiveness, and deviancy he is at one with the Clintons. Mitt, and for that matter Santorum, are just the opposite. They are straight arrows and duty-bound. They would not be a riot of scandals in the White House, but is it not about time that we leave the scandals to Hollywood?

This country is facing its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. President Obama offers us what Romney calls Crony Capitalism. Romney is right and Crony Capitalism means more Solyndras. Congressman Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, has served up a budget to cure the nation's ills and head us on a course that will not end like Greece has ended. Romney is not far from the Ryan budget and he can move even closer. Newt can be forgotten.

WASHINGTON -- How long have I been saying it? At least for 15 years, but in private I have been aware of it longer. Newt Gingrich is conservatism's Bill Clinton, but without the charm. He has acquired wit but he has all the charm of barbed wire.

Newt and Bill are, of course, 1960s generation narcissists, and they share the same problems: waywardness and deviancy. Newt, like Bill, has a proclivity for girl hopping. It is not as egregious as Bill's, but then Newt is not as drop-dead beautiful. His public record is already besmeared with tawdry divorces, and there are private encounters with the fair sex that doubtless will come out. If I have heard of some, you can be sure the Democrats have heard of more. Nancy Pelosi's intimations are timely. Newt up against the Prophet Obama would be a painful thing to watch. He might be deft with one-liners but it would be futile. There are independent and other uncommitted voters to be cultivated in 2012 -- all would be unmoved by Newt's juggling of conservative shibboleths.

Newt and Bill, as 1960s generation self-promoters, share the same duplicity, ostentatious braininess, a propensity for endless scrapes with propriety and the law. They are tireless hustlers. Now Newt is hustling my fellow conservatives in this election. The last time around he successfully hustled conservatives in the House of Representatives and then the conservatives on the House impeachment committee. He blew the impeachment and in fact his role as Speaker. He backed out in disgrace. He now says Republicans in the House were exhausted with his great projects. Nonsense, I knew many of them, and they were exhausted with his atrocious leadership. He is not a leader. He is a huckster. Today Mitt Romney has 72 Congressional endorsements. Newt has 11. Possibly the 11 have yet to meet him.

Now he has found his key for the hustling conservative electorate. He is playing the liberal media card and saying he embodies conservative values. Like Bill with his credulous fans, Newt is hoping conservatives suffer amnesia. Possibly some do. Perhaps they cannot recall mere months ago when this insufferable whiz kid was lambasting the great Congressman Paul Ryan for "right-wing social engineering" -- more evidence of Newt's not-so-hidden longing for the approval of the liberal media.

After his Ryan moment Newt's campaign was a death wagon, and it will be so again -- hopefully before he gets the nomination. Conservatives should not climb onto his death wagon. He is a huckster, and I for one will not be rendered a contortionist trying to defend him. I did so in his earliest days and learned my lesson. After Newt's and Bill's disastrous experiences in government both went on to create empires, Bill in philanthropy and cheap thought, Newt in public policy and cheap thought. As an ex-president Bill has wrung up an unprecedented $75.6 million since absconding from the White House with White House loot and shameless pardons. I do not know how much Newt has amassed, but he got between $1.6 million to $1.8 million from Freddie Mac, and he lobbied for Medicare Part D while receiving, according to the Washington Examiner's Tim Carney, "Big Bucks Pushing Corporate Welfare." Now after a lifetime in Washington he is promoting himself as an outsider.

Contending with Newt for the Republican nomination are Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, and Mitt Romney. All three are truer conservatives than Newt. I like them all. But John Bolton, former ambassador to the United Nations, and John Lehman, Ronald Reagan's secretary of the navy, are for Mitt, and they are solid conservatives. Governor Chris Christie and the economic pundit Larry Kudlow laud Mitt on taxes, on spending, and on attacking crony capitalism. Kudlow calls Romney "Reaganesque." Ann Coulter seems to loathe Newt.

Back in 1992 I appeared with Chris Matthews on some gasbag's television show. Was it Donahue? At any rate, I said candidate Clinton had more skeletons in his closet than a body snatcher. It was a prescient line then, and I always got a laugh. I can apply the same line today to Newt, though he has skeletons both inside and outside his closet. Conservatives should not be surprised by the scandals that lie ahead, if they stick with him. Those of us, who raised the question of character in 1992, were confronted by an indignant Bill Clinton, treating the topic as a low blow. To listen to him, character was the "c" word of American politics. It was reprehensible to mention it. By now we know. Character matters. Paul, Santorum, and Romney have it. Newt has Clinton's character.

WASHINGTON -- Whose job would you want to have? Would it be President Barack Obama's, whose budget woes are getting graver? Or would it be New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's, whose budget is at least looking to be survivable?

Now President Obama is facing the choice in his budgetary decisions. Does he raise taxes only on families making $1 million a year, or does he, as he has heretofore promised, raise taxes on families making $250,000. Governor Christie has had an easier choice. He has promised a 10 percent cut on every New Jerseyan's income. He has "stopped the bleeding" in New Jersey. He has cut 375 government programs. He has capped property taxes. He has confronted public employees with reasonable cuts in their bloated health care and pension benefits. It is all part of what he terms "the New Jersey comeback." New Jersey's state budget was a kind of Ponzi scheme when he came to office, and time was running out. Now he has the budget back on track, and it is time for a tax cut for everyone.

Interestingly, his Democratic opponents in the state legislature say the cut amounts to a pittance. It means a mere $275 for families earning $100,000. Their alternative is a tax increase, but only on millionaires. My guess is that a goodly number of New Jerseyans will see thorough this. The Democrats began their binge by raising taxes on the very rich. Yet, there was not enough money to pay for their munificence by taxing the very rich. So the Democrats worked their way down to the middle class, and the result was the economic basket case from which Governor Christie is now freeing all New Jerseyans.

President Obama has to make his decision by early next month when he decides on his budget: raise taxes on everyone making over $250,000 a year or only on millionaires? Of course, in 2010 he took a dreadful drubbing at the polls on taxes and it could happen again. Some Democrats have agreed with the Republicans. They say people making $200,000 to $250,000 are not making that much money, particularly if you live in a place like New York.

Democratic Senator Charles Schumer has seen the light. He has said of people with such incomes, "They are not rich, and in large parts of the country, that kind of income does not get you a big home or lots of vacation or anything else that's associated with wealth in America." And he went on, "They are firmly in the middle class. Same with small-business owners in that class."

What will our President do? I say he will include families making $250,000 in his tax cuts. Moreover, if reelected he will increase taxes on the middle class. President Obama is a redistributionist. He believes more ardently in redistributing wealth than in creating it. Follow the course of Mr. Obama's earlier redistributionist, Franklin Roosevelt, and you will know the direction in which Mr. Obama is going. In the current issue of The American Spectator Burton W. Folsom, Jr. and Anita Folsom write that FDR "lamented" in the late 1940s that "Too many people are earning money and not contributing to the government." Thus he and his New Dealers got to work raising taxes. From "1940 to 1942, the number of Americans paying income taxes jumped almost ten fold, from 4 million to 39 million. Furthermore, the starting tax rate skyrocketed from 4 percent to almost 24 percent." No wonder FDR is one of Obama's heroes.

Yet Obama is a reactionary. He believes in the past, a past of vast government control of the economy, redistribution, and slow growth. Christie and Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin believe in growth. The future is theirs.

WASHINGTON -- I have officially called off my boycott of the National Football League (NFL). I do not care how many felons or frotteurs play the game. Now there is Tim Tebow to redeem it. He can pass and run. He inspires his teammates. He inspires many returning fans like me. I shall follow him through the playoffs and maybe even next year as the season resumes anew. He is an American original -- and he is controversial. I am for him.

No, I shall not fall for the NFL's gimmicks. You will not see me wearing a jersey of the Denver Broncos for whom Tebow plays. I shall not even buy a coffee mug. In fact, I think I shall add up how much money I could spend on Tebow paraphernalia and donate it to charity. Tebow inspires his teammates and now he has inspired me.

I first noticed Tebow when he won a string of games in the last minutes. It was phenomenal, but then I seemed to have brought him bad luck for he lost the next three games. Then came the Denver Broncos' surprising upset of the Pittsburgh Steelers last Sunday. The Steelers played a great game behind the two-time Super Bowl winner, Ben Roethlisberger (himself an almost convicted felon who has now confessed his errors and mended his ways), but Tebow outplayed him. Roethlisberger did lead his team to an overtime Sunday. That worried me for I had already sat through hours of play and one of my complaints with the NFL is that the games are the closest thing we can experience on earth to eternity. Yet the Broncos won the flip of the coin. They elected to receive. And on the first play from scrimmage Tebow threw a pass to Demaryius Thomas (note the noble Roman name) and Demaryius outran the desperate Steeler secondary for eighty yards and a touchdown. Good show, fellows! The whole play took 11 seconds, the briefest overtime in NFL history.

Then came the grounds for controversy. Tebow after congratulating his Roman receiver knelt on one knee and thanked God. His recollections convey the essential Tebow. "When I saw him scoring," recalled the victorious quarterback, "first of all, I just thought, 'Thank you, Lord.' Then, I was running pretty fast, chasing him—like I can catch up to D.T! Then I just jumped into the stands. First time I've done that. That was fun. Then, got on a knee and thanked the Lord again and tried to celebrate with my teammates and the fans." Tebow is very pious, very humble ("like I can catch up to D.T."), and a lot of fun ("that was fun"). How can anyone dislike him?

He runs charities in the offseason. He invites sick children to games. He does all manner of good deeds. He is the son of missionaries and he takes his religion seriously. This appears to be a problem for some players in the NFL and other concerned Americanos. Some have uttered insults at him over his religion and in fact over his general good-guy deportment. Why should this be? One can strut and perform the most lurid dances on the field. One can demonstrate on behalf of various controversial causes. Nary an eye is batted. Yet, a show of piety to one's creator is deemed an offense. By the way, Tebow was not the only person on the field expressing a prayer. I saw a fellow from the Steelers make the Sign of the Cross repeatedly, and after an exceptionally good pass I dare say Roethlisberger raised his hands to the heavens. So what is so outrageous about a pause for a prayer of thanksgiving?

I predict that Tebow is in for some serious controversy in the weeks and years ahead. Some say he does not deserve his fame. That he is an unorthodox passer and a terrible ball handler. I do not know what they think they know. He is as strong as a bull and his running and passing wins games. Yet his real problem is the religious angle. Many Americans do not like it. They prefer their own gestures of false piety. They need our prayers.