hamp

watching santorum and gingrich just now on morning joe. santorum is unbelievably likable and sincere. i guess i just have no idea how romney could be a viable candidate: we need to stop rewarding automatism. one thing i really admire about gingrich; he's more or less the only presidential candidate i've ever seen who will straight-out admit mistakes. so he said that sitting down on that couch with pelosi was 'the stupidest thing i ever did.' now, i doubt that. but most of these people would have a gigantic self-justifying rigamarole. they asked him about romney's 'i like firing people' thing, and, even as he's trying to make romney pay in a sheer act of vengeance, gingrich says: you know, that was taken out of context and i agree with the point romney was making. so i hope no one uses that kind of crap in a negative ad. wait. what? even pundits with total distance from the proceedings were working out a way to use the thing: well, he didn't mean something bad. he meant something we all agree with. but he ought to understand that things will be taken out of context, so saying that was tone-deaf etc. this is ridiculous. if you know what he meant and you agree with what he meant or it was a trivial point, then you can't attack on that basis. but at any rate, that is exactly how you assess the credibility of someone: newt said what it was against his interests to say. that is amazing in this context, which is just soaked in jive, where palpably you can't believe what people say. people say gingrich has 'character' issues; he just displayed much more character than the rest of the field, at least in respect to trying to say what's true.