The Prophet Newt

“Measured against the scale and momentum of the Soviet empire’s challenge, the Reagan administration has failed, is failing, and without a dramatic change in strategy will continue to fail. . . . President Reagan is clearly failing.” Why? This was due partly to “his administration’s weak policies, which are inadequate and will ultimately fail”; partly to CIA, State, and Defense, which “have no strategies to defeat the empire.”

Turns out the GOP’s leading sociopath didn’t always wrap himself in the mantle of Reagan.  Nor is he quite the prophetic genius he always assures us he is.  Something to think about as this damp-handed chickenhawk pounds the drums for a fresh war for other people to suffer and die in. One thing is a constant though: for Newt, as for all neocons, it is eternally World War II and every hostile power is always Hitler. Thus, when Reagan met with Gorbachev in 1985, it was, for the prophet Newt “the most dangerous summit for the West since Adolf Hitler met with Neville Chamberlain in 1938 in Munich.” Yeah, that Reagan. What an appeasing Chamberlain he was. No wonder the Soviet Union went on to conquer us, as Iran will surely do next unless we elect this bellicose fake who couldn’t be bothered to serve.

Demagogues always need a new war to gin up the crowd with nationalism masquerading as patriotism.