If you want to understand one big reason why former House Speaker Newt Gingrich star is rising in the Republican presidential race, you have only to look at a couple of answers from Saturday night?s South Carolina ?commander in chief? debate.
When asked by National Journal?s Major Garrett, ?How would you think outside the box? on foreign policy, Gingrich answered: ?I would explicitly adopt the Reagan/John Paul II/Thatcher strategy towards Iran?I would explicitly repudiate what Obama?s done on Agenda 21 as the kind of interference from the United Nations that?s wrong.?
Continue ReadingThe appeal of the first part of the answer is obvious: invoke three heroes of conservatives and suggest that the Teheran regime can be pressured into collapse.
But ?Agenda 21?? I suspect I?m not the only (ostensibly) informed politics-watcher who asked: ?What the hell is it? A clothing store? A real-estate company? A spy novel??
It is, in fact. a nearly 20-year old U.N. ?action plan? aimed at ?sustainable development? on the local, regional and global level.
In the eyes of some on the right, however, it is ? as explained on The Blaze Website ? a ?cloaked plan to impose the tenets of Social Justice/Socialism on the world,? which threatens everything from single-family homes to private car ownership.
In this sense, Gingrich?s answer was a ?dog-whistle? ? a response that held great meaning for those in the audience, signaling that he both knew their concerns, and was sympathetic.
This was no isolated incident. As Gingrich has done in just about every debate, again and again Saturday he was operating at a level of tactical and strategic skill far above his opponents. His eye for the mot juste, for the jab or counter-punch that will please his audience, is unparalleled.
Whatever his liabilities as a prospective nominee ? and they are legion ? Gingrich has climbed back from irrelevancy to contender because he is playing Assassin?s Creed Revelations while his opponents are playing Pong.
Consider a few other examples. After Texas Gov. Rick Perry proposed subjecting all foreign aid to sharp scrutiny, Gingrich was asked if he?d apply that approach to Egypt. It?s hard to go wrong in a GOP debate by taking a slap at foreign aid, but here?s what the former speaker said:
?Candidly, the degree to which the Arab Spring may become an anti-Christian spring, is something which bothers me a great deal?. Christians ? are being persecuted under the new system, having their churches burned, having people killed. And I?d be pretty insistent that we are not going to be supportive of a regime which is explicitly hostile to religions other than Islam.?
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