Eye On Miami Exclusive! GOP presidential primary comes to Florida! ... by gimleteye

I exclusively listened to CNN coverage of the South Carolina presidential primary results last night. Newt Gingrich spoke directly to me. Scoop for readers: Newt Gingrich is a sociopath!

Yes Newt won in South Carolina among conservatives who hate Barack Obama. I don't mean, hate. I mean, HATE. And for his part, Newt knows that pouring gasoline on that fire is not so simple in Florida. Unlikely he can march like General Sherman through Georgia. (Oh, who gets the reference? Never mind.)

Speaking of references, can anyone argue after last night in South Carolina that Gingrich made Huey Long and Lester Maddox look like vestal virgins? Anyone remember Lester Maddox?

On CNN, the Republican punditry delicately referred to Gingrich as "unsteady". OMG. Gingrich delivered a speech so chock-a-bloc full of sublimated bullet points of racial hatred and the unique resentment of injury that as the sweat beaded on his wide forehead, I felt myself turning by degrees into the same fuming hunchbacked cripple he would like to make of the rest of the nation. Oh, that's what he calls, "American Exceptionalism".

It is no wonder that the GOP leadership (is there any?) despaired of Gingrich long ago. He IS the mad man, filling the empty, vaulted ceiling of his chambers with grandiose delusions. But Gingrich is also possessed of a mad genius the way some sociopaths are. Gingrich won in South Carolina but he comes into Florida-- territory of his nemesis Jeb! Bush-- like a cornered animal. Florida is key. His twin towers of aspiration by January 31: to tap into the resentments of Tea Party Republicans who despise the Republican establishment (apparently they have not quite figured out that Jeb! IS the Republican establishment) and to tap into the Republican money changers: polluters, Big Oil and Big Coal and Big Ag.

"I am articulating the deepest held values of the American people," Gingrich swore last night. He also swore that Barack Obama wants to keep us all from being American. Gingrich said the centerpiece of this campaign is American exceptionalism -- and the crowd in South Carolina chanted USA, USA, USA the same way they did when Saddam Hussein was trapped, cornered and killed in a hole. Gingrich sounded out against "the anti-religious bigotry of our elites". As in, here come the hunchbacks. (Speaking of which, why are there no Negroid hunchbacks?)

Gingrich actually said this: "We have speech dictatorship in America by anti-religious bigots who are federal judges." I did not make that up, and it certainly did make me want to pull the covers over my head.

"President Obama, the most effective food stamp president in American history." "I would like to be the best American paycheck president in American history." "If we shrink the Washington bureaucracy we have to increase citizenship back home." Yes, and that Gingrich led citizenship will be uneducated white, out-of-work, and carrying Glocks.

Moving on, Gingrich said, "There will be no Chinese leverage on our economy after four years when I balance the budget." "On an AMERICAN energy policy: no American president should bow to a Saudi king. So we will use some of that $29 billion from oil royalties and reward South Carolina by modernizing the Port of Charleston where it has taken 8 years to study the project by US Army Corps of Engineers." Gingrich leaned on history: it only took us three years and eight months to win World War II. (How long did it take us to win the wars started by George W. Bush in Iraq and Afghanistan? Never mind.) He will produce a lean effective federal government and what he meant was that all those regulations protecting the environment will be blown up if you just contribute a few more million dollars to spend in Florida. His naked plea might as well have been on a scroll bar at the bottom of the TV screen.

Gingrich said, "All Barack Obama has done is take care of extremist left wing friends in San Francisco." (I always liked San Francisco.) But honestly, only Newt Gingrich could put Jeb! Bush and Saul Alinsky on the same side of the point: nothing could be better for the Democrats and Barack Obama than if Gingrich and his one-man band of verbal flamethrowers, grenade launchers, and DDT sprayers won the Florida primary.

"We still have a long way to go," said candidate Mitt Romney to his South Carolina audience. "This battle is for the soul of America," Romney said, spilling sound bites like a torn burlap sack filled with corn. "I'm passionate about our economic liberty because ... we have seen a frontal assault on free enterprise, we didn't anticipate some Republicans would join President Obama."

We are never moving to South Carolina, my wife said to me. Yes-- I hesitate this morning-- but we live in Florida.