Conservatives are easily angered these days. Can’t say that I don’t blame them. I mean, look at who ran in the primaries… Bachmann (hallucinates that god talks to her), Newt (come on… he’s named after a salamander), Cain (9-9-9), Santorum (frothy mixture from fecal matter), Rick Perry (aka Mr Evil), Jon Huntsman (I rather liked this guy – he put Newt in his place once), Ron Paul (grandpa with some die-hard groupies), of course Romney (flip-flop, etch-a-sketch) and a few other non-notables.
Now that many Republicans are coming to realize, and admitting, that Romney is not much more than a joke, Republicans are rather irritable. So why not have some fun with them!
So far, the possible GOP candidates are Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, and Sarah Palin. And now, Newt. The GOP is making it much easier for Obama to be re-elected in 2012.
The former House speaker disclosed his bid on Twitter and Facebook on Monday and urged followers to tune into Fox News on Wednesday.
Gingrich, 67, enters a Republican field that’s far from fully formed; no less than a dozen Republicans are weighing bids and only a few have taken steps toward candidacies. It’s a crop of candidates that has many in the Republican Party yearning for more options as they seek the strongest candidate to take on President Barack Obama in 2012.
His entry into the race marks a comeback attempt more than a decade after leaving political office.
Once at the top of the House, he challenged the first-term Democratic president, Bill Clinton, at every turn. A spending fight between Gingrich and Clinton led to federal government shutdowns in 1995 and 1996, and Gingrich watched his popularity fall.
He faced charges of hypocrisy after revelations that he was carrying on an affair with a congressional aide at the same time he was criticizing Clinton’s relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. He divorced his second wife and married the aide, Callista Bisek; she now goes by her husband’s surname.
Ethics questions also dogged him as speaker.
Gingrich faced some 84 ethics complaints; they were leveled mostly by House Democrats who were in the minority and focused on what critics called his blurring of the lines between politics and his personal life. All but one of those complaints was dismissed with no penalty.
He paid $300,000 for the cost of investigating the final complaint – whether Gingrich’s college course had violated federal tax law – as part of an agreement with House ethics investigators. Led by Republicans, the ethics committee never reached a conclusion about that allegation. And the IRS cleared the organizations connected with the course of any tax violations.
Former regular Tina Fey returned to host Saturday Night Live for the third time Saturday and, in one of the evening’s highlights, brought back her Emmy-winning Sarah Palin impersonation during a sketch titled “GOP Debate.”
In the segment, Fey, dressed in Palin’s iconic red suit, squares off against other undeclared 2012 Republican presidential candidates, including Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Jimmy McMillan and Donald Trump. The debate is hosted by Fox News personality Shepard Smith, played cheekily by Bill Hader.
At the opening of her speech, Fey announces, “First I want to acknowledge that this week we finally vanquished one of the world’s great villains, and I for one am thrilled to say good riddance to Katie Couric!”
When asked if she has anything new to offer the American people, Fey responds winningly that she plans to film a cameo in Hangover 3 in the Middle East and has purchased Rosetta Stone English.
Fellow former SNL cast member Darrell Hammond also drew laughs for his impression of the embattled Trump, which included a reference to Osama bin Laden’s recent death: “Osama, boom! You’re fired!”
