Fear and Contempt on the Campaign Trail

This is hardly the most important thing in the world, but I’ve heard an awful lot of people lately saying that Newt Gingrich’s recent success is due to the fact that no one is better than him at channeling the anger of the Republican base. There’s nothing really wrong with that formulation, but for the record, I don’t think anger is quite the emotion in play here. Rather, it’s fear and contempt. The tea party wing of the Republican Party fears that the America they love is being taken away from them, and they have almost unbounded contempt for President Obama, the taker-away-in-chief.

And who does fear and contempt better than Newt? No one. Those are the emotions he’s channeling, not just boring old anger.