I Didn't Think He Had It in Him

When I got home from work last night, I went right to the Internet. After I got online, I checked out the news headlines on my ISP's Website and saw this:

"Gingrich weeps as he recalls his mom."

The man who served as this country's House Speaker from 1995 to 1999- who wants to get back into politics by going right to the very top- was at a coffeehouse in Des Moines to give his campaign one final pre-Iowa caucus push.

At some point or another, the discussion came to memories of the woman who adopted the Harrisburg, PA native when he was a child (she died in 2003).

Newton Leroy McPherson Gingrich (that's his full name, folks) told the coffeehouse crowd about how his adoptive mother had to battle bipolar depression, talked about how she lived a happy life, and then...he teared up.

I just hope that his tears the other day were truly genuine.

When USA Today did the story, the reporter told the world that Gingrich's tears were reminiscent of when, in early 2008, then US Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) answered a reporter's question about the rigors of campaigning for the most talked-about job in politics...only to shed some tears.

I remember how those same reporters, coming into 2008 itself, talked about how Rodham Clinton "lacked the warmth" supposedly needed for her to succeed as a presidential candidate. (They'd been after the former first lady since 1992, after all!)

Now many of these same media people are out there speculating over the idea of HRC trading in her gig heading up the State Department for the vice presidency.

Anyway, after the story about Rodham Clinton's tears broke, she ended up getting plenty of support- especially from the reporters who savaged her over events like her and husband Bill's 1992 interview on 60 Minutes. 

And now, we're told that Gingrich's teardrops might pull more people toward supporting the former US representative from Georgia.

We shall see.

All I know is this: Many of the things NLMG has done since coming on the national political scene in the 1980s (especially masterminding two government shutdowns during the Bill Clinton years) have driven many people to tears.

And then you've got some of things Gingrich has said here in 2011 alone...especially his desire to rip the textbooks out of inner-city children's hands and replace those books with brooms and dustpans. (To say nothing of his contention that there's nothing American about the man who's got the job the ex-college prof and six other Republicans are after: Barack Obama.)

Above all, I'm wondering if Newton ever weeps as he recalls the two marriages he walked out on before he met a woman named Callista.

Oh, well...it was just a thought.

Well, that's all I've got for now...except: I'm Jim Boston, and I'll see you in 2012! Thanks for reading this blog!