Last week in Washington Newt Gingrich may or may not have compared the GOP candidates for president to a group of "pygmies."
When asked if he'd join the '08 fray, Newt, ever erudite, invoked Charles De Gaulle. "This is like going to De Gaulle when he was at Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises during the Fourth Republic and saying, 'Don't you want to rush in and join the pygmies?'" he said at a dinner sponsored by the American Spectator. "I have no interest in the current political process."
But it seems as if Fred Thompson might win Gingrich's pygmy primary. Newt's longtime strategist, Rich Galen, recently signed up with the (to-be-announced-in-September) Thompson campaign. Gingrich and his wife dined with the Thompsons last month and he's said that if the former Tennessee Senator "runs and does well, then I think that makes it easier for me not to run."
Ari Berman
Last week in Washington Newt Gingrich may or may not have compared the GOP candidates for president to a group of "pygmies."
When asked if he’d join the ’08 fray, Newt, ever erudite, invoked Charles De Gaulle. "This is like going to De Gaulle when he was at Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises during the Fourth Republic and saying, ‘Don’t you want to rush in and join the pygmies?’" he said at a dinner sponsored by the American Spectator. "I have no interest in the current political process."
But it seems as if Fred Thompson might win Gingrich’s pygmy primary. Newt’s longtime strategist, Rich Galen, recently signed up with the (to-be-announced-in-September) Thompson campaign. Gingrich and his wife dined with the Thompsons last month and he’s said that if the former Tennessee Senator "runs and does well, then I think that makes it easier for me not to run."
What a relief! But given Gingrich’s sordid personal history and chronic foot-in-month disease, an endorsement for Thompson could be more trouble than it’s worth.
Ari BermanTwitterAri Berman is a former senior contributing writer for The Nation.