Gingrich is enough of an historian to be very familiar with Georgia’s Tom Watson and to understand how strong a populist appeal can be in The South. The South is now largely freed from the economic conflict between the races that so thwarted Watson’s brand of populism that he, like many other Southern politicians, gave up and made his way in the politics of race. There is a deeply inbred dislike and distrust of bankers, speculators, and “big business” in The South, and in the rest of rural America. People like to think of Sarah Palin as some conservative darling, but Palin’s actual governance came from somewhere between the tax protester libertarianism of the oilfields and outright anti-big business populism. There’s a template for it. The question is whether there are 270+ EVs for it.
There is something patently fraudulent about the Hahvud Biz and Wharton grads using the government to eliminate their competition, make their deriviative scams legal, and then claiming that they’re somehow engaged in free enterprise. The very last thing the elite school MBAs want is open competition on a level playing field. Maybe Newt’s populist theme is resonant; Wall Street is all in for Obama and “coordination,” to use the German phrase, with the Obama Junta. The big corporations just want the government to put up regulatory barriers to entry and run their competition out of business. Since the Republicans have largely become the Party of small business and trades people, maybe backing the Wall Street types isn’t quite the right ticket for the Republican nominee.
