NEWTERDAMMERUNG? I'M NOT SO SURE

No sooner does Newt Gingrich rocket to the top of the GOP charts than word gets out that he was paid more than a million bucks by Freddie Mac. The GOP base hates Freddie and Fannie! Game over for Newt -- right?

I'm not so sure. Back when the tea party was rising up and thickheaded journalists and pundits were telling us that angry right-wingers were really sorta like angry left-wingers because they hated fat cats too, I wanted to scream. They didn't hate fat cats at all -- they just found it distasteful that the fat cats were in bed with the evil Antichrist government. And for that, the evil Antichrist government got 100% of the blame. Government was the filthy slut prostitute, and Wall Street was just the john who was corrupted by that stinking whore.

That's how I suspect the wingers will respond to Newt's arrangement with Freddie Mac: Freddie is evil for giving him money; Newt isn't evil for taking it. Not only is government totally evil, but the totality of evil stems from government. (Well, except for the evil that comes from Democrats, liberals, Hollywood, and the academy, but those are just heads on the same hydra-headed beast, right?)

There's some distaste for Gingrich in this Free Republic thread, but it's mostly for other reasons (eeeuw, he worked with Nancy Pelosi!). Generally, the Freepers are shrugging:

I say everyone who took money from Fannie and Freddie has to step down from their office today.

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If this is true...then what? All these d@mn politicos are complicit.

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Should this derail Newt's campaign? Not at all. He just did what most (all?) of us would have done. Grab the money.

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Consultants get paid. Where are some of you people living, certainly not reality. He told Freddie Mac that the course they were taking on these mortgages would cause the bubble and fail. What more do you want? Maybe if Freddie Mac took the advice the housing marked would not have failed.

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Freddie-Mac was a Christmas Turkey that got stuffed by Dodd-Frank and was principaly protected by the Democrats. The Media don’t speak about this a whole lot. So NOW the Media get INTERESTED? Must mean that Newt is the “flavor of the month” in the Republican primaries.

See? Freddie Mac is evil. Newt isn't evil. He was just led astray. Don't know if that will be the consensus view, but I think a lot of the new Newt-bots will stick with him, following this line of reasoning.