by Brendan Monaghan

We’re less than a month in to the Republican primary playoff season and already the race has been turned inside-out, again. After being left for dead for a second time, Newton Leroy Gingrich surged to the top and won the South Carolina primary, convincingly. Those in the media are running out of mythical beings and destructive creatures to compare to the former Speaker of the House. Lazarus is Charles Krauthammer’s go-to figure, yet Lazarus only had to rise once. Jonah Goldberg warns us Newtzilla is on the loose again, ready to torch the media and repel Republican Civil Defense Forces. However, Republicans may be dealing with something far more dangerous and real than a super-monster who leaves nothing but destruction in his wake.

No, Republican nobles spent a South Carolina party attempting to poison, stab, shoot and drown him- but Raspnewtin just won’t die. He remains free to live a decadent, destructive lifestyle and reign of chaos on the Empire, spoiling an anticipated November Revolution. Raspnewtin tells the faithful peasants what they want to hear: Barack Obama is a Kenyan colonialist, Saul Alinsky radical with an intentional, socialist agenda to destroy America itself; he is being protected by an Elite Liberal Media which is out to get conservatives and ask me gotcha questions; he is being offered mere foil opposition by a Republican Establishment filled with Massachusetts moderates. Raspnewtin does not so much believe he is God’s chosen instrument as he believes God worships him.

His latest performance of enrapturing mysticism occurred last week in South Carolina. Raspnewtin mesmerized the Palmetto peasantry with a dazzling hex on Juan Williams. Asking questions about controversial statements- not policy- played right in to Raspnewtin’s hands and the raucous crowd devoured it whole. That was Monday. By the middle of the week the Elite Liberal Media hatched a plot that would finally kill off Raspnewtin and expose him in front of his flock. His second wife, it seemed, was asked by Raspnewtin for an open marriage so he could have an affair with his now-third wife. The hit job only strengthened Raspnewtin, and Republican nobility was flung in to terror as he masterfully chanted an incantation at John King USA, and Tea Party peasants cheered with fiendish delight. When the smoke cleared, Raspnewtin dominated his rivals, winning 43 of 46 counties.

The Republican nobility has good reason to be terrified of Raspnewtin. Calling him “borderline unelectable” as Charlie Cook did would be extremely charitable. Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey- a supporter of Mitt Romney- said on Sunday that Gingrich “has been an embarrassment to the party,” pointing squarely at his House ethics conviction, backbench rebellion, and ignoble resignation from the Speakership. Despite Raspnewtin’s protestations and claims of victimhood, this resignation was not voluntary but the product of a conservative coup. His own caucus simply had enough of him. Ann Coulter- who has more conservative credentials than Leonid Brezhnev had medals- told Fox & Friends that by nominating Raspnewtin, Republicans would “throw out the baby and keep the bathwater.”

Even those who endorsed Raspnewtin are not wild about him. Bob Livingston- who would have been Gingrich’s successor had he not committed an extramarital affair himself- called his former colleague “volatile.” Not exactly high praise. While Raspnewtin loves to constantly compare himself to his favorite president, FDR- err, make that Reagan- and how he was doubted and maligned by his party’s nobility, the realistic and truthful comparisons stop there. Ronald Reagan wasn’t perfect but he wasn’t undisciplined, grandiose, lecherous, frivolous, or ethically-challenged either.

There is ongoing speculation the level of panic Republican nobles would fling themselves into should Raspnewtin win all-important, winner-take-all Florida. While it is said South Carolina picks presidents (owing to an unblemished streak of nominees to 1980), it only does so because someone else picked first: Iowa in 1996, and 2000; New Hampshire in 1980, 1988, and 2008. Raspnewtin won neither, giving the nobles some small amount of comfort. Although Florida is just as early this year as it was four years ago, a win by John McCain here in 2008 made his lead symbolically insurmountable. Given the momentum of his South Carolina conquest and the peasantry’s visceral revulsion toward Romney, a follow-up win in Florida may make Raspnewtin nearly unstoppable.

With the chaos of a brokered convention unlikely and unviable, the nobility may throw every last weapon they can muster against Raspnewtin- even other men. There are 13 states with filing deadlines after the Florida primary, giving disaffected conservatives and desperate Republicans another seemingly-impossible chance to summon a Mitch Daniels, a Chris Christie, or a Paul Ryan. Again, such a scenario is seemingly impossible now.

Those paying extra special attention did, however, pick up on a clue on how to finally thwart Raspnewtin and his malignant, awesome power. Thanks to small changes in the debate format Monday night, Raspnewtin’s captivating and colossal victory seemed far less-obvious than last week’s twin killing- if it was even there at all. Moderators stuck largely to policy rather than personal antics or outrageous statements- taking away Indignewt’s ability to vaporize the media right in front of us. What’s more, the audience in Tampa was told to be quiet and respectful- thus denying Raspnewtin of his hooting, hollering, fist-pumping headwind. The result was a candidate on stage who appeared rather mortal compared with his rivals. The next morning, Raspnewtin went berserk, accusing the media of nothing less than controlling and stifling free speech.

The debates are where Raspnewtin derives his energy and healing power. Thus, like fighting fire with fire, the only way to subdue Raspnewtin is to give him the boring, dull, mundane, passionless, silent intellectual debates he once claimed to want. Since the poison, daggers, and bullets haven’t worked, Republican nobles should chuck Raspnewtin in a river of ordinariness.

Brendan is a graduate student at Portland State University, where he hosts the KPSU “Right Jab” radio program, and a regular contributor at Oregon Catalyst. Brendan is studying political science, and graduated from The Ohio State University in 2007, with a degree in political science.