The Romney campaign has apparently decided to roll out Newt Gingrich for the Republican National Convention. Gingrich will not get a headliner speaking position. He’ll get a college.
Sort of. According to a piece by Jeremy Peters in the New York Times:
Newt Gingrich hoped to get a coveted speaking slot at the Republican National Convention. Instead the Romney campaign will have him teach a series of workshops they have nicknamed Newt University.
The actual content of Newt University remains a mystery. It will likely consist of his usual pseudo intellectualism, offering a smart rhetorical gloss over many of the current Republican talking points. There will be a series of lectures in which Newt will explain that “history teaches us” something history does not actually teach us, “logic dictates” something that logic does not actually dictate, and the “Constitution says” something the Constitution does not actually say.
This will probably not be an opportunity for the former House Speaker to display his famous “visionary” ideas since, as Peters explains, the convention is mostly an opportunity for the Romney campaign to smooth over tensions in the Republican Party. Though Gingrich doesn’t appear to much like Romney (well, neither does anyone else), he’s apparently going to be on good behavior. Peters:
Mr. Gingrich insisted that he planned to play nice in Tampa. He is focused on preparing his lesson plans for Newt University, he said, not on sowing any further party discord. “The truth is the hardest-core conservatives didn’t win the nomination. So to turn to Romney and say, ‘You now have to dance to our tune’ doesn’t make much sense to me.”
It is, of course, not a real university. It’s sort of like Glenn Beck University or Trump University.
Why are these fake colleges so common among Republican figures? Why not just call it series of workshops and be done with it?
Whether or not actual Glenn Beck or Donald Trump will appear at the convention is still to be determined. [Image via]
