Stallion Cornell's Moist Board

“I’ll tell you what’s going on here. There’s an effort to clear the path right now for Romney. I guarantee you if Santorum was considered a threat, they’d be pulling out quotes from him and twisting them and turning them, and turning him into a pretzel, too. If they thought Ron Paul was a threat … they’d be turning him into a pretzel, too. Romney pulled the same thing with Fred Thompson. He pulled the same thing with Rudy Giuliani. Ladies and gentlemen, if you are conservative, if you are tea party activists, you’ve got to step back and say, ‘What the hell is going on here?’ All these commercials aimed at destroying opponents, not in communicating facts, not in advancing our principles, not focused on Obama, who’s the problem, but turning people into monsters.”

“If Gingrich is the nominee, it will have an adverse impact on Republican candidates running for county, state, and federal offices,” Dole wrote.

Erick Erickson, a Republican columnist, challenged that critique in a Jan. 26 post on redstate.com. Dole, wrote Erickson, gave in to Democrats during the 1995 government shut- down, undermining Gingrich’s demands.

“We’re supposed to hate Newt Gingrich because Bob Dole caved to the Democrats 24 hours before they were going to cave to Gingrich?” he wrote. “Pffffft.”

Gingrich’s clashes against the establishment are classic Alinsky.

“The job of the organizer is to maneuver and bait the establishment so that it will publicly attack him as a ‘dangerous enemy,’” Alinsky wrote in “Rules for Radicals.” He went on to reveal that, “Today, my notoriety and the hysterical instant reaction of the establishment not only validate my credentials of competency but also ensure automatic popular invitation.”

Though Gingrich has spent several decades profiting from being part of the Washington establishment, the fact that he’s been attacked by so-called “elites” has become self-validating.

And the way he scolded CNN moderator John King in last Thursday’s South Carolina debate followed Alinsky’s 13th tactical rule, which states: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

Alinsky argued that a faceless target such as City Hall, or in this case, the mainstream media, isn’t as powerful of a target as individual person. And by “freeze it,” he meant that whoever the target is shouldn’t be allowed to pin the blame on somebody else.

King, as Fox’s Juan Williams did in the prior debate, allowed Gingrich to personalize his attack on the media. And when King tried to claim that it was another network, ABC, that had aired the interview with his ex-wife that had prompted the question about whether he had ever sought an “open marriage,” Gingrich froze the target.

“John, it was repeated by your network,” Gingrich hollered. “You chose to start the debate with it. Don’t try to blame somebody else.”

South Carolina audience loves when he yells at John King for making a perfectly legitimate opening question.

Glenn and Coulter delved into Gingrich’s long history in D.C. as well as touched on a recently published caricature depicting the former House Speaker as “a little stick figure at the center of the universe,” with a “primary mission, advocate of civilization definer of civilization, teacher of the rules of civilization.”

Glenn marveled, “I don’t think the Pope describes himself as that.”

“He had notes reminding himself to smile and look cuddly. And then after, you know, it all came crashing down with the ethics investigation...

And you know who understands exactly the message that's being sent by Romney?

Hold on to your conservative hat. That would be no less than uber-leftist George Soros, who recently said this:

"Well, look, either you'll have an extremist conservative, be it Gingrich or Santorum, in which case I think it will make a big difference which of the two comes in," Soros told Reuters in a videotaped interview.

"If it's between Obama and Romney, there isn't all that much difference except for the crowd that they bring with them."

Thanks George. One hates to say it, but George Soros is right. Note well: It is conservatives Gingrich and Santorum that Soros fears -- not Romney. No less than the Wall Street Journal editorial page -- no admirer of Soros -- picked up on this problem long ago, writing up Romney as "Obama's Running Mate."