Man! Not only is Newt Gringrich no Jack Kennedy, he’s not even a Richard Perle. As regular readers well know, I’ve been a pretty tough critic of Mr. Perle, especially his long-running effort to serve as the Pentagon’s proxy in its war with Colin Powell. 
But one can denounce underhanded scheming and still be able to respect it when it’s ably done.
As you’ll remember, last week the former Speaker of the House used an AEI panel discussion to launch a broadside against the State Department, Colin Powell and even a few elementary points of basic logic. But his attack was so overblown and cartoonish that even those inclined to support his basic position immediately cut him loose, leaving the former Speaker terribly exposed when nearly every Republican in town spent 
the rest of last week saying he was at best out of line and quite possibly even slightly off his rocker.
It was the week of the great Newt Gingrich smackdown. Jack Kemp called his old friend’s argument ludicrous and compared him to “a bull who carries his own china shop around with him.” Bill Buckley, famed lover of Foggy Bottom, said Newt had “overdone it.” And pretty much every other Republican in town, pretty clearly at White House direction, trashed him.
Newt was like that one doofus you have in every high school clique who’s always trying to get into the act after the moment has passed.
