By Mark Warren on January 27, 2012
In debate this week, Newt has been sluggish, sleepy, as if he's digesting something large  like South Carolina, maybe. And he may yet win this thing, and have all the inner-city kids after-schooling as chimney sweeps and annexing the moon, but more likely we will look back at this farce and realize that Thursday, January 26, 2012, was the day when the Republican establishment (what's left of it, anyway) colluded to get its affairs back in order. But it won't just be yesterday's obvious coordinated bombardment by the freaked-out right wing that will have done in Newt. It will have been what it has always been: Newt is as flabby in his head as he is around the middle. He is lazy and wildly undisciplined, and he is wrong all the time. But the man did once overthrow the established order of both parties and become the actual Speaker of the actual House, which just goes to show how well-compensated shamelessness can be in America. Romney is also obviously shameless, a mushy walking inconsistency, and is also quite a facile liar. But he is incredibly disciplined. It ought to be humiliating news that after a year of campaigning and seventeen debates, Romney had to go find a debate coach, so that he might arrange the syllables coming out of his mouth in such a way that he sounds at last like a man one wouldn't be ashamed to vote for. But this development was instead greeted by the cable-TV wags  who only are able to focus on the stagecraft anyway (when they're not asking Edward R. Murrow questions like "Why would your wife make the best First Lady?")  as a masterstroke, and not a moment too soon. Huzzah, say the chattering classes.