TALL TALES: Newt Gingrich and Uncle Remus enrapture Southern audiences with fables.

  • TALL TALES: Newt Gingrich and Uncle Remus enrapture Southern audiences with fables.

Ernest Dumas this week explains why Newt Gingrich is doing so well with Southern Republican voters. He’s a good liar.

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Or, to put it more gently, Joel Chandler Harris had nothing on Newt when it came to fables. Dumas writes it gently:

When the unceasing debates went south, Gingrich claimed a great advantage. Southerners, or a good portion of them, are accustomed to a mythical view of history and celebrate it. And when a debater is unconstrained by facts or even a rough approximation of the truth, he gains a great advantage. So it was with Gingrich in South Carolina, and so is it likely to be in the Republican primaries across the South.

More detailed analysis and extensive fact-checking follows. (I don’t pretend to believe facts influence the non-reality- based ‘baggers who are setting the curve in the GOP primaries by propelling Newt.)

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