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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SmoothSail who wrote (466648)	1/22/2012 4:50:42 PM
From: KLP	4 Recommendations Respond to of 793840

Toby Harnden ~~ UKMail: 22 January 2012 6:36 PM ~~~ Newt Gingrich's big, slobbering mutual love affair with the elite media Newt Gingrich hates the media, right? He unloaded on John King at the Charleston debate for raising this issue of his ex-wife's allegations, blasting the "destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media". In Myrtle Beach, he slapped Juan Williams down for asking a race-based question. And the media despises Newt, right? He's so sarcastic and condescending towards us, brands us as elite liberals and uses us to whip up the Republican base. Actually, wrong and wrong. Gingrich loves the press. In some respects we are, as John McCain famously noted, his "base". He craves the media. I've never seen a man so happy as Gingrich was when he ambled into the spin room in Myrtle Beach last Monday night and about 200 of us swarmed around him hanging on his every word. Newt Gingrich in the Myrtle Beach spin room Romney would have rather been anywhere else in the world than that in the middle of that heaving, sweaty scrum. But Newt was in pure heaven. He loves the game. And it's mutual. The press laps up all things Newt. Like him, we thrive on chaos. He's a walking quote machine. You never know what he'll say next and he can't resist answering a question or engaging with a reporter. Just as every Romney event seems basically the same, every Gingrich event is different. Bob Dole once quipped that the most dangerous place to be in Washington was between a camera and Senator Chuck Schumer. The same could be said of Gingrich. You ask him a question, he'll invariably turn on his heels and advance towards you. In debates, Gingrich has repeatedly cited the New York Times and has referred to a conversation he had had with Joe Klein. Until this race got underway, Gingrich was a Fox News contributer - a colleague of Williams, whose question was a pivotal moment and triggered the Gingrich surge that led to his South Carolina primary victory. At the end of the Charleston debate, Gingrich warmly thanked CNN and afterwards he spoke cordially with King. This morning, Gingrich appeared on CNN for an interview with Candy Crowley (though he did boycott ABC News). I'm told that on Friday night his event onboard the USS Yorktown was held below decks rather than on the upper deck because of a request by CNN. Gingrich knows how the media works. At that USS Yorktown event, Gingrich asked a group of Boy Scouts onto the stage in part because they were sitting on the "buffer" (the raised stand for photographers and cameramen) and impeding the press - a gesture that the press appreciated and that meant we got our pictures. As Politico's Ginger Gibson reports, Gingrich is very pally with the reporters who travel with him, calling on them by name and praising their good humour. He wished NBC's Alex Moe a happy birthday at a press conference. That evening, he appeared at her birthday dinner with a glass of wine in his hand. The press pass issued to reporters for last night's Gingrich victory event. By contrast, Romney very rarely engages with reporters - which makes a lot of sense in terms of message discipline but can lead to frustration within the media and accusations of being a programmed "Romneybot". Strangely enough, in this respect he is a little like Barack Obama, who in the 2008 campaign hardly ever yukked it up with reporters in the way Gingrich does. The joke among reporters in South Carolina was that Gingrich should make Juan Williams and John King campaign co-chairs or at least treat them to a slap-up dinner somewhere as they had been key factors in his victory. Equally, Fox News and CNN have been clearly delighted with the publicity from the electric debate moments when he rounded on their questioners. In South Carolina, it was an open secret that the press were rooting for Gingrich, not out of bias or any belief that he would be a weaker candidate against Obama but simply because the press wants a good story and a knock-down, drag-out battle for the GOP nomination to cover. Let's face it, Gingrich loves the "destructive, vicious, negative" news media. He knows how to play the game. And the press loves him for it. The Gingrich media credential for last night that proclaimed "I'm a REPORTER with Newt" had it about right. harndenblog.dailymail.co.uk January 22, 2012 in Current Affairs \| Permalink \| Comments (1)