Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says the best way to understand President Obama is as a "con" artist motivated by a "Kenyan, anti-colonial" worldview he inherited from his father. Gingrich, a presumptive 2012 GOP presidential candidate, says he found this "stunning insight" in an article in Forbes by Dinesh D'Souza. Is Obama in fact too Kenyan, thanks to the influence of a father he barely knew, or is Gingrich flirting hard with the political fringe? (Watch an MSNBC discussion about Gingrich's comments)
What's Kenya got to do with it? Gingrich and D'Souza are proof that "Obama Derangement Syndrome" is now "as brain-devouring as Bush Derangement Syndrome was," says Tim Cavanaugh in Reason. D'Souza's thesis is just dumb — Obama is stumbling because he's a boring "New Deal leftist," not some exotic Kenyan anti-colonialist. And Gingrich's embrace of it shows why he's the "master of the politics of personal self-destruction."
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