Gingrich and Voight and the GOP's gun to its temple

The epic three-month-long, on-again, off-again, maybe, maybe-not, acceptance-one-day, rejection-the-next saga of Gov. Sarah Palin's attendance at one -- just one, mind you -- GOP dinner seemed to perfectly exemplify all her party's woes: She literally knew not if she was coming or going.

It was in March of this year that the progressively dysfunctional GOP invited Ms. Palin to speak Monday night at the annual Senate-House fundraising dinner, which is, among legal grafters, a really big thing. So oodles of timely preparation are always in order. But true to modern form, following her initial invitation there reigned unbridled "confusion" -- that's the one word that repeatedly pops up in every press account of this risible, Keynote Cops affair -- as to whether she would, indeed, even attend, let alone address this august gathering of GOP misfits, malfeasors and malefactors.

So the dinner's sponsors, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee, decided to shortcircuit the confusion by inviting a former House Speaker instead, which, naturally, only exacerbated the star-crossed confusion.

By last week they were back to reinviting Palin to attend and speak, by Saturday she was asked to attend but not speak, by Sunday and Monday they were begging her to at least show up and "be recognized," and "with just hours to go before the dinner was to begin, Palin's spokeswoman would not confirm even that she was attending."

Which of course she finally, anticlimactically did: "If she hadn't walked quickly across the stage at the outset," noted the Politico, "and if her presence hadn’t been mentioned briefly in the remarks of some of the evening's speakers, it would have been hard to know that she had, in fact, shown up."

So after all that fanfare and all those drumrolls and so much ado, nothing but a whimper, a fizzle and a bust -- it was, in short, a metaphorical dead-ringer for every "new" GOP phenomenon since January 20, from laughable alternative budgets to (un)affordable-health-care initiatives.

Which brings us to the dinner's actual keynote speaker, that non-citizen of the world, the "stunningly dangerous" Newt Gingrich.

I swear, I remain utterly bemused by that man's epithetic quality of "Big Ideas"; it's a term thrown around in and by the media with casual acceptance but virtually no proof. Wait, I take that back. Last night on "Countdown" Newsweek's Howard Fineman mentioned, with an equal level of utter bemusement, that Newt's last "big idea" was to enlist Visa and Mastercard in the task of keeping track of illegal immigrants. I kid you not, neither was Howard, and, apparently, neither was Newt.

Anyway, there was Mr. Gingrich, Monday night, "urg[ing] some 2,000 Republican party loyalists to stand up for GOP principles," as the AP reported from the scene, and brimming with all those principles-reflecting Big Ideas. Which were? ... let's see ...

Obama's economic recovery plan has, in less than 150 days running, "already failed," declared Newt, while also "blast[ing] Obama on everything from health care to national security."

Big Idea man? More like hit-man Joey "The Animal" Barboza, whom I hasten to distinguish from Dick "The Animal" Cheney, whom Newt was "happy" to call a good Republican. Look, Mr. Gingrich, I appreciate that in your mind you were only addressing 2,000 fellow gangsters, and that a certain malevolent esprit de corps is always nice to whip up at these events, but you've simply got to remember there are always microphones present.

The increasingly unpleasant and quite possibly senile actor Jon Voight was there to complement Mr. Gingrich's big ideas, which he did with alarming imitation, blurting that he was "embarrassed" by President Obama, whose leadership would be our country's "downfall," because "We are becoming a weak nation" under "Obama oppression."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said afterward that he "really enjoyed that" -- that, being Voight's public unhinging; Senator John Cornyn said it was "refreshing"; and Gingrich, again according to the AP, hailed it as "a rallying cry until the next elections."

Can it -- this, their entire muddle of clueless confusion and unquenchable hatefulness -- get any worse? Can it transmogrify any more hysterically? Can it, I dare ask, even survive till the elections after next? At this rate of downhill acceleration, I have my doubts.