Night of the Long Knives

I write with fear for Newt Gingrich tonight.

The man whose name (Saturday Night Live's) Seth Meyers quipped sounded like a character from Harry Potter, is in grave danger going into the CNN Debate tonight and the Florida GOP primary on Tuesday.

The Ministry of Magic and other GOP establishment evil-doers have set their wands upon Newt, feeling threatened by the only person who ironically can save Wizardom, and send Lord Voldemort out from the White House in November.

Since his tremendous comeback in South Carolina, Newt has been pilloried and vilified by a stream of Republican attackers like no other man in modern politics.  The intensity of the attacks against the former Speaker of the House by former (and some aging current) Members of the House of Representatives-- particularly the well-scrubbed Sen. Santorum who rivals him (Draco Malfoy?) for the nomination-- showed me how little I knew when I worked for the House in the halcyon days of the first GOP majority in decades.

My own obliviousness aside, watching the GOP establishment attack Newt is frightening.  It smacks of "Operation Hummingbird," the deadly 1934 Nazi party purge better-known as the Night of the Long Knives.  As the Wikipedia article explains:

Adolf Hitler moved against the SA and its leader, Ernst Röhm, because he saw the independence of the SA and the penchant of its members for street violence as a direct threat to his newly gained political power. He also wanted to conciliate leaders of the Reichswehr, the official German military who feared and despised the SA—in particular Röhm's ambition to absorb the Reichswehr into the SA under his own leadership. Finally, Hitler used the purge to attack or eliminate critics of his new regime, especially those loyal to Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, as well as to settle scores with old enemies.

While in tonight's debate you won't hear Newt Gingrich compare the attacks on him to a murderous purge that draws an allusion between the GOP and the Nazis, but make no mistake-- the cannibalism by aging liberal Republicans against Newt by "icons" like Sen. John McCain and Sen. Bob Dole (membah him?) do no good for the Republicans chance to defeat Barack Obama, let alone their "choice," the liberal Republican Governor from Massachusetts, Mitt Romney.

Depending on Newt's performance tonight, the Florida Primary will be decided and likely so his campaign for president.  Tonight's debate isn't itself the Night of the Long Knives, but the mobilization of lesser GOP elites against Newt Gingrich this week has been terrifying.