Newt Gingrich asks: “Do you want to move towards American exceptionalism, reassert the Constitution, reassert the nature of America, or do you, in fact, want to become a secular, European, sort of bureaucratic socialist society?”

Evidently his own answer is, “neither, thanks; I prefer a dictatorship.”

How do we know this?  Because he has decided to abandon the rule of law, one of the key things that makes America exceptional.

On “Face the Nation,” Gingrich announced not only that court decisions that are out of step with popular opinion should be ignored, but that as president he might have judges arrested by the Capitol Police or the U.S. Marshals.

Ignoring court decisions and having judges arrested is what dictatorships do.

He was referring to a decision to keep a public high school graduation secular, something required by the Constitution.  But ignoring unpopular opinions would not only let us establish government-ordained religion and reinstitute racial segregation, it would let undermine one of the pillars of our economy.   I’m thinking foreclosures are fairly unpopular decisions these days — shall we be allowed to ignore them?  How about evictions?  Don’t want to pay a judgment for breach of contract?  Form a mob and show how unpopular it is!

In my field, decisions tossing ADA cases based on procedural grounds such as standing or mootness are unpopular.  Shall we ignore them and bring our sledgehammers with us when we visit inaccessible facilities?  (Do NOT tempt me!)

Or are we only allowed to ignore decisions that are unpopular with conservatives?

And this guy is supposed to be the brain trust of the Republican party?

What’s funny is that Gingrich is smart.  He knows how important the rule of law is, which also means that he knows he’s full of shit.  But he has apparently decided that the only way to win this time around is graft the arrogance that has always been a side effect of his intelligence to some sort of random right wing slogan generator to create a FrankenCandidate who would be immensely entertaining if he weren’t so frightening.

And finally we have the Republican party 2011:  proclaiming conservative values while embracing a someone with three marriages and multiple affairs; decrying elitism while embracing a pompous windbag with a $500,000 line of credit at Tiffany’s; and proclaiming American exceptionalism while rejecting the rule of law.