You know it's an ugly, brutish debate when Newt Gingrich of all people turns to his rival and says, "You have to be realistic in your indignation."

Realistic? This from the Great Polarizer of the 1990s who rose to the ranks of House speaker with a militant zeal for defining Democrats as evil and moderate Republicans as fools; the insurgent GOP candidate who denounced President Obama as "the most effective food-stamp president in American history" who wants to transform America into "a brand-new secular Europe-style bureaucratic socialist system;" the resident of tony McLean, Va., who insisted that "elites... have been trying for a half-century to force us to quit being Americans."