What Newt Gingrich and Tinkerbell have in common

If you watched the debate last night, you likely noticed that the audience was eerily silent. They had been asked/admonished by Brian Williams not to be hootin' and hollerin' like they have in past debates.

Regardless your thoughts on Williams and NBC and the liberal media and their desire to silence the Right, this was a major problem for ONE candidate: Newt Gingrich. It was the rowdy crowd -- in both the Fox News debate when Newt took on Juan Williams' race-related questions and the CNN debate when he lectured John King for the media's "shameless" use of the interview with his second scorned ex-wife, Marianne Gingrich.

Because Newt knows that without the rowdy crowds his campaign suffers, the gentleman from Georgia has decided that if the rules can be HIS rules, then he's not going to play.

Newt Gingrich insists his fans will not be silenced.

Mr. Gingrich, a former House speaker, on Tuesday morning threatened not participate in any future debates with audiences that have been instructed to be silent. That was the case on Monday, when Brian Williams of NBC News asked the audience of about 500 people who assembled for a debate in Tampa to hold their applause until the commercial breaks.

In an interview with the morning show “Fox and Friends,” Mr. Gingrich said NBC’s rules amounted to stifling free speech. In what has become a standard line of attack for his anti-establishment campaign, Mr. Gingrich blamed the media for trying to silence a dissenting point of view.

Sounds a lot like Tinkerbell, who also required audience applause to survive: