Monster Rain wrote:The only thing scarier than Islamists and Secular Progressives are Islamist Secular Progressives.

KingCracker wrote:So your saying he would more then likely say one thing, and do others, and would/is be bought off rather easily?

The Nastiness of Newt

It figured that a Republican presidential primary race defined by nothing so much as a taste for cruel and unusual politics would eventually see Newt Gingrich emerge as the cruelest and most unusual contender. Sure, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Herman Cain might strive for the lowest common denominator. But Gingrich would outdo them in that department, despite heroic feats of insanity, stupidity and sex scandals by the other three. And so he has, emerging as the default choice of a new breed of Republican so extreme it would scare the bejeezus out of Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan.

In the same week that saw the former Speaker of the House become the most serious challenger to Mitt Romney, the Republican very few Republicans seem to like, Gingrich showed his true colors. As part of the ongoing GOP rant against organized labor, he stepped up with a proposal to fire school janitors and replace them with child laborers. Blaming “the core policies of protecting unionization and bureaucratization” for “crippling” children, Gingrich told a Harvard audience, “It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in, first of all, in child laws, which are truly stupid.” Gingrich did not misspeak. He was serious in suggesting that “most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school.”

Even in a party where shamelessness is now considered a virtue, it’s unsettling that a man who collected $30,000 a month for an hour of counsel to Freddie Mac administrators would attack school janitors, who according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics earn a mean wage of $13.74 an hour, or $28,570 a year. In response to Gingrich, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees said, “The people you want to fire and replace with kids? A lot of them are parents. That job puts a roof over kids’ heads, food on the table, and provides them with healthcare and the chance to get an education. That job is the only thing between a kid and poverty.” But Gingrich has never been bothered by the human costs of right-wing social experimentation. So why start, now that the Grand Old Party seems to be longing for a return to the Gilded Age? Gingrich is betting there’s no such thing as going too far to the right in this race. He may be right; just days after he championed child labor, he secured the endorsement of New Hampshire’s Union Leader, a rigid-right newspaper determined to stop Romney.

It’s still hard to imagine that Gingrich, with all his personal and political peccadilloes, will win the nomination. Romney has plenty of his own money, along with a shadowy network of PACs that will profit from the Supreme Court’s dismantling of laws controlling corporate and personal campaign giving. That cash advantage will allow Romney to launch the electoral equivalent of a nuclear strike against the latest anyone-but-Mitt boomlet. But should GOP disdain for Romney be so overarching that Gingrich prevails, he will then be the beneficiary of the largesse that Karl Rove, the Koch brothers and others are accumulating to pay for an anyone-but-Obama campaign in the fall.

Looming over Newt’s nastiness and Mitt’s mediocrity is this “silent candidate”: the flood of corporate and Wall Street money that will pour into the election. It might be hard to take the other candidates seriously, but the threat posed to our democracy by this one should not be underestimated.

KingCracker wrote:Ok as a guy that cant stand Obama, and a guy that knows nothing about Gingriches position on things, how does he actually look as far as a candidate? is he votable or is a secret fruit basket? Id like to know, because I can tell you 1 thing, I wont be voting Obama this year

Oh cmon Brass, you can paint anyone to look like the bad guy

BrassScorpion wrote:Or the cheating on 2 wives, one of whom was in the hospital with cancer when he left her?

BrassScorpion wrote:Is it the $300,000 fine for ethics violations that makes him so popular with Republican voters? Or the cheating on 2 wives, one of whom was in the hospital with cancer when he left her? Or maybe it's the callous cruelty and his 19th century attitude toward child labor?

KingCracker wrote: Did we ever figure out how to raise Andrew Jackson from the dead?

sebster wrote:Newt Gingrich has a reputation for being smart. He isn't, his speaches wobble from one factoid to the next, each sounding very reasoned and informed, but sounding like absolute nonsense to anyone who knows anything about the situation at all. The best way I've heard it described is that "Newt Gingrich is what stupid people think smart people sound like."

AustonT wrote:EFF that crap if we are resurrecting let's do GW and see which way he swings.

sebster wrote:Newt Gingrich has a reputation for being smart. He isn't, his speaches wobble from one factoid to the next, each sounding very reasoned and informed, but sounding like absolute nonsense to anyone who knows anything about the situation at all. The best way I've heard it described is that "Newt Gingrich is what stupid people think smart people sound like."

BrassScorpion wrote:Or the cheating on 2 wives, one of whom was in the hospital with cancer when he left her?

biccat wrote:
That doesn't necessarily mean that he's a smart politician, or a well spoken politician, but to attack him as not being smart is absurd.

biccat wrote:

BrassScorpion wrote:Or the cheating on 2 wives, one of whom was in the hospital with cancer when he left her?

No, she wasn't. This is a bad and stupid lie..

chaos0xomega wrote:Jon Huntsman, pay attention to JON HUNTSMAN!!!

Geez...

/does not understand lack of attention paid to Jon Huntsman

Manchu wrote:Dogma, by your thread title, I thought for sure this would be a thread about Mitt Romney!

George Will: Newt Gingrich a 'rental politician ... not a historian'

By ALEXANDER BURNS | 11/21/11 6:44 AM EST Updated: 11/21/11 10:41 AM EST

Conservative scribe George Will ridiculed Newt Gingrich as a "rental politician" on ABC's "This Week" yesterday, scoffing at the idea that the Republican Party's self-described "big ideas" candidate is employable as a historian:

Gingrich’s is an amazingly efficient candidacy, in that it embodies almost everything disagreeable about modern Washington. He’s the classic rental politician. People think his problem is his colorful personal life. He’s gonna hope people concentrate on that, rather than on, for example, ethanol. Al Gore has recanted ethanol. Not Newt Gingrich, who has served the ethanol lobby. Industrial policy of the sort that got us Solyndra – he’s all for it. Freddie Mac, he says, hired him as a "historian." He’s not a historian. Hire Sean Wilentz, hire Gordon Wood if you want a historian.

Mediaite has the video here. Will's undisguised scorn is a good illustration of why Gingrich, even as he makes a bid for the affections of rank-and-file anti-Romney voters, is unlikely to win over much of anti-Romney conservative upper crust. As much as there's still a demand for an impressive, thoughtful conservative in the race who can lead the party to Romney's right, most of the political elites who know Gingrich best were convinced a long time ago that he isn't that guy.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/68801.html#ixzz1fLpNGYzY

Gingrich: A gold medal in hypocrisy
By Jennifer Rubin

There a few things more distasteful about Newt Gingrich than his grotesque hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is a quality not uncommon among pols, but Gingrich takes it to new levels. The man who was for the Libya war before he was against it, was for the individual mandate before he was against it, savaged Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan before he admired it, and snuggled up to Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on global warming before he renounced her global warming fetish has no problem casting himself as the heroic, consistent conservative while criticizing his opponent Mitt Romney for his changes of mind.

And when it comes to excoriating lobbyists and special interests, no one tops the candidate from Big Pharm, Freddie Mac and the ethanol industry. In the Dartmouth debate, Newt went on his usual roll about the financial crash with no hint of self awareness:

The fact is, in both the Bush and the Obama administrations, the fix has been in. And I think it’s perfectly reasonable for people to be angry. But let’s be clear who put the fix in: The fix was put in by the federal government.

And if you want to put people in jail — I want to second what Michele said — you ought to start with Barney Frank and Chris Dodd and let’s look at the politicians who created the environment, the politicians who profited from the environment, and the politicians who put this country in trouble.

Not even probation for the historian who carried water for Freddie?

But nothing quite tops his lecturing Herman Cain about adultery. Politico reports: “Newt Gingrich, who has been friendly with Herman Cain but who has suggested his opponent needs to deal with the drip-drip of allegations about his past, suggested the businessman needs to address the claims made by Ginger White. ‘It is something that Mr. Cain will have to settle with the country and talk to the country about,’ Gingrich told CNN’s John King, as relayed by Politico’s Juana Summers. ‘It is sad to see that level of pain brought out, but I think he’ll have to deal with it.’ ” Gag.

On this the commenters were priceless. “I would like Gingrich to address the nation about his past multiple affairs. Maybe Gingrich and Cain can do a joint press conference,” wrote one. Another: “Newt telling Cain to talk to the country. Yeah, like Newt ever has [talked] about himself being a serial adulterer....” And finally, like many of us, this commenter can barely hide disgust: “After all, Cain’s merely been accused of philandering, but Gingrich is known to have philandered with his current wife, and evidently that’s just the ticket to winning the Truer-than-thou-Conservatives’ ‘values’ votes.”

Really, what’s next — the Family Leader considering him for its endorsement as the best “values’ candidate? Oh, well, yes. ( The other contenders for the nod, Rep. Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, have every reason to be appalled that they could lose out to a character with so little character.)

The very fact that Gingrich would so blithely direct Cain to bear his soul undermines Gingrich’s canard that he’s truly repentant. If he were truly remorseful and shamed by his own conduct, would he be going into his holier-than-thou routine? I think not.

Because Gingrich cheated on two wives years ago he seems to have been afforded a pass few other pols get. Why raise such a fuss over former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, who only cheated on one wife? Why get bent out of shape about Bill Clinton for that matter?

Gingrich’s serial adultery and his current hypocrisy suggest not a immoral man, but an amoral one. Rules, shame, punishment, consistency and transparency are abstractions for him, tools to be wielded against political opponents while his own supposed brilliance and patriotism exempt him from the standards that mere pols must follow. Really, is this a person whose values and judgment you’d trust to manage a charity or hold a leadership position in your church, let alone occupy the Oval Office?

Manchu wrote:I just got the newt confused with the salamander.

dogma wrote:Somehow I missed that.