Has Gingrich Ever Heard An Idea He Didn’t Like?
Can we please bury the notion that Newt Gingrich is some kind of deep thinker? His intellect may be as broad as the sea, but it’s about as deep as a birdbath.
I’m not saying the Republican presidential front-runner is unacquainted with ideas. Quite the contrary: Ideas rain through his brain like confetti, escaping at random as definitive pronouncements about this or that. But they are other people’s ideas, and Gingrich doesn’t bother to curate them into anything resembling a consistent philosophy. Given enough time, I’m convinced, he will take every position on every issue.
The week’s most vivid example of Gingrich’s intellectual promiscuity sent principled conservatives into apoplexy. Mitt Romney, his chief opponent for the GOP nomination, had called on Gingrich to return the $1.6 million in consulting fees he received from housing giant Freddie Mac. Gingrich replied that he would “be glad to listen” if Romney would first “give back all the money he’s earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees” during his time as head of the investment firm Bain Capital.
If this were a column about Gingrich’s hypocrisy, the point would be that he has been scorchingly critical of Freddie Mac while accepting tons of the firm’s money. But this is about his shallowness — and the fact that, in blasting Romney, he adopted the ideas and rhetoric of Occupy Wall Street.
Republicans are supposed to believe that “bankrupting companies and laying off employees” is something to celebrate, not bemoan, because this is seen as the way capitalism works. Even in the heat of a campaign, no one who has thought deeply about economics and adopted the conservative viewpoint — which Gingrich wants us to believe he has done — could possibly commit such heresy.
Gingrich doesn’t just borrow ideas from the protesters he once advised to “get a job, right after you take a bath.” He’s as indiscriminate as a vacuum cleaner, except for a bias toward the highfalutin and trendy.
Take his solution for making the federal government so efficient that we could save $500 billion a year: a management system called Lean Six Sigma. There’s no way Gingrich could resist such a shiny bauble of jargon. Why, the name even includes a letter of the Greek alphabet — the sort of erudite touch that a distinguished professor of history, such as Gingrich, could not fail to appreciate.
I won’t argue with the corporate executives who say that Lean Six Sigma works wonders for their firms. But is a technique developed by Motorola to reduce the number of defects in its electronic gear really applicable to government? There’s no reason to think it would be, unless you somehow restructured government to introduce competition and a genuine, not simulated, profit motive. I guess Professor Gingrich will get back to us on that; at the moment, he’s too busy playing with his new piece of management-speak.
Another example is Gingrich’s bizarre claim last year that “Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior” was the key to understanding President Obama. Aside from being one of the stranger, least comprehensible utterances by a prominent U.S. politician in recent memory — and that’s saying something — it was also completely unoriginal. Gingrich was citing and endorsing a hallucinatory piece in Forbes by Dinesh D’Souza. It was merely the idea du jour.
Gingrich finds it hard to watch an intellectual fad pass by without becoming infatuated. Do you remember Second Life, the digital realm? In 2007, he told us it was “an example of how we can rethink learning” and potentially “one of the great breakthroughs of the next 10 years.” I know Second Life still exists, but have you heard a lot about it recently? Has it changed your world?
Gingrich didn’t originate the idea of solving the health insurance problem through an individual mandate, but he supported it — before bitterly opposing it. Nor was he saying anything new last week when he made the offensive claim that Palestinians are an “invented people.” His xenophobic views about the alleged threat to the United States from Islam and sharia law conflict with earlier statements praising immigration and the melting pot as great American strengths. But for Gingrich, the word contradiction has no meaning.
Gingrich’s debating technique is dogmatic insistence, rather than persuasion. His discourse knows no past and no future, just the glib opportunism of now.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, December 16, 2011
“A Heart Two Sizes Too Small”: Pretending I Am A Republican
Ok, I thought it would be fun to pretend that I am a Republican. Cut me some slack here. I know what some of you are thinking…this is some mean trick.
No, really, I am trying to figure out what I would do if I were running for president as a Republican. And I understand the problem with going “mainstream” now, as everyone is fighting for the most conservative, extreme wing of the party.
But here are 5 things I would suggest:
Middle Class: First and foremost, I would try and figure out how to fight for the middle class. I would not be talking about stopping a $1,500 tax break for working families, while suggesting another drop in the upper income tax bracket from 35 percent to 28 percent, even after the Bush temporary tax cut from 39 percent to 35 percent. The Republicans are doing everything in their power to pay for the tax break for the middle class in some fashion but do not seem to care much about paying for the Bush tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. This is hurting them badly politically and they need to support tax breaks for those who are suffering. So, I would be talking about the middle class by suggesting help for college and trade school, help with job training, incentives for hiring and expanding, and providing tax breaks for start-ups.
Tolerance: I would try and take on others (including the opponents) for gratuitous slams at gays, Hispanics, blacks, women, and Arab Americans. I would openly criticize an audience that boos a gay soldier fighting for his country, a candidate who talks about “Obama’s war on religion” while blasting gays in the military, and others who believe a state initiative on Shariah law is smart politics. Americans are moving fast towards tolerance and acceptance of those who are different from them—embrace it, don’t fan the flames of intolerance.
Role of Government: Republicans will, for the time being, blast government but they should say what they are for. How about acknowledging that the Securities and Exchange Commission should have had more teeth and been more vigilant in going after the Madoffs and Stanfords of the world? Now is not the time to let the financial system run amok; rather we should be tougher in protecting the “little guy”, the consumer, the investor, the depositor. Why not combine a concern for over-regulation of small businesses with a tighter grip on those who have abused the system?
Foreign Policy: This is one area where Republicans should zip it. If I were running I would give Obama his due on the war on terror, Iraq and Afghanistan, praise Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and pivot to domestic issues. Talk expanding trade, cutting good deals, competing with the Chinese and leave it at that—but don’t accuse Obama of being “weak.” Doesn’t work. Creating more jobs in the international economy is a much better message.
National Service: Sounds like a side issue, but I would call for all Americans to give back to their country. Everyone between 18-25 should serve in some capacity for two years, in the military, in the Peace Corps, Teach for America, in their local communities. The reward: help with their education, paying off student loans, assistance with grad school—a new GI Bill if you will—but ultimately, good deeds are their own reward. We would change the ethic in this country that you can have your cake and eat it too, that your government owes you, that there is no need to contribute your talents, hard work, resources, to others.
So, I guess if I turned into a Republican, I wouldn’t be very popular in the current crowd, would I? But my strong belief is that a Republican who adopted these five ideas might just stand a better chance of being elected next November. Yes, this is Christmas and a time of miracles but maybe, just maybe there are some Republicans out there who agree.
By: Peter Fenn, U. S. News and World Report, December 16, 2011
“Handsome Swindler”: Romney’s Eerie Post-Flip-Flop Consistency
When Mitt Romney decided to get Republican ideological-purity cautionary tale and non-witch Christine O’Donnell to announce her endorsement of him, he was probably thinking about how useful it would be to have the support of another staunch conservative. He may not have been thinking about some of the secondary issues involved in this plan, such as the fact that it would require O’Donnell to talk, which would involve her saying awkward things like, “he’s been consistent since he changed his mind.”
The line actually gets to the nub of the conservative question on Romney. Since he changed his mind, he has indeed been dogmatically consistent. (In contrast to Newt Gingrich.) But why?
One of the most revealing stories I’ve seen on Romney was written by Jonathan Weisman last month in The Wall Street Journal. In it, Weisman chronicles the degree to which Romney simply flipped a switch in 2005, deciding virtually overnight to stop courting moderates and liberals he needed to get elected in Massachusetts and to start courting the right. The switch occurred across the board, on social as well as economic issues:
A gun-rights lobbyist, Jim Wallace, found himself battling the governor over firearms fees and hunters’ priorities. A low point for Mr. Wallace came one day in July 2004 when Gov. Romney was set to sign a bill that banned assault weapons but that also had some provisions gun-rights groups liked. Mr. Wallace had an invitation to speak at the signing ceremony.
At the last minute, a gun-control activist, Jon Rosenthal, got an invitation too. Not only that, but as Mr. Rosenthal rushed into the news conference, he says he saw Romney aides pulling up the name tags taped to the floor that showed where each guest was to stand —tearing up the paper with Mr. Wallace’s name and replacing it with one bearing his own name. The gun-control advocate was placed close to the governor and got the speaking slot that Mr. Wallace, the gun-rights lobbyist, had expected.
Yet in the following year, 2005, both sides on the gun issue noticed a change.
In May of that year, Mr. Romney declared a “Right to Bear Arms Day.” Mr. Wallace’s group, the Gun Owners’ Action League, began having nearly monthly meetings with the governor’s top aides, he says. Mr. Romney signed legislation cutting some red tape detested by gun owners in November 2005, and less than a year later he became a lifetime member of the N.R.A.
The positive interpretation of this narrative, if you’re a conservative, is that Romney will stay bought — he decided to ingratiate himself with the right, and he needs to retain the right’s support to accomplish anything. That’s more or less the argument Ramesh Ponnuru made in his National Review cover story endorsing him. The negative interpretation is that Romney is essentially running a con, though it’s impossible to tell if he was conning Massachusetts then or is conning Republicans now. (My guess, based on Romney’s admiration for his moderate father, is that he’s conning conservatives now, but I can’t really be certain.) When you’re running a con, of course you stay consistent – you have to keep up the front, no matter what.
The robotic consistency of Romney’s newfound conservatism does contrast sharply with Gingrich, who lurches between hysterical right-wing paranoia and bouts of bipartisanship. And yet the erratic character of Gingrich’s swings suggests that they’re unplanned, and thus that they spring from actual conviction, albeit momentary convictions. Gingrich actually believes what he is advocating at the moment he is advocating it. Nobody can plausibly say the same of Romney.
Romney is the handsome swindler who plots to win your mother’s heart and make off with her fortune. Gingrich is like the husband who periodically gets drunk and runs off to spend a week with a stripper in a low-rent motel but always comes home in the end. Which one would you rather see your mother marry?
By: Jonathan Chait, Daily Intel, December 14, 2011
Mitt Romney And Newt Gingrich Now Engaged In All-Out Class Warfare
The Occupy Wall Street protest may have petered out, but its antagonism against the nation’s wealthiest one percent lives on in the unlikeliest of places: a GOP primary race between two multi-millionaires. As Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich duke it out in the weeks leading up to the first primary contests, their attacks on each other are increasingly focused on one another’s vast wealth. It all started on Monday, after Romney called on Gingrich to return the money he’d earned from Freddie Mac, for his work as a, um, historian. Not because earning money is inherently bad, but because of where it came from — an organization that conservatives blame for the economic meltdown.
Gingrich responded by attacking Romney’s time at investment firm Bain Capital, while also mocking his tin-eared $10,000 bet during Saturday’s debate:
“If Gov. Romney would like to give back all the money he’s earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his years at Bain that I would be glad to then listen to him,” Gingrich told reporters after a town hall, referring to the company Romney ran. “And I’ll bet you 10 dollars, not 10 thousand that he won’t take the offer.”
Gingrich’s condemnation of Romney’s private-sector experience didn’t sit well with a lot of conservative observers. On Fox News, Charles Krauthammer said it was a line you might expect to hear “from a socialist.” The National Review‘s Jonah Goldberg called it “petulant, leftwing, bunk.” Indeed, there’s nothing conservatives hate more than when liberals engage in so-called class warfare against the wealthy, something Obama is accused of on practically a daily basis. So Romney’s rejoinder today, provided to CBS News between trademark fits of fake laughter/panting sounds, probably won’t make the GOP establishment any happier:
“He’s a wealthy man, a very wealthy man. If you have a half a million dollar purchase from Tiffany’s, you’re not a middle class American.”
Isn’t there a drum circle somewhere you two could join?
By: Dan Amira, Daily Intel, December 14, 2011
The New Republican Revolution: “Fundamentally” Transforming The GOP
Should former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) win the Republican nomination for president, the fiery revolutionary seeking to “fundamentally” transform almost everything will have upended the political system anew. Unlike Gingrich’s successful revolution of 1994, his battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party in 2012 might not lead to the White House. But his nomination would overhaul the Grand Old Party, altering it in unexpected and unprecedented ways, and Gingrich would make history once again.
Here’s how:
1. Republicans will no longer belong to the party of order: The long-held tradition of nominating next-in-lines will be broken. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, running for six years, will have been turned out for the unlikeliest candidate — a former congressional leader already rejected and retired by the party with no experience running a presidential campaign. Conservatives, who prize caution, will gamble on a political lightning rod.
2. Town halls and good ground games will be so yesterday: Debates rule, and they helped bring Gingrich back from the political dead. He rocketed to the top of the polls without building a campaign in Iowa or any early states. As he toured the country doing book signings and his documentary screenings he didn’t log the traditional hours on the ground in these places that successful presidential candidates and previous nominees have. Iowans may have insisted on face-time in the past, but Gingrich might well prove that media buzz, social networking sites and stellar performances in nationally televised debates are the new ingredients for winning over voters. 3. Republicans have turned a critical corner on immigration policy: Gingrich’s immigration proposal, to provide longtime, law-abiding illegals with a path to legalization but not citizenship, was expected to sink him. Yet the same Republican voters who scorned Texas Gov. Rick Perry for his willingness to aid illegals seeking a college education in Texas have largely sat quiet over Gingrich’s plan to provide what many hardliners would define as amnesty. If Gingrich becomes the leader of the GOP, the tide will turn on its immigration policy, which could be a huge political problem for Democrats.
4. The revolving door can keep swinging: According to Esquire magazine, in the first half of 2010, before he entered the race, Gingrich’s American Solutions raised more than double the money raised by the Service Employees International Union, making it “the biggest political-advocacy group in America.” His Center for Health Transformation is a for-profit outfit charging fees from healthcare giants, including the largest insurers, of up to $200,000 per year to connect to Gingrich. His $30,000 per month retainer with Freddie Mac proves that highly paid “strategic” advice fattens the wallets of former politicians, whether they call themselves lobbyists or not.
5. Evangelicals will embrace an adulterer: Gingrich polls well with evangelical voters — adultery, divorces and all. Should he win Iowa, and the nomination too, it will be because he won enough of these voters to secure the largest coalition. These voters hate the sin but love the sinner and have moved off of social issues to focus on the economy. And they love Gingrich’s steadfast defense of Israel and tough talk on Iran.
6. Flip-flops are fine for credentialed conservatives: Be it a mandate for healthcare, ethanol subsidies, man’s role in climate change, Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) Medicare reform plan or the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), Gingrich has changed his mind on conservative bedrocks. But he is the architect of a conservative victory that brought Republicans back to power after 40 years. Romney is a former governor of Massachusetts.
By: A. B. Stoddard, Associate Editor, The Hill, December 14, 2011
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