A Rare Politician, “Newt Gingrich Is A Lousy Human Being”
Newt Gingrich is a lousy human being. Any assessment of his presidential aspirations has to begin with that. It’s always worth considering what motivates a politician, particularly given all the personal complexities that attend a life lived in public, but with Newt Gingrich this is particularly relevant. We have had some very successful presidents whose personal lives were messy and complicated and we have had some terrible and even disastrous presidents whose personal lives seemed relatively stable, but it’s rare that we have a president who is such a lousy human being and whose politics are no better. Newt Gingrich is a rare politician, but he won’t be president. He is a rare politician because he is such a lousy human being and because his politics are so terrible. He won’t be president precisely because he is such a lousy human being and because his politics are so terrible.
The politics of Newt Gingrich are obvious. Not only is he a cookie-cutter Republican champion of the 1 percent, he also is an enemy of the 99 percent. A typical Republican hypocrite on fiscal responsibility, he espouses a balanced budget but after voting for the policies of Reagan and the elder Bush that created the largest federal deficits in history, he then voted against the Bush tax increases that were meant to begin to address them. He then voted against the Clinton tax increases on the wealthy that helped balance the budget and spark the economic boom that created near full employment. And while opposing most of the best of President Clinton’s policies, he supported President Clinton’s worst policies. He now calls for possibly reinstating Glass-Steagall, but at the time he helped spearhead its repeal. And, of course, while opposing any restraints on the rapacious greed of the worst 1 percenters, he also opposes government programs that help those victimized by them. He proposed to privatize Social Security, which would have taken guaranteed income from the elderly and placed it in the hands of the same investment bankers who after being unfettered from Glass-Steagall crashed the economy; and with the economy still staggering from the Bush-Cheney economic meltdown, he is waging war on food stamps, while throwing in a racist dogwhistle at President Obama, just for good measure. He wants a Medicare voucher plan, which would take guaranteed health care from the elderly and place their medical security in the hands of those always benevolent private insurers. He wants to restructure the tax code, making the 1 percent even more disproportionately wealthy while adding even more to the federal deficit.
If it seems Newt Gingrich hates all things government, that’s only part of the story. Because while he does oppose using the government to help those who most need help, he does seem to love its ability to enrich himself. In fact, lest anyone forget, Gingrich’s long career in public office came to an ignominious end after he was caught using tax-exempt funds for overt political propagandizing, the wider investigation of which by the House Ethics Committee he obstructed by providing false information, the result of which was an enormously bipartisan House vote to make him the first Speaker of the House ever to be disciplined for ethical wrongdoing. And within a year, and just four years after leading the GOP to a House majority, he was so unpopular within his own caucus that he was forced to abandon his leadership, and soon his tenure in Congress. After which he went on to become a very well-paid non-lobbyist lobbyist. Newt Gingrich has never demonstrated any interest in helping make the world better for all, but he does love to make the world a better place for Newt Gingrich. Indeed, he seems to abide by a credo of asking not what he can do for his country but what his country can do for him. But that’s not even the worst of it.
In my opinion, and speaking only for myself, it is a fundamental wrong to politicize politicians’ personal lives. The private behavior of consenting adults is their business not ours. Even if they hypocritically attempt to politicize the personal behavior of others, theirs remains sacrosanct. That applies to Anthony Weiner and it applies to Sarah Palin. But when Newt Gingrich argued over a divorce with his first wife while she was lying in a hospital bed the day after her third surgery for cancer treatments, that was not the private behavior of consenting adults. Gingrich’s first wife was not consenting to being so abused. Gingrich was demonstrating his utter disregard for what most people would consider a basic sense of humanity. As Robert Scheer wrote in 1994:
The man has chutzpah. In his 1974 campaign, he ran on the slogan, “Newt’s family is like your family.” A sad but perhaps accurate commentary on life in suburban Georgia. In 1978, he ran an ad blasting his opponent, Virginia Shapard, saying, “If elected, Virginia will move to Washington, but her husband and her children will remain in Griffin.” Under Gingrich’s photo, it said: “When elected, Newt will keep his family together.”And he did, until he filed for divorce 16 months later. His wife told the court she wanted to stay married although she had “ample grounds” for divorce herself. But she complained bitterly that he failed to support the family. As her petition stated:
“Despite repeated notices . . . plaintiff has failed and refused to voluntarily provide reasonable support sufficient to include payment of usual and normal living expenses, including drugs, water, sewage, garbage, gas, electric and telephone service for defendant and the minor children. As a result, many of such accounts are two or three months past due with notices of intent to cut off service . . . . “
The man who led the Republican drive to punish the less fortunate by cutting off what was and is framed as coddling government services was then ordered by a judge to provide basic child and family support. And it’s even worse. Because the same deadbeat dad who refused to take personal responsibility for his own children’s “normal living expenses” would go on to promote a political plan for single moms and their children that was right out of the most dystopian Victorian nightmare. As recently referenced by digby:
In 1994, during the early days of the public debate on welfare reform, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich ignited a media firestorm by suggesting that orphanages are better for poor children than life with a mother on Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). Responding to blistering criticism, he first defended the proposal by invoking the idyllic orphanage life of the 1938 film “Boys Town,” finally retreating, at least rhetorically, from the entire controversy. Orphanages became just another blip on the nation’s radar screen, or so it seemed.In fact, the plan to revive orphanages is embedded in the Personal Responsibility Act, the Republican plan for welfare reform, and is a major piece of the Republican Contract With America. The Republicans’ pledge promised to balance the budget, protect defense spending, and cut taxes, targeting programs for the poor–cash assistance, food, housing, medical, and child care–as the big areas for major budget savings. Parents who are poor, it has been predicted, will have little or no choice but to watch their children board the orphan trains in search of shelter and food.
Newt Gingrich seems to have a problem with children. His own children. The children of single teenaged moms. Poor children:
“It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in, first of all, child laws, which are truly stupid,” said the former House speaker, according to CNN. “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. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they’d begin the process of rising.””You’re going to see from me extraordinarily radical proposals to fundamentally change the culture of poverty in America,” he added.
Change the culture of poverty? By punishing the poor? By punishing poor children? And of course, getting rid of unionized janitors undoubtedly would create even more poor children, because when you have a broken economy and chronic unemployment and you then start getting rid of some of the remaining well-paying jobs, you end up with more unemployed people. More people who were earning incomes and then suddenly aren’t. Some of whom undoubtedly have children. Children who then will become poor. Poor children created by Gingrich’s plan who then under Gingrich’s plan would be forced to find work, and maybe even would end up getting their parents’ old jobs. As non-unionized child labor janitors in their own schools.
Newt Gingrich personifies everything that is wrong with Washington. Even consummate DC Republican George Will can’t contain his disdain:
Gingrich, however, embodies the vanity and rapacity that make modern Washington repulsive.
And it’s astonishing that such a verity isn’t even the worst. Newt Gingrich wants to wage political war on poor children. And it calls into question the values of anyone who would support Gingrich. Any Republican who supports Newt Gingrich cannot claim to support families, family values, or any recognizable form of morality. Should Gingrich’s candidacy prevail in his party, it would prove once and for all that the much espoused Republican values are nothing but lies.
By: Lawrence Lewis, Daily Kos, December 11, 2011
Newt Gingrich’s Dangerous, Self-Aggrandizing Foreign Policy
A mere four months ago, Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign had just imploded, his top staff had resigned en masse, and the disgraced former House speaker was apparently engaged in nothing more than a self-promotion tour. Now, his inexplicable revival as a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination requires that Americans understand just how dangerous he would be if he became president. Like many of his rivals, Gingrich is reliably hawkish on foreign policy, but he has the habit of framing issues in stark, apocalyptic terms that inevitably exaggerate the scale of contemporary threats. There is every reason to expect that U.S. foreign policy would become even more militarized and confrontational under a President Gingrich, and America’s relations with much of the world would deteriorate quickly.
Many Republicans flatter Gingrich by treating him as one of the party’s intellectuals, but Gingrich frequently shows that he is unable or unwilling to make crucial distinctions in his treatment of international problems. He complains on his campaign website that “we currently view Iraq, Afghanistan, and the many other danger spots of the globe as if they are isolated, independent situations,” and that America “lacks a unified grand strategy for defeating radical Islamism.” But these conflicts are largely separate from one another, and there is no such thing as a monolithic, global, radical Islamism that can be addressed by one strategy. No conflicts around the world can be properly understood except by focusing on local circumstances, but for Gingrich, the ideological emphasis on a unified global threat takes priority over proper analysis.
Gingrich’s formulation doesn’t allow for recognizing the differences among diverse Islamist groups, and it prevents him from seeing how those differences could be used to American advantage. Instead, he lumps them together much as the absurd “Islamofascist” label did during the last decade, and adopts a posture of hostility toward much of the Islamic world as a result. This failure of intellect was on display last year when Gingrich joined in the ridiculous demagoguery against the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque,” whose ecumenical supporters Gingrich predictably labeled “radical Islamists.” Far from “telling the truth about our enemies,” Gingrich has a tendency to imagine enemies where none exist.
He has referred to Iran’s nuclear program as an “apocalyptic Iranian nuclear threat,” which grossly exaggerates the danger from future Iranian nuclear weapons and misleads the public into believing that Iran has decided to acquire nuclear weapons. Gingrich’s judgment of the Iranian threat is so exaggerated that he has claimed that it’s worse than the Cuban Missile Crisis. He openly supports waging covert war against Iran to thwart the threat he is exaggerating, which ensures that tensions between the U.S. and Iran would increase dramatically in the event that Gingrich took office.
While Gingrich often refers to himself as a “cheap hawk,” he has been firmly opposed to current proposals for military spending cuts. The ambitious and active role Gingrich envisions for the U.S. in the world precludes the possibility of meaningful reductions in military spending. Fiscal conservatives should expect no help from Gingrich in reducing the Pentagon’s budget.
Civil libertarians may have the most to fear from Gingrich. He has defended practices of indefinite detention, torture, and targeted assassinations of U.S. citizens such as Anwar al-Awlaki. Gingrich has articulated justifications for virtually every government abuse committed in the name of national security in the last ten years, so we should expect nothing less from his administration if he came to power.
Another worrisome sign of Gingrich’s belligerence was the approval he gave to John McCain’s dangerous overreaction to the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia. Despite the Georgian government’s role in escalating the conflict, McCain famously declared that “we are all Georgians,” and insisted that the U.S. support Georgia during its short, disastrous war. Gingrich called this “one of the best moments McCain had in the campaign so far,” which tells us that Gingrich believes that McCain’s aggressive, knee-jerk response to a foreign crisis was correct, and that it’s presumably the sort of response Gingrich would offer in a similar situation.
Perhaps worst of all is Gingrich’s supreme confidence in his own intellectual superiority. This means he will not be easily dissuaded from making policy on the basis of his numerous misjudgments about foreign threats and U.S. interests. A Gingrich administration promises to give America many of the misguided and harmful policies of the Bush years, but the errors will be compounded by Gingrich’s presumption that he understands the world far better than anyone else.
By: Daniel Larison, The Week, December 8, 2011
“This Year Belongs To The Republicans”: I Hope They Kept The Receipt.
The Wall Street Journal had an interesting report the other day on the congressional fight over extending the payroll tax cut through 2012. Democrats were quoted as saying they feel like they have the advantage in this debate — they’re the ones fighting for a middle-class tax break — but one Republican said something in response that stood out for me.
Terry Holt, a former House GOP aide who is close to Mr. Boehner, said any perceived political advantage is superficial, compared to the way Democrats have lost ground on spending issues over the past year.
“Democrats are trying to put the best face on a very bad year for them,” Mr. Holt said. “This year belongs to the Republicans.” [emphasis added]
Holt apparently looks back at the nearly-completed year and believes it’s been a good one.
He’s not alone. National Journal published the results of its latest Congressional Insiders Poll yesterday, and one of this week’s questions was, “What grade (A+ through F) would you give the first year of the 112th Congress?” Republicans were fairly impressed — a 39% plurality gave this Congress so far a B, and 28% gave it a C. While 66% of Democrats gave it an F, only 6% of Republicans felt the same way.
To my mind, this Congress is proving to be one of the worst — most destructive, most negligent, most dysfunctional — in the history of the country, but for Republicans, there’s a sense that 2011 wasn’t that bad. Indeed, a month ago, none other than House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) defended his institution, saying it’s his job to make Congress work, “and it is working.”
I wonder what the weather is like in the GOP’s reality.
Look, some of the questions are subjective, but if Republicans can look back at the last calendar year and feel a sense of pride, the obvious question is what exactly they hoped to get out of 2011.
The year has been so miserable, it’s tough to imagine what the GOP finds satisfying. Republicans’ approval rating dropped to levels unseen since Watergate; Congress’ approval rating dropped to a level unseen since the dawn of modern polling. Republicans held the full faith and credit of the United States hostage, on purpose, and caused the first-ever downgrade of the nation’s debt. Neither party has been able to pass any of its major legislative priorities, and thanks to Republican intransigence, compromise between the parties has become a laughable pipedream.
At the same time, the Republican presidential nominating race has become farcical, with random cranks, clowns, and charlatans taking turns as ostensible frontrunners, hoping to serve as the main primary challenger to a core-free, flip-flopping coward who lies with discomforting ease. The more Americans see of the GOP field, the more they recoil.
This isn’t to say that the year has been awful for everyone. The domestic economy and job creation have steadily improved; the United States has scored some major counter-terrorism and foreign policy victories; the American auto industry is starting to flourish after nearly collapsing in 2009; and we saw the formal end of misguided policies like “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
But the year’s best news invariably resulted from developments that Congress couldn’t screw up and Republicans had nothing to do with.
“This year belongs to the Republicans”? Unless nihilism was the goal — and perhaps it was — I hope the GOP kept the receipt.
By: Steve Benen, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, December 10, 2011
Republicans’ Reality TV Politics
I guess I was wrong. I thought Republicans surely would have come to their senses by now. Instead, they seem to be rushing deeper into madness.
With less than a month to go before the Iowa caucuses, Mitt Romney, the candidate shown by polls to have the best chance of defeating President Obama, evidently remains unacceptable to most of his party. He has spent the summer and fall playing second fiddle to a series of unconvincing “front-runners” who fade into the shadows once their shortcomings become obvious.
The latest is Newt Gingrich, a man with more baggage than Louis Vuitton — and the taste for fine jewelry of Louis XIV, judging by his Tiffany’s bill. Be honest: Is there anybody out there who believes Gingrich would make it through a general-election campaign against Obama without self-destructing? I didn’t think so.
Far from settling down, the Republican contest keeps getting wackier. I can think of no better illustration than the fact that a Dec. 27 candidates debate — the last before voting begins with the Iowa caucuses — will be moderated by Donald Trump.
Romney, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Jon Huntsman and Michele Bachmann have had the dignity and good judgment to decline participation in what is likely to be an embarrassment for all involved, except Trump, who lives in a world beyond shame. Paul’s campaign noted that the planned event would create an “unwanted, circus-like atmosphere” that is “beneath the office of the presidency.”
Gingrich, apparently lacking dignity and good judgment, will eagerly participate. He will be joined by Rick Santorum, who, let’s face it, has nothing to lose.
“I’m surprised that Mitt Romney said no,” Trump told MSNBC. “Frankly, I’m surprised, because he really wants my endorsement. I mean, he wants it very badly.”
Really? Before associating themselves too closely with Trump, I’d suggest all the candidates look at a Fox News poll from September. While 10 percent of Republicans surveyed said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate if he or she were endorsed by Trump, nearly twice as many — 18 percent — said Trump’s backing would make them less likely to vote for the candidate.
And that’s nothing compared with the potential impact in the general election against Obama. Among all voters, the Fox News poll found, only 6 percent said a Trump endorsement would make them more likely to vote for the endorsee, while a stunning 31 percent said they would be less likely to do so.
That’s quite an achievement for the helmet-haired host of “The Apprentice.” It’s hard to think of anyone else this side of Guantanamo whose backing could turn off nearly one-third of the U.S. voting population.
Doesn’t bother Gingrich, though. He seems to see participation as a matter of courage. “I think if you’re afraid to debate with Donald Trump,” he said, “people are going to say, ‘So you want me to believe you can debate Barack Obama, but you’re afraid to show up with Donald Trump?’ ”
Gingrich thus casts his lot with the likes of Sarah Palin, who claims that if she were running for president, she’d definitely take part in the Trump debate. She says the encounter will be “a positive thing” because Trump “will be able to attract a diverse demographic that maybe has not been as interested in this horse race thus far.” But since we know from the Fox News poll that much of the audience is likely to find the spectacle repellent, I suspect Palin is just showing solidarity with Trump. Reality-show stars gotta stick together.
Do you suppose Trump will ask Gingrich about the ethics violations he committed while he was speaker of the House, or the $300,000 penalty fine he had to pay? Do you think he’ll press Gingrich on the lucrative lobbying-by-another-name he’s been doing on behalf of clients such as the government-supported mortgage giant Freddie Mac? Do you imagine he’ll read Gingrich his Dickensian quotes about child labor laws and ask him to explain which jobs are suitable for urchins and which are not?
No, no and no. This show can have only one star, and we already know who it is. No matter which candidates show up, Donald Trump’s debate will be about Donald Trump. I’m betting that at some point during the event, Trump will actually utter the phrase “You’re fired.”
And from the direction of the White House, you’ll hear the sound of high-fives.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, December 9, 2011
More Damaged Than All Other Candidates Combined, Newt Is A Risky Bet
Despite frenzied prognostications from the political commentariat about Newt Gingrich’s inadequate war chest, lack of an actual campaign operation in the early voting states, potential absence from key ballots and even burdensome debt, they matter little as long as the former House Speaker continues to snooker GOP voters into thinking he can beat President Obama.
New polls showing Gingrich at the top of the field in Iowa, South Carolina and Florida explain why his sudden vault to front-runner status is genuine and durable; how (at least for now) Gingrich has surmounted the insurmountable and convinced voters who know him well that he is viable in a general election.
In focus groups Democratic pollster Peter Hart conducted for the Annenberg Public Policy Center last week, respondents characterized Gingrich as “grandfatherly.” In some polls voters have called him “authentic,” and a new New York Times/CBS News poll found that Iowa voters think Gingrich has the best chance of defeating President Obama, is most empathetic, the strongest commander in chief and best prepared for the job of president. Evangelical Christians, who don’t trust Mormons like Mitt Romney, are throwing their support by 3-to-1 behind the twice-divorced Gingrich, also an admitted adulterer.
Although Gingrich would conclude that his new popularity is a testament to his brilliance or at least to his powers of persuasion, it actually reflects an unrelenting resistance to Romney that has caused GOP voters to swerve chaotically from Sarah Palin to Donald Trump to Michele Bachmann to Rick Perry to Herman Cain. Gingrich was always a choice, but never a palatable one until the circus had finally folded tents and left town. Unlike the favorites before him, in Gingrich voters have someone steeped in critical policy matters, deeply interested in the problems the nation faces and effective at debating. But as a general-election candidate he is far more damaged than all of the other candidates combined.
Most who know him expect Gingrich to soon perform a campaign-ending act of self-destruction, with his trademark recklessness. No one will be surprised by new reports in The Washington Post that Gingrich has spent $3 for every $2 he raised in his campaign and that he paid himself back $42,000 for a mailing list his business gave the campaign, before paying back other vendors.
He sure doesn’t plan to stop running his mouth — just capturing the lead in polling last week led him to boast he would be the nominee, take credit for defeating communism in Congress and then suggest that poor people don’t work and are raising their children to be criminals. Indeed, Gingrich is just getting warmed up, and feels free to say almost anything at this point. After all, he practically embraced amnesty for illegal immigrants and didn’t see even a slight dent in his support. The voters have decided to overlook his personal failings, policy flip-flops, questionable ethics and even his attempts to explain that making more than $100 million representing interests like Freddie Mac in Washington wasn’t lobbying because he never needed the money because he makes $60,000 every time he gives a speech.
Unless they change their minds, Tea-infused Republican voters are opting for everything they have criticized: Gingrich is a controversial insider their party already turned away once because of his failed leadership and who has enriched himself with his access ever since. He isn’t a pure conservative, he isn’t fresh and he has no credibility as someone prepared to cut off the stranglehold of special interests.
Republican primary voters might be comfortable gambling on Gingrich, but it’s not a gamble independent voters are likely to feel comfortable with next year.
By: A. B. Stoddard, Associate Editor, The Hill, December 7, 2011
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