Newt Gingrich: “Deconstructing A Demagogue”
When not holding forth from his favorite table at L’Auberge Chez François, nestled among the manor houses of lobbyist-thick Great Falls, Va., Dr. Newton L. Gingrich likes to lecture people about food stamps and how out-of-touch the elites are with real America.
Gingrich, as he showed in a gasping effort in Thursday night’s debate in Florida, is a demagogue distilled, like a French sauce, to the purest essence of the word’s meaning. He has no shame. He thinks the rules do not apply to him. And he turns questions about his odious personal behavior into mock outrage over the audacity of the questioner.
After inventing, and then perfecting, the modern politics of personal destruction, Gingrich has decided now to bank on the dark fears of the worst element of the Republican base to seize the nomination — using skills refined over four decades.
Monica Almeida/The New York TimesNewt Gingrich spoke at the 1998 Republican National Convention winter meeting in Indian Well, Calif.
Deconstructed, Gingrich is a thing to behold. Let’s go have a look, as my friend the travel guide Rick Steves likes to say:
The Blueprint. Back in 1994, while plotting his takeover of the House, Gingrich circulated a memo on how to use words as a weapon. It was called “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control.” Republicans were advised to use certain words in describing opponents — sick, pathetic, lie, decay, failure, destroy. That was the year, of course, when Gingrich showed there was no floor to his descent into a dignity-free zone, equating Democratic Party values with the drowning of two young children by their mother, Susan Smith, in South Carolina.
Today, if you listen carefully to any Gingrich takedown, you’ll usually hear words from the control memo.
He even used them, as former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams wrote in National Review Online this week, in going after President Reagan, calling him “pathetically incompetent,” as Abrams reported. And he compared Reagan’s meeting with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “the most dangerous summit for the West since Adolf Hitler met with Neville Chamberlain in 1938 in Munich.”
The Method. Even a third-grader arguing with another kid over the merits of Mike and Ikes versus Skittles knows better than to play the Hitler card. But Gingrich, the historian who never learns, does it time and again. Thus Democrats, he said last year, are trying to impose “a secular, socialist machine as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany.”
He has compared the moderate Muslims trying to erect a mosque and social center near Manhattan’s ground zero to Nazis, and made the same swipe at gays. People who love members of the same sex, he said, were trying to force “a gay and secular fascism” on everyone else.
Deny the Obvious. Gingrich is the rare politician who can dissemble without a hint of physical change, defying Mark Twain’s maxim that man is the only animal that blushes — or needs to. He’s also skilled at attacking the very things he practices. In the South Carolina debate last week, when Gingrich went ballistic over a question on an ex-wife’s claim that he wanted an open marriage, he said he had offered ABC numerous witnesses to rebut the charge. In fact, his campaign admitted this week, there were no such witnesses — only character rebuttals by children from a previous message.
His claim that he was paid at least $1.6 million by the mortgage backer Freddie Mac for work as a “historian” was a laughable fiction. This week, those contracts were released, and show no mention of historian duties; it was old-fashioned influence peddling.
He got caught by Mitt Romney Thursday in a classic political move. After Gingrich blasted Romney for investments that contributed to the housing crisis, Romney turned around and asked him if he had some of those same kinds of investments. Um, yes, Gingrich admitted, he did.
Go for the Hatred. It was Gingrich, even before Donald Trump, who tried to define the president as someone who is not American — “Kenyan, anti-colonial.” And there he was earlier this week, pumped by a big audience in Sarasota, Fla., reflecting back at him these projected fears. When he said he wanted to send President Obama back to Chicago, the crowd took up a chant of “Kenya! Kenya!”
Calling Obama “the best food stamp president ever” is a clear play on racial fears. In the crash of the last year of George W. Bush’s administration, food stamp use surged, but Gingrich would never associate a white Texan president with dependency.
A favorite target is the press. He’s snapped at debate moderators from Maria Bartiromo of CNBC, Chris Wallace of Fox and the preternaturally fair John King of CNN for asking relevant questions. It was a tired and predictable ploy when he tried it on Wolf Blitzer Thursday — he tried to deflect a question on his attacks by calling it a “nonsense question” — and Blitzer didn’t back down. But the outrage is selective and always calculated.
So, Gingrich was the picture of passive redemption when the Christian Broadcasting Network asked him, twice over the last year, about his many wives. In one case, Gingrich said he cheated because he loved his country so much. This week, he said his infidelities made him “more normal than somebody who walks around seeming perfect.” But he never flipped out at the Christian questioner, as he did at King, calling the CNN reporter’s query “close to despicable.” (Another favorite word.)
The general public can read this particular character X-ray, given that Gingrich’s unfavorable rating is off the charts, higher than any other major politician’s. And so could his former Republican colleagues in the House; witness the paucity of endorsements from those who served with him.
But he has a vocal constituency, weaned on the half-truths of conservative media. It makes perfect sense, then, that Gingrich this week demanded that crowds at future debates be allowed to cackle, whoop and whistle at his talk-radio-tested punch lines.
Let’s grant him his wish, and allow audiences to vent at will, as they did Thursday night in Florida. This kind of noise — from Republican debate crowds who have booed an American soldier serving overseas, cheered for the death of the uninsured and hissed at the Golden Rule — are a demagogue’s soundtrack.
By: Timothy Egan, The New York Times Opinionator, January 26, 2012
Why Evangelicals Don’t Like Mormons
According to a CNN exit poll of South Carolina Republican primary voters, Newt Gingrich, a thrice-married Catholic, won twice as much support from evangelical Protestants as Mitt Romney, a Protestant. And among voters for whom religion meant “a great deal,” 46 percent voted for Mr. Gingrich and only 10 percent for Mr. Romney.
This is the second evangelical-heavy state Mr. Romney has lost. With a third, Florida, next on the list, it’s important to consider the often antagonistic skepticism that many evangelicals have of Mr. Romney’s brand of Protestantism: Mormonism.
For many evangelicals, that faith — a “false religion,” as the Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress called it — raises serious doubts about Mr. Romney’s suitability for office. But such concerns ultimately say more about the insecurities of the establishment denominations than about Mormonism itself.
Many evangelicals assert that Mormonism denies the divinity of Christ and is therefore not a branch of Christianity. But the Mormon belief is that Jesus was the first-born child of God and a woman, and that humans can aspire to share his spiritual essence in the afterlife.
What’s more, if a belief in Christ’s divinity were used as a test of our politicians, many past American leaders would fail abysmally. Most of the founding fathers — including Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine — endorsed deism, which sees Jesus as a very good human being, not part of the godhead.
It was precisely the founders’ religious tolerance that, over the years, has given rise to many new denominations and sects — particularly during the so-called Second Great Awakening, the 19th-century period of religious revivals that energized existing churches (including the Baptist and Methodist churches, bulwarks of today’s Bible Belt) and yielded new ones, including the Mormons.
In that era, it was a short step from feeling that one was possessed by God, as often happened at revivals, to feeling that one was appointed by God for a special mission. Joseph Smith Jr., who founded Mormonism after experiencing a vision of an angel, was among them.
But Smith wasn’t alone; many religious groups sprouted during the period. Like Mormonism, some were founded by people considered divinely inspired by their followers — for instance, Ellen G. White by Seventh-day Adventists and Mary Baker Eddy by Christian Scientists — while others, like Charles Taze Russell of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, were admired for their charisma.
There’s plenty about these and other surviving Protestant groups that’s out of sync with mainstream religion. Christian Scientists, for instance, eschew doctors and medicine. Seventh-day Adventists have often set dates for the end of the world that have come and gone, while Jehovah’s Witnesses reject the doctrines of the Trinity and eternal punishment.
But neither those nor other American-bred religions arouse nearly the degree of anxiety that Mormonism does. Why?
For one thing, many people associate Mormonism with polygamy; according to a recent poll, 86 percent of Americans aren’t sure whether Mormons practice polygamy, despite the fact that the church banned the practice in 1890.
Then there’s the issue of race. In 1852 the church banished blacks from the priesthood and did not allow them back in until 1978. But while this is undoubtedly a stain on the church’s history, it was also a reflection of the country’s racial attitudes at the time.
Still, the church’s doctrines and practices, past and present, don’t fully account for evangelical uneasiness. After all, there are hundreds of religious groups in America today, some of whose tenets or practices are far more distant from the mainstream.
The real issue for many evangelicals is Mormonism’s remarkable success and rapid expansion. It is estimated to have missionaries in 162 countries and a global membership of some 14 million; it is also, from its base in the American West, making inroads into Hispanic communities. Put simply, the Baptists and Methodists, while still ahead of the Mormons numerically, are feeling the heat of competition from Joseph Smith’s tireless progeny.
Some evangelical leaders take this a step further to accuse Mr. Romney of vaguely conspiratorial motives. The Baptist minister R. Philip Roberts, author of “Mormonism Unmasked,” recently said that evangelicals are concerned not about Mr. Romney promoting his faith as president, but about the great boost a Mormon presidency would give to the church’s proselytizing efforts.
There is particular worry that Mr. Romney, a wealthy, prominent figure in the church, is too close to his faith. How else to explain the concern among evangelicals when it became public that Mr. Romney had tithed some $4 million to the church over the last two years?
Interdenominational competition may also explain why the faith of Mr. Romney’s father, George Romney, went unchallenged when he ran for president in 1968. Back then Mormonism was a much smaller, and therefore less controversial, part of the religious landscape.
Amid the passions of this election season, it’s time to revive the tolerant spirit of the founding fathers. Religious competition of any kind, they believed, can breed bigotry, repression and hatred. The founders made an earnest effort to keep religion out of politics. Let’s do the same as we carry out the important work of choosing our next president.
By: David Reynolds, The New York Times Opinion Pages, January 25, 2012
“Blind Trust Ruse”: Romney Does Not Dispute He Profited From Foreclosures In Florida
ThinkProgress reported Wednesday that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) has profited from thousands of Florida foreclosures through a Goldman Sachs investment fund. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R) blasted Romney on the trail today for those investments, and re-upped those attacks in tonight’s CNN debate.
Romney attempted to explain away the investments, saying he didn’t control them because they were part of a blind trust:
GINGRICH: Governor Romney has investments in Goldman Sachs, which is today foreclosing on Floridians. So maybe Governor Romney, in the spirit of openness, should tell us how much money he’s made off of how many households that have been foreclosed by his investments.
ROMNEY: First of all, my investments are not made by me. My investments for the last 10 years have been in a blind trust, managed by a trustee. Secondly, the investments they’ve made, we’ve learned about this as we made our financial disclosure, have been made in mutual funds and bonds. I don’t own stock in either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. There are bonds the investor has held through mutual funds. And Mr. Speaker, I know that sounds like an enormous revelation, but have you checked your own investments? You also have investments through mutual funds that also invest in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Watch it: http://youtu.be/A8Dg4wpZNRo
Notably, Romney never denied the charge that he made money off of foreclosures. Later in the debate, Romney was asked about the $3 million he kept in a Swiss bank account before it was closed in 2010. Again, Romney attempted to brush aside the question, saying, “I have a trustee” who manages a blind trust.
Romney’s reliance on blind trusts is interesting, considering it was he who called them “a ruse” when running against former Sen. Ted Kennedy (D) in 1994. And as ABC News noted, the trusts are “not so blind,” since they have been noted on his financial disclosure forms. The trusts are also maintained by Romney’s personal lawyer and don’t meet federal standards for elected officials. Romney’s original investments into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, meanwhile, were never in a blind trust.
By: Travis Waldron, Think Progress, January 26, 2012
Mitt Romney’s Mormon And Evangelical Divide
In the Republican nomination contest, where evangelicals represent a broader segment of the voting population than the general election, it’s widely accepted that Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith could cost him. Romney’s tax returns brought his faith back into the limelight when it was revealed that he does in fact tithe around 10 percent of his earnings to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as dictated by church rules.
Yet, in the weeks preceding the Iowa caucuses, I didn’t run across a single Republican who had ruled out Romney on the basis of his religion—or at least no voters willing to admit as such to a reporter. The worst I would get from the Iowans was concern that other people in the general election would be hesitant to cast their ballot for a Mormon, though they themselves were of course not influenced by that factor.
I arrived in Florida this week to cover the last few days of the Sunshine State’s primary, and at the very first event I attended, one voter made no qualms about why she wouldn’t be supporting Romney. “Mitt Romney is a Mormon, and therefore I have some issues with that,” said Peggy Bennett, a nurse from Cocoa. We were speaking in a crowded ballroom before Newt Gingrich’s big speech on space policy. When I asked her what specifically concerned her about the Mormon faith, Bennett said, “anything that adds to or takes away from what the bible says is not of God.” She said she was torn between Gingrich and Rick Santorum in the primary, but did clarify that she would support Romney in the general election if he wins the nomination.
I don’t want to extrapolate too much from one random voter, but many voters in the room noted that Gingrich’s tone matched evangelical interests. “From his moral standards, he pretty much thinks in the Christian and the evangelical side of things,” said Pete Bell. The central Florida corridor that might decide next Tuesday’s election is dotted with mega-churches featuring congregations with thousands of members who all share common convictions. In fact, the overflow parking for the Gingrich event was across the street from a small evangelical church.
This is the land of exurbs and subdivisions; despite high statewide unemployment and foreclosures there are still plenty of gaudy displays of wealth. When Romney campaigns in central Florida perhaps he can finally let loose among his fellow rich Americans. But while few voters may be as direct as Bennett on classifying their exact reason to oppose Romney, he’ll need to assure many that being a Mormon doesn’t threaten their evangelical faith.
By: Patrick Caldwell, The American Prospect, January 26, 2012
Romney Failed To Disclose Swiss Bank Account Income
Mitt Romney‘s campaign is amending the financial disclosure forms he filed in 2007 and 2011 to acknowledge that a Romney trust held a Swiss bank account, a detail that had been missing from both reports.
“An amendment is being filed to address this minor discrepancy,” a campaign official told ABC News in an email Thursday in response to questions about the apparent omission.
The discovery that the Romneys had $3 million in an account with the Swiss bank UBS came only after the Republican presidential candidate released his tax returns for 2010 on Tuesday. The campaign had maintained that it was not necessary to disclose the Swiss account because Romney’s money manager, Brad Malt, had shuttered it in early 2010.
Several Republican election lawyers told ABC News Thursday that the account still needed to be disclosed because a Romney trust earned about $1,700 in income on the account during 2010. The campaign’s decision to amend the forms was first reported by the Los Angeles Times.
At the same time, questions from ABC News about undisclosed income that appeared on Newt Gingrich‘s tax return have led Gingrich to announce that he, too, will be amending his financial disclosure report. Gingrich’s returns showed he received $252,500 in wages from Gingrich Holdings Inc. in 2010, but those wages do not appear anywhere on his presidential disclosure report.
“An internal account review found the need to amend the reporting,” said a Gingrich campaign official. “It was done immediately.”
Romney also decided to amend the report from his 2007 run for president, a decision first reported by the New York Times. Those who track the finances of presidential candidates said they found the failures to disclose these key financial details distressing. Bill Allison, editorial director of the non-profit watchdog group the Sunlight Foundation, said the whole purpose of the disclosure reports is for candidates to provide an honest look at their finances to voters.
“Obviously, if you don’t give them the information before the vote, it defeats the whole purpose of disclosure,” Allison said.
Melanie Sloan, executive director of the non-partisan group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said she, too, was dismayed — noting that while in Congress, Gingrich had been called out for failing to include information on his disclosure reports.
“You’d think someone once sanctioned by the House of Representatives … would be a little more careful with his financial disclosure forms,” she said.
The discovery that Romney’s vast holdings included an account in Switzerland, a country long notorious for helping the very wealthy hide their assets, came during his release of his tax return earlier this week. Malt, who oversees Romney’s blind trusts, acknowledged during a conference call with reporters that he decided to shut down the Swiss account because he worried it could create a headache for Romney’s campaign. “It might or might not be consistent with Governor Romney’s political views,” he said. “The taxes were all fully paid … it just wasn’t worth it. And I closed the account.”
That suggests, Allison said, that the campaign had a motivation to exclude any evidence of the Swiss account from the candidate’s forms. The Romney campaign called the omission an oversight.
Allison noted that there is generally no penalty for a candidate who leaves something off a disclosure report, and then goes back to amend the report if the missing information is discovered.
“Nobody is going to get into trouble for this,” he said. “That is the problem with the disclosure system.”
By: Matthew Mosk and Brian Ross, The Blotter, ABC News, January 26, 2012
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