Newt Gingrich on the House floor during the health care debate -- March 16, 1994:
Mr. GINGRICH.
I agree with my friend, the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Gephardt]. I want to reach out in a bipartisan way to pass the bill. I praise the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Bilirakis] and the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Rowland] for a bipartisan bill. I praise the gentleman from Iowa [Mr. Grandy] and the gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. Cooper] for a bipartisan bill. They are starting in the right direction to reach out.
How did that work out?
So why is Sen. Mark Warner one of the many Democrats playing right into Newt Gingrich's hands? From Lowell Feld, who interviewed Warner this weekend for Blue Virginia:
Senator Warner appears committed to at least attempting bipartisanship (what he likes to call "radical centrism"), at least with a few "moderate" Republicans like Olympia Snowe (ME), Susan Collins (ME), Charles Grassley (IA), and Michael Enzi (WY). Warner makes a strong case for getting a health care reform bill that's at leaest somewhat bipartisan so it can't easily be dismissed as "Democratic health care reform." Also, Warner wants health care reform that has enough bipartisan buy-in that it actually lasts.
When I was a law student at UVA, I campaigned for Mark Warner during his successful 2001 gubernatorial run -- and actually campaigned for him in 1996 during his first Senate run too. So I have a warm spot for him.
But this is ridiculous.
First, this strategy plays right into the hands of Gingrich and others who want to kill the public option and kill reform.
Second, announcing the need for "bipartisanship" during the stimulus fight gave away Democrats' leverage in negotiations -- it told Republicans they might as well drag their feet because Democrats wouldn't pass a bill until they agreed.
That resulted in a worse stimulus than just forcing Republicans to vote on a Democratic plan. States like Virginia got less money than needed -- and now the watered-down elements of the stimulus are held against Democrats, not Republicans. If we pass a water-down health care reform, and consumers feel screwed, which party will they blame?
And third, why on earth would Warner walk away from a Democratic branded health care plan if it was good for the public? If Republicans want to be the party of no health care reform, ceding the ground to Democrats -- fine. Let them wander the wilderness for a couple more decades.
Democratic politicians, please -- stop playing right into the hands of Gingrich and other reform opponents. Stand on principle. Follow Sen. Jay Rockefeller's lead. Say that if Republicans won't do the public's work, Democrats will do it without Republican votes if that's what it takes.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich lent credence Sunday to Sarah Palin's claim that the healthcare reform legislation will create "death panels" to judge end-of-life issues.
"Communal standards, historically, is a very dangerous concept," Gingrich said on ABC's "This Week." ...
... Nataline Sarkisyan, a 17-year-old from Glendale, Calif., died Thursday just a few hours after her insurer, Cigna HealthCare, approved a procedure it had previously described as "too experimental."
..."They have insurance, and there's no reason that the doctors' judgment should be overrided by a bean counter sitting there in an insurance office," Jenkins said. ...
Tuesday, March 22, 2005 Sun Hudson, a six-month old Texas baby died last week when health care providers at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston, Texas removed his life support system over the objections of his mother. The action was authorized under the 1999 Futile Care Law which was signed into law by then-Gov. George W. Bush.
Under the Texas Futile Care Law, health care workers are allowed to remove expensive life support for terminally ill patients if the patient or family is unable to pay the medical bills. ...
... So the hospital invoked the state law that allows it to end life-sustaining treatment in medically futile cases after a 10-day notice to the family. That deadline was voluntarily extended while the hospital and family tried, unsuccessfully as of Monday, to find another facility to care for Emilio.
Catarina Gonzales, 23, who has no other children and cannot have more, denies that her son is nonresponsive, as medical caregivers say, Carden said. She says the boy smiles and turns his head toward voices. ...
Yeah, I can't stand these people. And not only because my 5th metatarsal's broken and I can't really stand.
Week before last it was Newt Gingrich tweeting, "White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw." A week later, on his website, Newt wrote:
The word "racist" should not have been applied to Judge Sotomayor as a person,
as if some stranger had done it, not Newt himself.
Today, it was Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, usually regarded as one of the few non-insane Republicans on Capitol Hill, making a fool of himself on Twitter:
Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley... issued two angry "tweets" Sunday morning as the president wrapped up an overseas tour.
For months Obama had left the details of health care legislation to Congress, then inserted himself firmly into the debate in recent days, including using his weekly radio address Saturday to declare "it's time to deliver" on health reform.
Grassley's first tweet: "Pres Obama you got nerve while u sightseeing in Paris to tell us 'time to deliver' on health care. We still on skedul/even workinWKEND."
A short time later: "Pres Obama while u sightseeing in Paris u said 'time to delivr on healthcare' When you are a 'hammer' u think evrything is NAIL I'm no NAIL."
Old habits die hard, I guess. The Republicans had a good long run snarling at everyone and everything in sight. It's pitch perfect for talk radio or cable TV. But it's not 1994 or even 2001 anymore. And Twitter is not Faux News. You don't impress or intimidate anyone when you strike a belligerent pose on Twitter for no good reason whatsoever, except that you're a one-trick pony and that's your trick; you just come across as a petulant twit. Which, of course, you are.
Asked to respond to Grassley's Twitter commentary, White House spokesman Reid Cherlin said: "President Obama is gratified that the Senate is working hard to bring a health reform bill to the floor on schedule. He looks forward to continuing his work with them upon his return from the commemoration of Allied heroism at D-Day."
A media environment that tilts to the right is obscuring what President Obama stands for and closing off political options that should be part of the public discussion.
That's the first line of his June 4 column. And he's absolutely right. But the title of that column is "Rush and Newt Are Winning" and that's absolutely wrong. That's not the root of what's wrong in his column, though. It's just the tip-off.
Dionne continues:
Yes, you read that correctly: If you doubt that there is a conservative inclination in the media, consider which arguments you hear regularly and which you don't. When Rush Limbaugh sneezes or Newt Gingrich tweets, their views ricochet from the Internet to cable television and into the traditional media. It is remarkable how successful they are in setting what passes for the news agenda.
The power of the Limbaugh-Gingrich axis means that Obama is regularly cast as somewhere on the far left end of a truncated political spectrum. He's the guy who nominates a "racist" to the Supreme Court (though Gingrich retreated from the word yesterday), wants to weaken America's defenses against terrorism and is proposing a massive government takeover of the private economy. Steve Forbes, writing for his magazine, recently went so far as to compare Obama's economic policies to those of Juan Peron's Argentina.
The mention of Steve Forbes provides the opening for seeing what's wrong with Dionne's headline formulation: It's not "the Limbaugh-Gingrich axis". It's our entire political class that's out of whack. Not just Rush-Newt and Steve Forbes and Dick-Liz Cheney and Sarah Palin and Rick Perry and Pat Buchanan and Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck and etc., etc., etc. Not just the rightwing crazies, in other words, but the "sensible" Democratic establishment as well. In short, all of Versailles.
Newt Gingrich has put up a new post on his Web site saying he shouldn't have called her a racist -- and then proceeds to go into detail about how she's a racist!
"The word 'racist' should not have been applied to Judge Sotomayor as a person," Gingrich says, "even if her words themselves are unacceptable (a fact which both President Obama and his Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, have since admitted)."
Then he goes into all sorts of details about the "wise Latina" comment, the intricacies of the New Haven firefighters case, and other objections he has to Sotomayor. At each juncture, he borrows a line from Fox News: "You Read, You Decide."
Well, at least Gingrich does us the favor of underscoring the folly of the "pragmatic" but utterly mistaken response to apologize--when I explained there was absolutely no reason to (in my diary, "What Sotomayor ACTUALLY Said, And Why No Apology Is Necessary"). That's far and away the strongest thing he's got going for him. The rest is just warmed over racist BS table scraps.
In fact, Gingrich'S invocation of the "You Read, You Decide" mantra is actually used to distance himself from any engagement with Sotomayor's actual record. It is best comprehended as an of performance, a ritual invocation of the gods of Faux News, rather than any serious sort of argument. The purpose, quite simply, is to stir up outrage, and to throw in the shabbiest imaginable appearance of rationality, due to the lingering prestige rationality still manages to command.
NOTE: I should be fundraising here, folks. I wanted to give you good reasons to support the site before rattling the old tin cup. But as often happens, instead of polishing something off I got carried away in a whole new direction, and so I've got the post below. But please consider as you read it if there is anywhere else on the net where you're likely to read this particular take. I'm sure there are some. But there are few, if any, that are situated the way that Open Left is. Please consider what that means, and act accordingly
As I noted in an earlier diary, Newt Gingrich has gone all-in with a nutjob email attack on Sotomayor. In this diary, I want to deconstruct Gingrich's attack, explicating both the lies and the racism involved. The racism is most accurately understood in terms of preserving white racial power, along the lines indicated by social dominance theory, which is a theory of group dominance. As a consequence, and a result of the civil rights revolution of the 1960s, the old power relations are largely maintained in the deceptive guise of a new dispensation. Three inter-related patterns are particularly salient for the analysis in this diary: (1) A new pseudo-egalitarian narrative, involving language such as "equal opportunity, not equal outcomes" is used to ensure against equal outcomes, while distracting attention from the fact that opportunities remain vastly unequal. (2) The realities of historical and material context are suppressed, so that a realistic critical analysis of existing conditions is rendered impossible. (3) All attention is focused on (or deflected away from) individual actors, about whom narratives can readily be shape-shifted on the spot.
Before turning to examine Gingrich's email directly, I want to turn to an illuminating NY Times op-ed, "Rogues, Robes and Racists" by Charles M. Blow, which begins thus:
Someone pinch me. I must be dreaming. Some of the same Republicans who have wielded the hot blade of racial divisiveness for years, are now calling Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court nominee, a racist. Oh, the hypocrisy!
The same Newt Gingrich who once said that bilingual education was like teaching "the language of living in a ghetto" tweeted that Sotomayor is a "Latina woman racist." The same Rush Limbaugh who once told a black caller to "take that bone out of your nose and call me back" called Sotomayor a "reverse racist." The same Tom Tancredo, a former congressman, who once called Miami, which has a mostly Hispanic population, "a third world country" said that Sotomayor "appears to be a racist."
This is rich.
Even Michael Steele, the bungling chairman of The Willie Horton Party knows that the Republicans have no standing on this issue. In an interview published in GQ magazine in March, he was asked: "Why do you think so few nonwhite Americans support the Republican Party right now?" His response: "Cause we have offered them nothing! And the impression we've created is that we don't give a damn about them or we just outright don't like them." Ding, ding, ding, ding.
As Blow's first few paragraphs make plain, there is little doubt that those leading the attacks on Sotomayor are themselves infected with the very same racism they claim to see in her. And he proceeds to demonstrate the vacuity of their attacks in greater detail. Yet, even his explication suffers from an over-concentration on the individual actors within the field of sustained white privilege, as opposed to a focus on the field itself. Blow is working primarily within the constraints of this new dispensation, and so the most he can possibly achieve is to reveal contradictions within it. He does this quite brilliantly, but such a strategy is necessarily limited in how far it can go.
Desperately trying to distract attention from the rapidly-breaking, multiple-angle story that BushCo tortured detainees to concoct a phony excuse for the Iraq War, the GOP has decided that the best defense is a good offense, and if that's not available, then just giving offense will have to do.
And so they're going after Nancy Pelosi for sticking by her guns that the CIA never briefed her that it had already used torture. The CIA said they did brief her, Pelosi says not so much. And since the CIA also said they had briefed former Senator Bob Graham four times (including twice shortly after Pelosi) and now they've been forced to back down from that, things aren't really looking so good for the Slam Dunk-era CIA guys, and their current-day ass-coverers.
But you go to war with the lies you've got, as a great liar once said, not the lies you wish you had. Leading the crowd, of course, is the most hyperboliplectic GOP leader/liar of the past 20 years, serial adulterer Newt Gingrich.
In an interview with ABC News Radio's Marcus Wilson, Gingrich, R-Ga., said Pelosi, D-Calif., "has lied to the House" in claiming that she was never briefed by the CIA about the Bush administration's use of waterboarding and other harsh tactics.
"I think she has lied to the House, and I think that the House has an absolute obligation to open an inquiry, and I hope there will be a resolution to investigate her. And I think this is a big deal. I don't think the Speaker of the House can lie to the country on national security matters," Gingrich said.
He's right, of course. That's the President's job!
February 13, 2009
Gingrich: Obama Has Rekindled 'Red vs. Blue' @ 10:29 am by Michael O'Brien
President Obama reignited the "red versus blue" partisan divide his campaign had sought to heal in less than a month, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) alleged Friday.
"President Obama has not yet reconciled his bipartisan rhetoric with his partisan policies," Gingrich said in an interview with The Daily Beast. "In a sense they are recreating the red vs. blue partisanship that we were all tired of. And they've managed to do it in less than a month."
Reality: Not So Much:
Looks like it's the Congressional GOP that's dividing the nation much more, and getting by far the smaller share.
But wait! that was all the way back on Feb. 6-7. Perhap's Obama's done a nosedive in the polls since then?
From the very beginning, there were consistencies and inconsistencies in Ashley Todd's narrative about the alleged attack she suffered. The inconsistencies were within the story itself (the reverse "B" most obviously). The consistencies were with a long, long history of lies about blacks that are inescapably linked with racism in all its forms, from slavery, through segregation, through the "colorblind" racism of the present day. Both leaped out at me as the story exploded. Among the consistencies were the 4,742 identified lynchings from 1882 to 1964, for which the breakdown of "causes" reads:
"Cause"
Number
Percent
Homicides
1,937
40.84
Felonious Assault
205
4.32
Rape
912
19.22
Attempted Rape
288
6.07
Robbery and Theft
232
4.89
Insult to White Person
85
1.79
All Other Causes
1,084
22.85
Total
4,743
100.00
Speaking of "Insult to White Person," although not strictly a "lynching" per se, I thought as well about Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy murdered for whistling at a white woman. You see, the history of lynching is a history of terrorism, a history of collective punishment and mass intimidation. One black does something, however trivial-or is alleged to-and some black, any black, must pay, without all that "due process" stuff that's reserved for white people.
This, quite naturally, puts the entire black community at risk. Which is, of course, the underlying point. A point that's very much alive today, as revealed in a blog post from Fox Executive Vice President Joe Moody, titled, with unintended irony, "Moment of Truth":
If Ms. Todd's allegations are proven accurate, some voters may revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are racists (with due respect to Rep. John Murtha), but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee.
Revisit their support for Obama not because they are racists? Why then? What exactly is it, Joe, that connects a blackety-black man who attacks a white female McCain volunteer with support or lack of it for the Senator?
It's not just racism is a generic sense, but the specific tradition of racial terrorism that's being invoked here. Any black at any time can be singled out for any reason, even if he's on the verge of being elected President of the United States.
Newt dumped cancer-stricken 1st wife. When his pastor criticized him for not supporting his two kids, he left the church. Newt dumped 2nd wife after cheating on her with the Congressional aide who is now his 3rd wife. The scandal sidelined Newt in 2008.
Until now.
My fellow Americans, meet a true defender of traditional marriage:
With Newt's YouTube plug for Prop 8 now airing over at the Yes on 8 blogs, maybe today's a good day to revisit Jeralyn's TalkLeft post from 2002 on the subject of Republican Sexual Hypocrisy.
Drill Here, Drill Now -- But What Are The Oil Companies Planning?
Nationally, Drill Here, Drill Now seems to be the only issue where Republicans are gaining any traction with voters during 2008. For those who don't know, Drill Here, Drill Now started on the website www.americansolutions.com. A couple of mouse clicks on the American Solutions website will take you to a screen with friendly welcome from none other than former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.
Newt Gingrich wants Republicans to shut the government down over drilling. Here's Tom Daschle.
"The Republicans haven't had much luck with shutdowns in recent years, and I can't imagine that this would be any different," he said. "The American people want to see progress, they want to see comity, they want to see bipartisanship. They want to see some action, not shutdowns. I can't imagine they would fare any better this time."
McCain's new ad emphasizes the disgusting bipartisan praise of John McCain by leading Democrats.
The Obama campaign tried to run ads on gas pumps. They purchased the time and space, and then the gas stations rejected the ads because they attacked oil companies and John McCain.
Greyhound has scrapped an ad campaign that extolled the relaxing upside of bus travel after one of its passengers was accused of beheading and cannibalizing another traveler.
The ad's tag line was "There's a reason you've never heard of 'bus rage.'"
Nikki Tinker's latest anti-semitic ad has drawn a denouncement from her supporting group, EMILY's List. Howie Klein has more
A senior adviser to Barack Obama has blamed recent attack advertisements comparing the Democratic presidential hopeful to celebrities Britney Spears and Paris Hilton for a dip in Mr Obama's polls with voters.
Tom Daschle, the former Democratic Senate majority leader, said in an interview with the Financial Times that the Mr Obama's Republican rival John McCain was seeing a "short-term blip" as a result of the advertising, including one that used the image of Charlton Heston as Moses to mock the supposedly messianic Mr Obama as being "The One".
I just came back from the Capitol, where Moveon volunteers and conservative movement group staffers were holding competing rallies around oil leasing (the full flickr set is here). Patrick Ruffini, one of the smartest consultants on the right, thinks this marks a turning point for the right. For the first time, he says, Moveon has mobilizes against "the House Republicans and the rightosphere".
The problem with this formulation is that the people that I spoke from Moveon came because they were volunteers, whereas the people from the pro-drilling groups were paid staffers from groups like the National Taxpayers Union and Dick Armey's FreedomWorks. I spent some time arguing with a nice young man from FreedomWorks about oil companies (though I'll spare you the video), and he was a law student who did economic policy for the group. These two groups are by and large funded by large companies, and they were formed by recognized conservative movement elites who came to power in the 1980s.
So there's this sudden faux-grassroots movement on the right to open up all of our wildlife reserves and our shores for oil drilling, under the pretense that it'll reduce our dependence on foreign oil and lower prices at the pump. It's even got a catchy, easily memorable slogan: "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less." And it's all the rage in East Wingnuttia.
Too bad that it's completely wrong and as far from the truth as one can get while still being in the same space/time continuum.
Newt Gingrich has sent so many hints pointing in so many different directions that we're dizzy trying to follow them all. But now, it appears, he's made up his mind.
Rick Tyler, Mr. Gingrich's spokesman, confirmed today that the former Republican House speaker has decided against a presidential run in 2008.
Mr. Gingrich was "presented with legal advice this morning," said Mr. Tyler in a quick phone interview. "There was a choice presented."
The choice was to remain chairman of his political action committee, American Solutions, or to allow advisers to move forward with an exploratory committee. But he could not, legally, do both, Mr. Tyler explained.
"So Mr. Gingrich made a choice to remain a citizen activist," he said.
I probably would have thrown in some money toward Gingrich's run, considering that with his 2-1 unfavorable to favorable ratio, he would have been the worst possible Republican nominee.
That is actually a key difference between progressive and conservative bloggers when it comes to giving advice to the opposing party. Conservative bloggers would frequently offer concern troll advice saying that it would hurt the Democratic Party if Ned Lamont defeated Joe Lieberman in the 2006 Connecticut Senate primary. However, you knew they never actually believed that, since they all actively supported Joe Lieberman. By way of contrast, I, and I imagine several other bloggers, would have helped shove the Republican Party over the egde, and helped out Gingrich's campaign.
I'm just as excited as Chris Bowers and Jonathan Singer to welcome Newt Gingrich to the Republican Presidential field. Although Newt appears unlikely to win the Republican nomination (Pollster finds him at 6% nationally, 4% in Iowa, and 4.5% in New Hampshire), his entry provides the perfect occasion to note how much public opinion on government has changed since Gingrich's 1994 Contract with America.
A few notes on the graph. The data come from a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal (pdf) poll. It included historical trend data for the following question: I'm going to read you two statements about the role of government, and I'd like to know which one comes closer to your point of view. Statement A: Government should do more to solve problems and help meet the needs of people, OR Statement B: Government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals. Because the data points are not equidistant, slopes should be interpreted with caution, if at all.
Although the NBC/WSJ data goes back only to 1995, and so doesn't include pre-Contract with America sentiment on government services, public opinion on government has nearly reversed itself since then. In 1995 62% of the public thought government was doing too many things. Today, 55% of the public thinks government should be doing more. The trend is even stronger in the youth vote (pdf). 63% of 15-25 year old believe government should do more to solve problems. Similarly, 63% of 18-29 year olds believe government should promote the principle of a strong community and policies the expand opportunity and promote prosperity for all.
A lot has changed since 1994. Maybe that explains why Newt Gingrich is so unpopular. To my knowledge, only three polls this year include favorability ratings for Newt Gingrich. Combining them, he has a net favorability rating of minus 22, far worse even then Romney's net favorability ratings, which tend to hover around zero with forays into both the positive and negative single digits. In Newt's defense, he has been on the political scene for a long time. Favorability ratings tend to start high and decline over time, such that newcomers to the scene have relatively higher favorability ratings. So it's possible that when Mitt Romney has been around as long as Newt Gingrich, he will also be one of the most disliked American political figures.
Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton was endorsed Saturday by retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who sought the party's nomination in 2004 and whose sterling military credentials could bolster her bid to be the first female commander in chief.
Clark, the former supreme allied commander of NATO, praised the New York senator as ''a remarkable person'' with the skills and experience to be president.
''She will be a great leader for the United States of America and a great commander in chief for the men and women in uniform,'' Clark told reporters in a conference call with the former first lady.
Definitely a big pickup for Clinton. Makes me wonder if a Clinton-Clark ticket is a possibility, even if that would be a little Arkansas heavy.
After two previous runs for U.S. president, former Reagan diplomat Alan Keyes has announced he's again seeking the White House in the 2008 election, and he'll take part in Monday night's Republican presidential debate here.
Keyes told syndicated radio host Janet Parshall he's "unmoved" by the lack of moral courage shown by the other candidates, among whom he sees no standout who articulates the "key kernel of truth that must, with courage, be presented to our people."
Newt Gingrich is moving closer to a presidential nomination bid in a severely divided Republican Party.
"I will decide based on whether I have about $30 million in committed campaign contributions and whether I think it is possible to run a campaign based on ideas rather than 30-second sound bites," the former House speaker told The Washington Times yesterday.
I bet I could beat Newt Gingrich in a Presidential campaign, and I am not even old enough to run. The country would pass a constitutional amendment allowing someone else to become President before it would elect Gingrich. Go Newt, go!
