RAGGED THOTS

The smart young liberal journalist Adam Serwer of Mother Jones invited me to sit down -- in separate cities -- for a fine conversation on various political and cultural topics: Mitt Romney's "gifts" that keep on giving; demographics and the political parties; and, oh yeah, the rise of the Black Nerd on TV (I take full responsibility for introducing that topic -- while somehow forgetting to include the inimitable Donald Glover of Community in my list! D'oh!)!

Anyway, we had a good time. Hope y'all enjoy it -- either in small doses or for the full 43 55 minutes!

And without further ado:

Labels: 2012 presidential election; Barack Obama; race, Latinos; Hispanic; Asian-American, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, women voters

On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal's Jason Riley and I discussed President Obama's first post-election press conference and Mitt Romney's conference call with his donors.  This was the now much-criticized session where Romney blamed his loss on the various "gifts" that he distributed to various parts of the electorate.

Jason and I both shared our horror at Romney's comments -- not merely because of the content, but also because of the political foolishness demonstrated by allowing the press in on a call to one's donors! Apparently, there was more than one lesson Romney failed to pick up in the fallout from the "47 percent" debacle!

In any event, here's the video:


A rather perceptive observation on the "gifts" statement was also made by my former boss Newt Gingrich.  If it was all about "gifts," why did Republicans do worse with Asian-Americans than they did with Hispanics?  ("Right, seventy-three percent of Asian-Americans, seventy-one percent of Latinos," the Texas Tribune's Erik Smith corroborates.)

Gingrich follows up: "This is the hardest working and most successful ethnic group in America, okay. They ain’t into gifts. Second, it’s an insult to all Americans. It reduces us to economic entities who have no passion, no idealism, no dreams, no philosophy..." 

Some might want to jump on Gingrich by implicitly buying into the notion that the other groups Romney are into gifts, but put that aside. But his overall point is simply dead-on. If you go by the stereotype of Asian Americans being as family-oriented as Latinos and even more entrepreneurial, why would they be so hostile to the GOP (or friendly to Obama/Democrats, if you will). I would argue that this may well be considered "collateral damage" of Romney and the GOP's immigration problem.  

The party's blocking of comprehensive immigration reform didn't just send a signal of being tough on immigrants coming across the Southern border. It also made things remain difficult for those trying to enter the country for either education or technology jobs.  A significant number of those, duh, are coming from Asia.  If all Asian Americans see is a GOP seemingly opposed to overall immigration reform -- and hear its presidential nominee talking more "self-deportation" than actual policy -- it's only logical they might conclude that this is a party that isn't so friendly to their presence either.

Yes, elections have consequences.  

So, does the combination of  ill-focused strategy and thoughtless rhetoric.  

I think the same conclusion has come to Bobby Jindal -- the nation's first governor of South Asian descent.  This may explain why, perhaps moreso than any other outraged Republicans, he's been the most vocal in denouncing Romney's "gifts" comments. And Jindal doesn't sound like he's just making a rote "distance myself from our recent embarrassing party standard-bearer." He seems genuinely appalled. And I think there's a reason for that. This is as much personal as it is political for Jindal. 

The contrast with Marco Rubio's going rather easy on Romney is fascinating. These different post-election statements may be tactical moves by young Republican leaders who will be the ones seeking to define the party in the coming years. 

Labels: Barack Obama, Bobby Jindal, immigration, Marco Rubio, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich

After letting the White House spokesman make an initial statement on the killing of Trayvon Martin earlier in the week, President Obama weighed in personally on Friday, in a statement that concluded:.

But my main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon. And I think they are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves, and that we're going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened.

While most applauded Obama's comments (delivered following an unrelated Rose Garden event), they didn't completely escape controversy.  Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin calls the words, "cloying," adding, "Why is it always about him? I thought the president — like all of us — is supposed to care about those who look like his kids and those who don’t."

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich -- surprise! -- went even further:

“What the president said, in a sense, is disgraceful,” Gingrich said on the Hannity Radio show. “It’s not a question of who that young man looked like. Any young American of any ethnic background should be safe, period. We should all be horrified no matter what the ethnic background.
“Is the president suggesting that if it had been a white who had been shot, that would be OK because it didn’t look like him. That’s just nonsense dividing this country up. It is a tragedy this young man was shot. It would have been a tragedy if he had been Puerto Rican or Cuban or if he had been white or if he had been Asian American of if he’d been a Native American. At some point, we ought to talk about being Americans. When things go wrong to an American, it is sad for all Americans. Trying to turn it into a racial issue is fundamentally wrong. I really find it appalling.”

Appalling? Disgraceful? Absurd.

Sorry, but this is one of the most frustratingly disappointing statements I've ever heard my former boss utter (and there've been more than a few over the last year leading into and including the presidential campaign season).

Obama's statement was completely appropriate. To the extent that anyone felt them overly personal and racial, it's because they didn't read/hear the entire statement! The president said, in full:

Well, I'm the head of the executive branch, and the attorney general reports to me, so I've got to be careful about my statements to make sure that we're not impairing any investigation that's taking place right now.

But obviously, this is a tragedy. I can only imagine what these parents are going through. And when I think about this boy, I think about my own kids. And I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this, and that everybody pulls together - federal, state and local - to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened.

So I'm glad that not only is the Justice Department looking into it, I understand now that the governor of the state of Florida has formed a task force to investigate what's taking place. I think all of us have to do some soul-searching to figure out how does something like this happen. And that means that examine the laws and the context for what happened, as well as the specifics of the incident.

But my main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon. And I think they are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves, and that we're going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened.

Obama begins with a cautionary observation about not saying too much so as not to interfere with either Justice Department or ongoing state investigations into the killing. So, he is thus recognizing who he is as national leader -- not as a black man.

He then uses a word that everyone can agree on to describe what occurred: "Tragedy" carries moral weight, but not legal. So, again, he's not mucking up the investigative part of the episode.

Then, most importantly, he gets as universal as is possible: "I can only imagine what these parents are going through. And when I think about this boy, I think about my own kids. And I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this, and that everybody pulls together - federal, state and local - to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened.'

He speaks as father and explicitly of "every parent in America should be able to understand" the need for an explanation of "how this tragedy happened." How on earth can anyone not see that as the president addressing the universal nature of what happened -- speaking to white, black, Asian parents and letting them know that they have a stake in this as well?

It is only at the very end that Obama, offering a "main message to Trayvon Martin's parents" that he invokes the personal. He is, at that point, speaking as a black man to black parents who have lost a child in a tragedy, that may not have been a racist act, but in which Trayvon's race almost definitely played a role.

President Obama spoke in three roles Friday: as chief executive of the nation's laws, as president noting the universal nature of the tragedy -- and only at the end as a public leader speaking empathetically to those whom the tragedy has hit closest. Yes, Obama went further than the generic "I feel your pain" stance, because, frankly the circumstances called for it.

as Newt Gingrich himself seemingly recognized earlier this year,
saying “I’m prepared if the NAACP invites me, I’ll go to their convention and talk about why the African American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps."

Again, after first speaking to all American parents, Obama then stepped out as an empathetic black  parent addressing grieving black parents. Besides being a factual statement (not just because of race, one could picture a son of Barack Obama resembling the slender athletic Trayvon Martin), he helped universalize the special fears that black parents have of losing sons prematurely to random violence (no matter the race of a potential assailant).

While that's one community's unique pain (specific), the particular way it manifested itself in a Florida  town one month ago, is nonetheless -- for reasons already articulated -- one that "all of us as Americans" (universal) take seriously enough to demand resolution.

Far from appalling, that's an essential message that hopefully all Americans heard.

Labels: Barack Obama, Newt Gingrich, race, Trayvon Martin

All Florida polls have Mitt Romney with a significant lead over Newt Gingrich heading into tomorrow's primary, with NBC/Marist showing a 15-point margin and Rasmussen at 16 points. For the Sunshine State, at least, it appears to be all over. However, on Sunday, Public Policy Polling came in with a survey showing a much more compact Romney lead -- 39-32 (Santorum and Paul are way back at 14 and 11, respectively). That can be considered an outlier, sure, except PPP (yes, a Democratic outfit) pretty much nailed the breadth of Newt's South Carolina win.

Even though it's still a lead, high single digits is still different from 15 and 16-point blowouts. Caution should still be shown. So, one wonders exactly what Romney's people were doing giving the equivalent of an early victory lap to The New York Times Sunday:

David Kochel, an adviser who arrived here from Iowa to oversee the pressure campaign, described the strategy as “let’s go rush the quarterback.” A team of Romney boosters started infiltrating nearly every Gingrich campaign stop to offer instant rebuttals. Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah showed up to challenge Mr. Gingrich’s record to reporters and at one point tangled with Mr. Gingrich’s press secretary as the cameras rolled. Bay Buchanan, a longtime conservative activist, worked on the Romney campaign’s behalf to win over voters and commentators.
[SKIP]
A team of some of the most fearsome researchers in the business, led by Mr. Romney’s campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, spent days dispensing negative information about Mr. Gingrich, much of it finding its way to the influential Drudge Report, which often serves as a guide for conservative talk radio and television assignment editors and to which Mr. Rhoades has close ties.
The effort hit a peak by Thursday, when the site was virtually taken over by headlines assailing Mr. Gingrich, whose advisers said they eventually gave up on trying to persuade the Drudge staff to spare them, acknowledging, in the words of one aide, that “very little can be done.”
The Romney team was also carefully tracking Mr. Gingrich’s every utterance for a potential opening. What an aide described as a “eureka moment” came just hours before the debate on Thursday night. At a Tea Party rally in the Central Florida town of Mount Dora that day, Mr. Gingrich had opened a new line of attack, noting that Mr. Romney had investments in funds that included shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage lenders.
Mr. Romney’s opposition-research team in Boston quickly dug into Mr. Gingrich’s own publicly disclosed holdings to find that he, too, had mutual fundsinvested in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The information was quickly fed to Mr. Romney during his private debate preparation session at a hotel in downtown Jacksonville.
When Mr. Romney delivered the attack against Mr. Gingrich that evening, Mr. Gingrich was left with no substantive response, a killer blow that helped keep Mr. Gingrich from commanding the debate stage as he had in South Carolina.

Wow. If Gingrich need anymore ammunition on his charge that Romney is the hardball candidate of insiders and borderline dirty campaigning, this article sure provides it. Personally, all's fair in love, war and politics (well, except for attacks on the family), but this sort of press access -- before the primary is actually over -- seems, well, not exactly wise.

Labels: 2012 GOP nomination, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich

Newt Gingrich, an old boss of mine from a galaxy far away, officially launched his campaign for the presidency yesterday. 

His announcement video: 



Andrew Sullivan calls it a "doomed" effort. Former Bush adviser Mark McKinnon takes a balanced, nuanced view, but doesn't think he's the answer to the GOP's prayers.

But MSNBC's First Read doesn't completely dismiss Newt's chances. Indeed, their take is that, yes, the former Speaker has much "personal baggage." However,

flawed candidates always have gone on to win the White House. The winner in 1992 (Bill Clinton) was the governor of a small state who had a, well, colorful past. The winner in 2000 (George W. Bush) overcame doubts about his knowledge of world affairs, as well as booming economy under a Democratic administration. And the winner in 2008 (Barack Obama) triumphed despite questions about his experience and his worldview. What matters in presidential campaigns -- and we’ll witness this over the next year and a half -- is how the candidates conquer, exploit, or side-step their flaws. Nobody is perfect, especially in politics. But what counts is how they take a punch and respond. In many ways, a presidential primary campaign is a test to see who can BEST overcome obstacles.

Can Newt overcome his obstacles -- which include a tendency to step on his own message?

I don't know -- and it would be inappropriate for me to "endorse" or dismiss his campaign now. I'd prefer to at least try and maintain my objectivity in the Republican nomination. I wish him "luck" -- as I would any candidate about to embark on a lengthy, expensive quest. I will try to judge and assess him as I do the other candidates as the field develops.

He's certainly one of the smartest guys in the contest. We'll see how well that asset helps him in the months ahead.

Labels: 2012 GOP nomination, Newt Gingrich

Newt Gingrich on Barack Obama and Bill Clinton: 


"First of all, he's not capable of being like Clinton [who's] much more cued in to normal American behavior than Obama." 
"[Obama is] a very aloof kind of personality," whose "ability to cue off normal Americans is very limited." 


Ex-House Majority Leader Dick Armey on Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton: 


“Clinton found out about the Gingrich affair and called Newt over to the White House for a private meeting between the two of them,” Armey said in an interview with the World Magazine posted Thursday. “Clinton said, ‘You and I are alike.’ Which meant, shut up about Monica or I'll start telling your story,” Armey said. “Newt and Clinton actually developed sort of a bond over it.” 


Ah, that good old normal American behavior.  Mr. President, forget about remaining faithful to Michelle! That's just not normal American behavior! Besides, if you hook up with some White House 20-something hootchie-mama and get the goods on Speaker Boehner's jump-off -- who knows, you might have a bonding experience! 


And balance the budget too!! 

Labels: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Dick Armey, Newt Gingrich

I called my reaction to Newt's "Kenyan, anti-colonialism" comment depressing and it is.  Not because it suggests that after twelve years out of office, the former Speaker hasn't learned when the wise tactic is to hold off on saying the first thing that pops into one's head. Remember the gift he gave the Clinton White House on the roots of the government shutdown?  

No, it's because the Newt Gingrich I once worked for -- even when tempted to go for the jugular when engaging political rhetoric -- was intellectually more rigorous when assessing a political argument. 

It's especially ironic that Newt would characterize as Obama's rise to power as "a wonderful con" pulled on the American people.  That very phrase could be used to describe the "source" -- Dinesh D'Souza -- that launches him on this spurious theory.  Newt, you're an historian.  How about checking the history of a person before you opine on his "profound insight"?  For that matter, one can ask why Forbes didn't bother considering D'Souza's track record before publishing this drivel as a cover story.  

Daniel Larison does yeoman work taking apart D'Souza's piece (indeed, he caught this before Newt brought it to everyone's attention). 

D'Souza is, take your pick, a con man or "hack" of the first order (though the terms aren't mutually exclusive).  And the article proves that (starting early on with a pseudo urban legend about oil drilling in Brazil -- the facts of which could have been checked on, uh, Snopes).  The question is how he's managed to pull the same con on the conservative intelligentsia over and over again. The record is quite clear: 

1) D'Souza writes a fairly mainstream conservative book about PC on college campuses that isn't exactly original in terms of scholarship, but wins many plaudits among conservatives and even crosses over to the mainstream (1992's Illiberal Education). 

2) Then he gets a big contract to produce a major tour de force that will cement his reputation. Alas, when said major book comes out in 1995, The End of Racism, it is so over the top and sloppily written (and, in fact, so wrong in places that the first edition has to be trashed and a chapter rewritten) that it appalls yes, those on the left, but fair-minded liberals and smart thinkers on the right.

3) With reputation somewhat bruised, D'Souza then retreats and gets a contract for an "easy" book -- Voila! A quickie book extolling the virtues of conservatives' greatest elected leader. That Reagan was a great president is undeniable, but the hagiographic approach to D'Souza's work can be gleaned from the title alone, Ronald Reagan: How An Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader. This is followed by a couple of rah-rah books about prosperity and patriotism.  But, hey, guess they don't quite pay the bills, so it's time -- yep, to write another "intellectual" tour de force. 

4) To say that there was universal reaction, nay, revulsion to 2007's The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11 would be an understatement.  His thesis is that America's cultural output -- Britney Spears, Hollywood, etc. -- inspired the 9/11 attackers. This essentially anti-American screed was "aiding the enemy," one conservative declared; D'Souza was willfully ignoring that Islamists are anti-democratic, said another. Finally, after a tendentious four-part D'Souza epistle at NRO, Victor Davis Hanson eviscerated every part of D'Souza's argument and re-argument.

(In between, D'Souza appropriated wholesale a rather even-handed profile from a San Diego paper, edits it to remove any problematic information and posts it to his own website -- without getting permission from the original author!  Only after legal letters are sent does D'Souza take the article down.)  

Given this history, one asks the question: Why would Newt fall for the con?  Apparently, the National Review folks aren't fooled (kudos, actually, to Robert Costa's breaking the story).  As Ramesh Ponnuru says rather drolly, "I didn’t find Dinesh D’Souza’s cover story in Forbes as “stunning” or “profound” in its insight into the president as Newt Gingrich did."  Of course not.  He's seen this movie before. 

Showing a stunning lack of self-awareness or sense of irony, D'Souza leaps to the anti-colonial argument by first noting that "Here is a man who spent his formative years--the first 17 years of his life--off the American mainland, in Hawaii, Indonesia and Pakistan, with multiple subsequent journeys to Africa."

But, as Dave Weigel cogently points out, "Hawaii, while not part of the mainland (neither's Alaska, folks), is obviously part of the United States, and Obama spent 13 years there before heading to college. He spent four years in Indonesia and two weeks in Pakistan." 

Meanwhile, D'Souza was born and raised in India for his first 17 years. So, let's do a thought experiment: Presume there exists an individual from the nation of India -- a huge democracy, but one nonetheless that has been wracked over its history with issues surrounding race, class and religion.  Indeed, arguably these issues still exist in large measure to this day. Would a young man raised late into his teen years in such an environment be able to completely overcome the influence of his culture?  

Or would he perhaps succumb to the temptation to see the racial drama of his adopted nation through the eyes of his native land? Could such a sensibility lead him to believe that American blacks -- like the untouchables of India -- have an immutable "pathology" that makes it impossible for them to rise above their condition and immoral for the state to even try? Perhaps taught by his parents of the pressures that led to the partition of India -- and an exercised Muslim minority -- might he posit that cultural acquiescence by the secular state to the angry Muslims is the best option?

Finally, could his familiarity with the caste system and lower status of the so-called "half-castes" cause him to see the half-caste president in a completely, well, foreign light? D'Souza doesn't analyze -- or choose to perceive -- Barack Obama as conventional liberal. Rather, he uses reductionist theory to concoct a Marxist (philosophically) theory about Obama based solely on the president's familial roots (a father Obama had all of two years and one month knowing). In doing this, he endeavors to rip out any semblance of Americanness from the president and leave him only influenced by his African father. This from the man who declared the end of racism?  And Newt's buying this?  

Would it be fair to assess all of Dinesh D'Souza's life from his 17 years in India -- and ignore all the other influences on his life since he came to the United States? Of course not. But his analyses over the years of American racism, cultural influence and now, evidently, The Roots of Obama's Rage are far more "odd" and "bizarre" than the ideology of a rather liberal president -- who followed a "conservative" chief executive in bringing back "the era of big government." 

And what of Newt, the once smart historian who has seemingly been taken in by a con man (no, not the guy in the White House)?  Perhaps he should pay attention to words Virginia Postrel wrote fourteen years ago:  

You cannot get to a colorblind society by constantly reinforcing racial categories. You can't get justice by playing the race card. Conservatives make those arguments when they oppose affirmative action...They don't, however, appear to believe them. And that is America's loss.

Labels: Dinesh D'Souza, Newt Gingrich

I have no idea WTF my former boss is trying to say here:

Gingrich: Obama’s ‘Kenyan, anti-colonial’ worldview September 11, 2010 10:52 P.M.

By Robert Costa

Citing a recent Forbes article by Dinesh D’Souza, former House speaker Newt Gingrich tells National Review Online that President Obama may follow a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” worldview.

Gingrich says that D’Souza has made a “stunning insight” into Obama’s behavior — the “most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama.”

“What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?” Gingrich asks. “That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior.”

“This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president,” Gingrich tells us.

“I think he worked very hard at being a person who is normal, reasonable, moderate, bipartisan, transparent, accommodating — none of which was true,” Gingrich continues. “In the Alinksy tradition, he was being the person he needed to be in order to achieve the position he needed to achieve . . . He was authentically dishonest.”

“[Obama] is in the great tradition of Edison, Ford, the Wright Brothers, Bill Gates — he saw his opportunity and he took it,” Gingrich says. Will Gingrich take it back in 2012? “The American people may take it back, in which case I may or may not be the recipient of that, but I have zero doubt that the American people will take it back. Unlike Ford, the Wright Brothers, et cetera, this guy’s invention did not work.”

“I think Obama gets up every morning with a worldview that is fundamentally wrong about reality,” Gingrich says. “If you look at the continuous denial of reality, there has got to be a point where someone stands up and says that this is just factually insane.”

"Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior"?  Really?? 


Actually, change my opening statement that. I think I know exactly what he's trying to do -- and it depresses me to no end. I'll discuss more on this later. In the interim, I hope to try and forget how insane the world has gone by having a few pints with my Sunday football.


(By the way, clicking on the above link may not bring up the actual story. I tried it this morning and ended up only at NRO's Corner. May just be temporary glitch -- since we all know that nothing ever truly disappears from the 'Net).

Labels: Barack Obama, Kenya, Newt Gingrich

1) Harry Reid, Senate Ethnic Profiler, strikes again.  


2) Glenn Greenwald and Jonathan Rauch, both gay marriage supporters, have interesting opposite takes on the meaning and import of the Judge Vaughn Walker's striking down of the California referendum. 


3) My ex-boss' ex-wife demonstrates the old adage that revenge is a dish best served cold -- and ten years after the marriage falls apart: 

Early in May, she went out to Ohio for her mother's birthday. A day and a half went by and Newt didn't return her calls, which was strange. They always talked every day, often ten times a day, so she was frantic by the time he called to say he needed to talk to her.

"About what?"

He wanted to talk in person, he said.

"I said, 'No, we need to talk now.' "

He went quiet.

"There's somebody else, isn't there?"

She kind of guessed it, of course. Women usually do. But did she know the woman was in her apartment, eating off her plates, sleeping in her bed?

She called a minister they both trusted. He came over to the house the next day and worked with them the whole weekend, but Gingrich just kept saying she was a Jaguar and all he wanted was a Chevrolet. " 'I can't handle a Jaguar right now.' He said that many times. 'All I want is a Chevrolet.' "

He asked her to just tolerate the affair, an offer she refused.

He'd just returned from Erie, Pennsylvania, where he'd given a speech full of high sentiments about compassion and family values.

The next night, they sat talking out on their back patio in Georgia. She said, "How do you give that speech and do what you're doing?"

"It doesn't matter what I do," he answered. "People need to hear what I have to say. There's no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn't matter what I live."

When they got to court, Gingrich refused to cooperate with basic discovery. Marianne and her lawyer knew from a Washington Post gossip column that Gingrich had bought Bisek a $450 bottle of wine, for example, but he refused to provide receipts or answer any other questions about their relationship.

Then Gingrich made a baffling move. Because Bisek had refused to be deposed by Marianne's attorney, Newt had his own attorney depose her, after which the attorney held a press conference and announced that she had confessed to a six-year affair with Gingrich. He had also told the press that he and Marianne had an understanding.

"Right," Marianne says now.

That was not true?

"Of course not. It's silly."

During that period, people would come up to Marianne and tell her to settle, that she was hurting the cause.

Just a hunch, but these comments won't exactly be considered helpful to "the cause" either. 

Labels: Marianne Gingrich, Newt Gingrich

My erstwhile employer, Newt Gingrich, vents on the legislative process (i.e., why the process leading to the current health care bills shouldn't be trusted): 

"It's not possible to write a comprehensive bill that that makes sense, because nobody understands the system," he said. Gingrich claimed that the White House and congressional Democrats are writing their health care bills in secret, something he called "suicidal hubris."

He went on to ridicule the men and women who work in the halls of Congress, where he served as a congressman from Georgia for two decades.

"Of course it's the nature of the modern Congress, which hires lots of nice young staffers who have never had a real job, who spent their entire life being arrogant to visitors from back home, who end up thinking they know a lot because they stay up until 3 o'clock working on a word processor, and who write legislation as though they have some contact with reality," he said, eliciting laughter.

Yeah, sure there's been arrogance from the Democrats putting together health care. But, you know, Newt? There were damn sure quite a few "nice young staffers who have never had a real job" who helped draft -- and then write -- the Contract With America that helped "make" you the CPAC rock-star you are today. Are all the "nice young staffers" appreciably stupider today than 15 years ago (the congressional leadership is another question)?


I don't think so. 

Frankly, my experience has been that those "nice young staffers" often end up working longer hours than their counterparts who may or may not have "real jobs" -- and for a lot less pay.  Republican or Democrat, they work darn hard. 


You'd think a guy who became Speaker of the House and relied on those nice young staffers might show a little perspective -- and gratitude.    

Labels: Newt Gingrich

A few days ago this entered the blogosphere:

Labels: Newt Gingrich, Sonia Sotomayor

Based on Sunday's Face The Nation, Barack vs. Dick. vs. Colin vs. Rush may be a Final Four better than the NCAAs: 

Labels: Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh

Rather than just reading the tea leaves, sabermetric poll analyst Nate Silver went, as best he could, for hard counts on the successes of the various "Taxpayer Tea Parties" held around the country yesterday.

Labels: Newt Gingrich, tea parties

So, in the end, the Reagan Revolution ended Thursday with a whimper and not a bang. For nearly three decades, the only thing that unified Republicans in all circumstances was an aggressive anti-tax stance.

Labels: A.I.G., AIG, Eric Cantor, House Republicans, Newt Gingrich, Republicans, Ronald Reagan