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No Democrat Should Want Gingrich Nominated
By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog
26 January 12


epublicans are worried sick about Newt Gingrich's ascendance, while Democrats are tickled pink.

Yet no responsible Democrat should be pleased at the prospect that Gingrich could get the GOP nomination. The future of America is too important to accept even a small risk of a Gingrich presidency.

RIsk averse people didn't travel the Oregon trail, or build the transcontinental railroads. They didn't leave everything they knew to travel to a country where they didn't speak the language. This right here is a big part of our problem: our deciders, and the pundits who support them, think they have something to lose. They've forgotten the truth in the saying Nothing ventured nothing gained. They;ve forgotten that in the long run, we're all dead. Life is risk, and a Gingrich campaign would be a great teachable moment for the country. A crazy spokesperson for an insane and discredited political philosophy. Possibly the end of the southern stragtegy? That would be worth the risk.

Land of the Skeered and home of the fleeced. Our ancestors would be surprised and disappointed.

The Republican worry is understandable. "The possibility of Newt Gingrich being our nominee against Barack Obama I think is essentially handling the election over to Obama," says former Minnesota Governor Tom Pawlenty, a leading GOP conservative. "I think that's shared by a lot of folks in the Republican party."

Pawlenty's views are indeed widely shared in Republican circles. "He's not a conservative - he's an opportunist," says pundit Joe Scarborough, a member of the Republican Class of 1994 who came to Washington under Gingrich's banner. says the representative of the party that has triumphed using the divisive southern strategy. If that isn't opportunistic what is? Gingrich doesn't "have the temperament, intellectual discipline or ego control to be either a successful nominee or president,"says New York Republican representative Peter King, who hasn't endorsed any candidate. "Basically, Newt can't control himself."

Gingrich is "an embarrassment to the party," says New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie, and "was run out of the speakership" on ethics violations. Republican strategist Mike Murphy says "Newt Cingrich could not carry a swing state in the general election if it was made of feathers."

The Coats Amendment of 1996 prohibits the government from "discriminating" against medical residency programs or other entities that lose accreditation because they fail to provide or require training in abortion services" and the Hyde/Weldon Conscience Protection Amendment of 2004 "forbids federal, state and local governments from requiring any individual or institutional provider or payer to perform, provide, refer for, or pay for an abortion."

( These "conscience clauses" are enshrined in Obama's signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act )

In Davenport, Iowa, on December 19 Gingrich, the "Christmas Warrior," revealed the results of something he said he'd been investigating . for the last three days. Guess what? Yup - he just pulled that one out of. perhaps one of those mass emails your crazy right-wing uncle keeps forwarding you.

Gingrich has claimed he had been wholly exonerated in his ethics' investigation, while Speaker of the House. An odd claim given that he was sanctioned by the House and was fined $300,000 to cover the costs of the investigation. Gingrich claimed that the House Ethics Committee was a very partisan political committee and that the way he was dealt with related more to the politics of the Democratic Party than to ethics. In that sense, it actually helps me in getting people to understand, this was a Nancy Pelosi-driven effort. But, as Politifact noted in three of the four Republicans on the committee voted to recommend that Gingrich be sanctioned, and then the "full House went on to pass the ethics report 395 to 28, with 196 Republicans voting for it and just 26 voting against it." ( Recently Bob Dole has revealed that he had given Gingrich $300,000 to pay his fine)

Gingrich's shameless lies about food stamps: "More people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history." Gingrich's claim is simply false. 444,574 more people were added to the program under Bush than during Obama's term. But not be as brazen as a claim he made in November in Council Bluffs, Iowa. "We now give benefits away as cash," he said. "You don't get food stamps. You get a credit card, and the credit card can be used for anything. We have people who take their food stamp money and use it to go to Hawaii. They give food stamps now to millionaires because, after all, don't you want to be compassionate?"

Ron Paul: "Everyone agrees with me." On January 3, Paul told his supporters, "today there was a national poll that came out and they were talking about how many people supported the gold standard." Politifact asked Paul's campaign to provide some documentation, and they were pointed to a column that referenced three polls showing slim majorities of respondents holding a favorable view of the idea, but they were polls of only Republicans and Republican leaners, and they were conducted in just three states. Gold standard was phased out in 1971

Santorum, who appears fascinated with dead babies and inflammatory rhetoric: "A dingo is eating your baby." At the Iowa Faith and Freedom conference ... a bill that would require doctors to treat fetuses after "botched abortions, Santorum said that Obama had opposed the measure when he was in the Illinois state senate, which was true, but then Santorum went on to claim that Obama had "said in fact that any child, prior to nine months of gestation would be able to be killed." Santorum added: "Think about that: any child born prematurely, according to the president, in his own words, can be killed."

Lastly ... resurfacing Herman Cain has endorsed Gingrich, because Gingrich's values resembles his. Go figure!!!


If Americans wants to continue living as middle class they need to vote DEmocrat in 2012.

The Republicans have ruin the USA,lied about Iraq got over 4000 American soldiers killed for no reason,almost broke the USA and caused the 1% to get richer as the other 99% and that includes you to do without paying higher gas prices that cheney and mobil-exxon made a secret deal in the white house to keep gas prices higher and taking every dime each American can get ahold of to buy gas,food,clothing and keep the children in school or the retired from buying medicine,and people working from a good wage,benefits insurance and retirement.republicans have caused this not the Democrats..

Please read all of this, it is short. In Finland, there are no Jeb Bush's, no George Bush's, no Michelle Rhee's, none of the terrible ideas being pushed with an eye for the $500,000B "education business" that Rupert Murdoch is salivating over getting his rapacious hands on--FOR BIG PROFITS!

The quality, free education of U.S. children is about to go the way of the dodo bird, thanks to the culture of unbridled GREED prevalent in U.S. society.

EVERYTHING, with no exception, has to be a profit center for the greedy. Those who DO NOT CARE about the future of our children AND this country are busy promoting unconstitutional vouchers, dozens of irrelevant, expensive tests every school year, charter schools using public funds to be established and THEN generating profits for private companies, and the newest "flavor of the month"--online education, a la AGAIN, Jeb Bush. Those pushing these privatization schemes are NO FRIENDS for secure, prosperous lives for our students! Yet, in state after state, they are being touted by Republican governors at the expense of our struggling public school systems. Without a strong public school system, our democracy itself has no future. And the erosion of our freedoms and a well-educated electorate is exactly the goal of these schemers!

I, for one, do not want our schools privatized, I do not want them to be a source of profits for corporations! Schools, nor our government, were never meant to be run like businesses; they are institutions created for the common good and the profit motive should NEVER taint their operation. I say stop selling off our public assets for for-profit corporations to run. These assets belong to the people and are not for sale!

Any public figure who swore an oath to act in the best interest of the people who elected him/her who doesn't agree with these tenets needs to be run out of office!

So sadly, those who have mucked up the "greatest" nation must now look to Finland for a model for how to heal our ailing schools!

And notice the four most trusting countries (and also rated the happiest) are Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark. There's a glaring lesson to be learned from Scandinavia!

REPUBLICANS STINK