Well we have been in the midst of people campaigning for president in 2012 and I haven’t said much about it to date. Rest assured though I have been taking notes and I am here to fill you in on how crappy things really are. We will first take a look at old Newt Gingrich and any possible pros and cons he has.
Pro
He is really shiny in a debate and he doesn’t like the media.
Con
In 2010, Gingrich supported Dede Scozzafava as a Republican candidate for congress only because she was Republican. Dede’s views do not resemble anything conservative and Gingrich stated that in supporting her he was simply being loyal to the party so the votes don’t get split and the Democrats win. The question for Gingrich is: If the Republican supports everything the Democrats want, what is the difference between a Democrat winning on a split vote and this Republican winning? The only reason I could come up with for Newt Gingrich not wanting someone who possesses his professed ‘conservative’ beliefs is that he does not actually hold such views. Rather than be guided by principles he prefers to play political games and try for power. Personally I would rather go down in flames while still holding onto my principles than to compromise on what I believed to appease other people.
In May of 2011 Gingrich proclaimed support for a health-care mandate, something that any freedom loving conservative loves, when he said, “I’ve said consistently we ought to have some requirement that you either have health insurance or you post a bond.” Golly, I am not sure he is all that conservative.
Then there’s this classic:
Oh yeah, Mr. Gingrich let’s get our leaders to make new laws and policies that will force a spark of innovation, since that is how a free-market conservative would do things and it works so well.
And there’s this in which he supports green companies like Solyndra as sound businesses.
He also says that people who oppose farm subsidies are “big city” folk who hate farmers. Oh yes let’s prop up private businesses with taxpayer money Newt, conservative to the core.
In 1987 Newt cosponsored the “1987 Pro-Fairness Doctrine Bill”. That’s right the good old fairness doctrine that forced businesses to provide types of content that they may disagree with or that may not be good for business. That sure sounds conservative and Constitutional Newt. Oh boy.
Newt Gingrich voted to form the Department of Education in 1979. Education used to be under the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, but in 1979, with Newt’s and Jimmy Carter’s seal of approval, the government expanded with new individual departments. The new Department of Education had more power over school curricula and hiring, taking some power away from state and local authorities. The department has been a huge hole for politicians to dump money into without ever seeing improvements in student performance. In fact, almost all important numbers, such as graduation rates, have either declined or remained stagnant since the formation of the Department of Education in 1979. There is no authorization in the U.S. Constitution for federal involvement in education. Supporting this department is a violation of the oath Gingrich took to uphold the Constitution. The infamous American Communist William Z. Foster, in his 1932 book “Toward Soviet America” said,
“Among the elementary measures the American Soviet government will adopt to further the cultural revolution are…[a] National Department of Education…the studies will be revolutionized, being cleansed of religious, patriotic, and other features of the bourgeois ideology. The students will be taught the basis of Marxian dialectical materialism, internationalism and the general ethics of the new Socialist society.”
This hardly seems like a conservative position for Gingrich to take, especially the part about how the communists called for the formation of the department as part of the way to overtake America.
In 1980 Gingrich voted to give most favored nation status to Communist China; you know the one that kills people in rice paddies. We now get all of our crap from human-rights-violating China and they now own more of U.S. debt than any foreign country.
Gingrich also supported the US signing an agreement to get in on the whole, “General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization” (GATT/WTO). This took the power given to congress by the people in the Constitution, “to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations”, and gave it away to the international body “The World Trade Organization”. The Constitution does not allow congress to give away the duties and powers specifically granted to it, to an unelected foreign body.
But the big glaring reason to not trust him, is that his own wife wives could not trust him. Once any politician has an affair, you really see how good their word is. If a promise is made to the person that they love and they break it in the most offensive way, surely they will not care about an oath they took in behalf of strangers. Gingrich had an affair while going after Bill Clinton for having an affair. Technically, he went after Clinton for perjury and obstruction of justice, but he did tout family values and character as important, which makes him an untrustworthy hypocrite.
All of these and more add up to make me not trust Newt Gingrich when he says,
“I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”