Pot, Kettle, Newt

by Stuart Shapiro

So apparently Newt Gingrich is lamenting the hostile spirit in Washington and the lack of bipartisanship exhibited by the Obama Administration.  Kevin Drum lays blame where it belongs:

I read that with my mouth agape. If there’s a single person in the country more responsible than Newt for the poisonous state of partisan politics in America today, I don’t know who it is. Remember these gems down through the years?

1978, speaking to a group of College Republicans: “I think that one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty.”

1989, speaking about the Democratic leadership in Congress: “These people are sick….They are so consumed by their own power, by a Mussolini-like ego, that their willingness to run over normal human beings and to destroy honest institutions is unending.”

2011, speaking about the current Democratic president: “Obama is the most serious radical threat to traditional America ever to occupy the White House.”

There’s no cherry picking here. These are all workaday themes for the GOP’s self-proclaimed philosopher king, one of the nastiest, most malignant pieces of work ever to grace American politics. Newt Gingrich extolling the virtues of bipartisanship is like Hannibal Lecter promoting the value of good nutrition.

Yup, next Newt is going to complain about adultery and history professors running for president.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.