Gingrich has thrown his hat into the presidential ring. That should go well. Not so long ago, he was the most hated man in America. I have to think he has moved up from there – perhaps that fact alone has encouraged him to try. Or maybe he’s pulling a Buchanan and using it as a fundraising, image-building exercise. (Great way to sell books.) Either way, I can hardly imagine a less likely or desirable prospect, and I don’t think I’m alone in this. It’s no accident – the policies he has been most closely associated with 
over the years are wildly unpopular. The current crop of GOP congresspeople represent an odious distillation of his most extremist positions. What’s not to hate?
Back when the Newt was Speaker, I wrote a song about his crusade against welfare – one cheerfully joined by Bill Clinton and various other Democrats, eager to throw the poor over the side for a few cheap political points. Written like a bloodthirsty hymn sung aboard a pirate ship, the lyric went, in part, like this:
Please, Newt Gingrich, save us from welfare dependent mothers
whose hungry infants threaten our fortunes with default
Please, o Speaker, drive them away from this captain’s table
Please drive them from below the salt!
Bring to us the biscuit, that humble little biscuit
Please add it to our bounty, we savor every crumb
Take it from the infant, that greedy mother’s infant
Please pluck it from his toothless gums!
Mr. Speaker – we beseech thee, for the gods of war and industry
Mr. Speaker – we beseech thee, please… Bless This Feast!
Imagine the singing pirates being all of those industrialists, corporate CEOs, and generals/admirals who benefit from budgetary largess, year after year, to the tune of billions of dollars (at the expense of all of the rest of us, including many in dire need) and you’ll get the idea.
I suppose it makes sense that Newt would think this is a good time for him, since the ethos of greed and further targeting of the poor/working class has descended upon us once again. Given today’s sensational announcement that the Social Security trust fund will be expended in 2036 (instead of 2037), after which the fund would only cover 75% of its costs (assuming we never come out of deep recession and never again experience economic growth above 1% a year), he may be right.
But I doubt it.
luv u,
jp
Granted, they were not all his ideas. He was, like many presidents, something of an empty vessel into which various policy mavens and ideologues were able to pour their nasty ideas. Reagan’s son Ron has written of how his father showed the beginning signs of Alzheimer’s while still in office. I have known two people who had occasion to observe him for fairly long periods of time during his term, both of whom told of a man so cloudy minded he needed to be briefed on the basics every fifteen minutes by an extremely protective Secret Service. In that respect, his administration was run by the people around him, just as George W. Bush’s foreign policy was shaped by Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, and others. (If we get a president Palin, that job will be taken up by the likes of Randy Scheunemann. War with Russia, here we come!)
Sad thing is, Obama seems ready to assist them in this. His somewhat schizophrenic SOTU lurched from major investments to multi-year spending freezes. Domestic spending kept level for five years? Sounds like McCain. What would the impact of that be on all of these domestic initiatives he’s mentioning in the same breath? We shall see how that shakes out. Of course, the CBO came out with dire estimates regarding both the federal budget and Social Security practically while Obama was speaking. The primary culprit? The tax cut deal, which is blowing the predictable hole in the Federal budget and starving Social Security of its payroll tax funding. Guess how they’re going to try to fill that hole. Ask Paul Ryan.