Tag Archives: Newt Gingrich

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Standing with a courageous GOP senator

I want to stand with an embattled Republican U.S. senator who chose to honor his sacred oath rather than following a path toward blind partisan fealty.

Mitt Romney, the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee, voted to convict Donald John Trump on an allegation of abuse of power when the Senate cast its vote to acquit the current president.

That has brought a barrage of scorn and recrimination from Trump’s loyalists. One of them is Fox News talker Jeanine Pirro, a former judge from New York who said this, according to The Guardian: “get the hell out of the United States Senate,” while claiming that “your dream of endearing yourself to the Trump-hating left is a joke.”

Sigh …

Pirro doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

Sen. Romney, a freshman from Utah, is more of a Republican than Pirro or her Fox pals ever have been or ever hope to be. He is a man of deep religious faith. He takes the oath he took to deliver “impartial justice” as seriously as he could take any oath he’s ever taken.

So he voted to convict Trump on a single charge brought to the Senate from the House of Representatives impeachment. Trump was still acquitted. Romney’s vote didn’t matter, a point he made while declaring his intention to cast a “guilty” vote in a speech on the Senate floor.

I am reminded a bit by a former Republican House member I got to know well while I worked as editorial page editor of the Amarillo Globe-News.

Larry Combest represented the 19th Congressional District, which for a time included the southern portion of Amarillo. In the mid-1990s, Combest resisted a GOP-led farm policy overhaul. It was called “Freedom to Farm.” Combest stuck it in then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s eye when he opposed the Freedom to Farm legislation.

Gingrich demanded loyalty to the party platform. Combest was unwilling to grant it. Why? Because the farmers and ranchers in West Texas — for whom Combest worked — opposed the legislation. Combest was more loyal to them than to the House party leadership.

Accordingly, Mitt Romney was more loyal to the oath he took than to the president of the United States. Mitt Romney didn’t get my vote for POTUS in 2012. He gets my undying respect now.

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Newt’s legacy lives on with ‘Democrat Party’

REUTERS/Mark Avery

I laugh to myself when I see the term “Democrat” used as an adjective, or as part of the proper name of one of the nation’s two major political parties.

It’s a holdover from an earlier era when Republicans took control of Congress for the first time in 40 years. You remember the landmark Contract With America election of 1994, right? Of course you do!

A then-young GOP bomb thrower, Newt Gingrich, led the insurgency that elected Republicans to the House and Senate that year. The GOP slate took down plenty of heavyweights, including House Speaker Tom Foley and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jack Brooks.

Gingrich essentially coined the usage of the term “Democrat” in a way that sought to cast the other party as a sort of foreign element.

Democrats belong to the “Democratic Party.” Gingrich, who became speaker of the House in 1995, kept referring to the party as the “Democrat Party,” a term that just doesn’t roll off the way the proper term does.

Well, Gingrich left the speakership and the House after the 1998 midterm election and the failed impeachment of President Clinton. He ended up with his own personal baggage — the affair he was having with a staffer while married to his second wife — that took him out; it was one of the more ironic political downfalls in modern U.S. history, given the nature of the charges leveled against Bill Clinton.

However, Newt’s branding of Democrats and their political party lives on. Donald Trump refers to the Democratic Party as the Democrat Party; so do his allies in Congress; so do critics of this blog, by gum, use that term.

It used to annoy me, given my understanding of the motive behind its use: the demonization of a great political party. I’ve gone beyond the point of annoyance. I am now mildly amused.

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Imagine another president doing this

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I want to let a six-page letter that Donald Trump, the current president of the United States, sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stand more or less on its own.

Read it here.

It’s pretty angry. I am trying to imagine another president who was impeached by a House of Representatives controlled by the opposing party sending something this angry to the speaker.

I am referring, of course, to Democratic President Bill Clinton, who in 1998 was impeached by the House led by Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich. Did the president fire off a screed such as this? Did he impugn the motives, the integrity, the patriotism of his foes? I don’t recall that kind of rhetoric coming from the president himself; yes, he had many allies speak publicly on his behalf.

Oh, the president surely thought such things about the GOP speaker. He might even have told him so — privately.

The letter attached to this brief post is the ranting of an angry and seemingly desperate man who, interestingly, is likely to survive the Senate trial that will result from the House impeachment.

Weird. Simply weird.

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Enemies cannot discuss difference with each other

My adventure into the belly of the political beast earlier this year revealed so much to me that I want to revisit a major part of what I learned.

I attended a Donald J. Trump “Keep America Great” political rally at the American Airlines Center in downtown Dallas. I stood in line for seemingly forever to get inside. I met some nice Trumpsters along the way, visited with them, exchanged small talk about our families.

As I walked in I heard one of Trump’s warmup acts bellow something from the podium that I believe sums up the dysfunction that has gripped today’s political climate.

It came from Dan Patrick, the fire-breathing Texas lieutenant governor and presiding officer of the Texas Senate.

Patrick called the Republicans’ adversaries “enemies.” Then he doubled down with the next sentence that flew out of his mouth. He acknowledged that, yes, he meant to say “enemies.” They aren’t mere opponents, but they are the “enemies” of freedom, liberty, upstanding moral values.

It occurred to me in the moment: That is precisely what has infected the nation’s political climate. Political foes cannot talk to each other if they view the other side as the “enemy.”

Were we able to talk to Hitler or Tojo or Mussolini during World War II? Or to Ho Chi Minh during the Vietnam War? Or to Osama bin Laden?

Dan Patrick’s “enemy” statement exemplifies the kind of politics that Donald Trump himself has promoted since the moment he declared his candidacy for the only public office he ever has sought. He labeled the press the “enemy of the people.” He has talked about Muslims as being enemies of Americans. He has referred to the refugees fleeing repression in Latin America as conducting an “invasion” of this country.

Trump, of course, isn’t the first politician to refer to political foes as the “enemy.” GOP firebrand Newt Gingrich said it was imperative during the 1994 congressional election for Republicans to persuade voters that Democrats were the “enemy of normal Americans.”

How do you debate your differences with someone who considers you to be the enemy?

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Newt offers a stunning demonstration of duplicity

Newt Gingrich’s lack of self-awareness is utterly and totally astonishing.

The former Republican U.S. House speaker told Fox News this week that he is amazed and stunned that congressional Democrats would have the nerve to impeach Donald Trump this close to Christmas.

Why, that is just appalling, he said. How can Democrats possibly sully this holy event with such a display of blatant partisanship?

Well, let’s flash back 21 years, shall we?

The GOP-led House of Representatives, led by Speaker Newt Gingrich, received articles of impeachment from the Judiciary Committee in its effort to impeach President Bill Clinton. When did the full House vote on those articles and formally impeach the president?

They did it on the week of Christmas, 1998! The date was Dec. 19.

So, my demand of the former speaker today is clear and concise.

Shut … up!

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Lt. Gov. Patrick to Trump faithful: We are fighting ‘the enemy’

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick was part of a warm-up act for Donald Trump’s “Keep America Great” rally at the American Airlines Center in downtown Dallas.

He didn’t disappoint those who came to cheer the president.

I was still working my way into the arena when Patrick took the stage, but I did see and hear him on the jumbo screen on the side of the AAC. He used the “e” word to describe foes of his conservative Republican policy machine.

He said “progressive socialist Democrats” aren’t just “our opponents; they are the enemy.” There you go. He went on to say they are the enemy of “liberty,” of “national security,” and I presume of the American way.

A future speaker of the U.S. House, Newt Gingrich, once declared during the 1994 Contract With America campaign that his aim was to make “Democrats the enemy of normal Americans.” Donald Trump declared the media to be “the enemy of the American people.”

Oh, there have been plenty of politicians who toss the “e” word around like that. Lt. Gov. Patrick is just the latest.

There is no need to wonder just how our political interaction has developed this level of coarseness.

I still prefer the approach sought by the late President George H.W. Bush that hoped to create a “kinder, gentler” nation. The “enemy” talk that I heard from Dan Patrick just makes me angry. We have enough anger out there already.

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In defense of a congressman’s non-commitment

Mac Thornberry is now officially a lame-duck member of Congress, given his announcement today that he won’t seek re-election in 2020 to another term representing the 13th Congressional District of Texas.

I have plenty of issues with Thornberry and his tenure as a member of Congress. However, I feel compelled to defend him on a point for which he was pilloried and pounded over many years since taking office.

Mac Thornberry did not, despite claims to the contrary, ever make a personal pledge to limit the number of terms he would serve in the House of Representatives.

He ran in 1994 for the House under the Contract With America banner waved at the front of the Republican ranks by future Speaker Newt Gingrich. The CWA contained among other items a provision to limit House members to three terms. The idea was to serve six years and then bow out, turning the seat over to new faces, with new ideas.

The term limits provision needs a constitutional amendment. The House has not referred an amendment to the states for their ratification. Thornberry, though, has voted in favor of every proposed amendment whenever it has come to a vote of the full of House.

Thornberry never made a personal pledge. Indeed, he has been elected and re-elected 13 times to the 13th District seat. He ascended to Republican leadership over the course of his tenure, being awarded the chairmanship of the Armed Services Committee.

I just feel the need to defend Thornberry against false accusations that he reneged on his pledge to limit the amount of time he would serve in Congress. Thornberry knew better than to make a pledge he well might be unable or unwilling to keep, such as former Rep. George Nethercutt of Washington state, who defeated the late Tom Foley in that landmark 1994 CWA election. Nethercutt pledged to limit his terms, then changed his mind … and eventually faced the wrath of his constituents for reneging on his promise.

Mac Thornberry doesn’t adhere to my own world view of how government should work. Indeed, I happen to oppose congressional term limits, believing that elections by themselves serve the purpose of limiting the terms of congressmen and women who do a bad job. That’s not the point here.

He didn’t deserve the pounding he took from within the 13th Congressional District for allegedly taking back a campaign promise … that he never made.

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Just remember: they work for us!

I somehow feel the need to declare the obvious.

People who hold down elected or appointed public office are our servants. They work for us. Whether they are presidents of the United States, members of Congress, city council members, school board members . . . you name it. They are our employees.

I mention this because of what I am witnessing at a couple of levels of government.

Donald J. Trump demands personal loyalty from those he nominates to high office. If they don’t grant him what he wants, he cans ’em, demands that they quit or he tells one of his other underlings to do his dirty work for him.

This kind of would-be autocracy speaks ill of the notion that we live and function in a representative democracy. In other words, the folks who sit at the seat of power are there to do our bidding.

Let’s skip down a few rungs on the government ladder for a moment. Amarillo school trustees have dummied up over the resignation of a highly touted girls volleyball coach who quit a vaunted athletic program after a single season. Parents who pay the bills for the Amarillo Independent School District are demanding accountability and transparency from the elected school trustees. So far, as near as I can tell, they are getting neither from their “employees,” the men and women who work for them and serve their children.

Political leaders too often act as though they are the bosses. Wrong! They aren’t! We are! You and me, man!

I want to bring up for a moment something I watched about two decades ago in Congress. Republicans had just taken control of both congressional chambers. The new speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, wanted to enact a radical overhaul of the nation’s farm policy. He ran into stiff resistance from my congressman, Republican Larry Combest, who told the speaker — in so many words — to stuff his farm program where the sun didn’t shine.

Why the resistance? Combest told Gingrich that West Texas ranchers and farmers keep sending him back to the House to represent them. They didn’t like Gingrich’s idea of farm policy overhaul. Therefore, neither did their congressman.

Gingrich decided to punish Combest by denying him the House Agriculture Committee chairmanship.

Combest attained the chairmanship eventually, but only after Gingrich had been run out of office because of a failed effort to impeach and remove President Clinton from office and because of some personal indiscretions involving the speaker that came to light.

The moral of the story, though, remains the same. These folks are our employees. They work for us, not the other way around.

There are times when we the people need to flex our muscle and exercise the power inherent in our system of government . . . at all levels.

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Watch the body language at the SOTU

I don’t know about you but I plan to try to interpret some body language that will be on full display this evening in front of the entire United States of America when Donald Trump delivers the presidential State of the Union speech.

Sitting over his left shoulder will be a woman with whom he has had, um . . . words. Speaker Nancy Pelosi invited him to the House of Representatives chamber, then uninvited him, then reinvited him.

The president and the speaker aren’t exactly close. They’re fighting over The Wall. Trump wants money to build it along our southern border; Pelosi says it is an “immoral” request and opposes its construction.

Hey, we’ve seen this kind of thing play out many times over many decades. Speaker John Boehner and later Paul Ryan never looked all that thrilled when Barack Obama delivered his State of the Union speeches. The speakers were Republicans, the president was a Democrat.

How about when Speaker Pelosi sat behind GOP President Bush, or when GOP Speaker Newt Gingrich had to listen to Democratic President Clinton deliver the SOTU? Same thing, man. The speaker of a different party than the president usually doesn’t jump to his or her feet to applaud when POTUS delivers a line that suggests he expects some hand claps.

The animus between the current speaker and the president, though, is more visceral. Or so it appears. Sure, Trump said some nice things about Pelosi when House Democrats elected her speaker at the start of this congressional session. Did he mean them? Hah, you figure it out!

Pelosi, meanwhile, has been even less generous in her public comments about Trump. I believe the president knows it and likely will feel the speaker’s icy stare on the back of his neck while he talks about the State of the (dis)Union.

Pass the popcorn.

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Unity, Mr. President? You’re going to talk ‘unity’?

Donald J. Trump has let the cat out of the bag.

The president’s long-planned State of the Union speech is going to stress several points, but he said he wants to stress “unity” in his pitch to a joint session of Congress and to the nation that will watch him on TV.

Well, now. What do you think about that? Here’s what I think.

I believe the president will have to demonstrate his quest for political unity by scrapping a petulant rhetorical device we hear Republicans use all the time.

The first time he uses the term “Democrat” as an adjective — as in “Democrat lawmakers” or “Democrat Party” — will be a clue that his unity pledge is just another empty platitude.

That bit of rhetorical chicanery grates on me. I hate hearing it because I know why Republicans do it. They bastardize the term “Democrat” that way because it has an edge to it. The term doesn’t roll off the tongue the way “Democratic” does.

The conversion of “Democrat” into a adjective began during the mid-1990s when then-Speaker Newt Gingrich decided to characterize Democrats as the “enemy of normal Americans.” I’ll hand it to Republican politicians ever since. They’ve done a good job of turning their “friends” on the other side of the aisle into political cartoon characters.

The latest top Republican, Trump, now is set to talk yet again about unity. He wants to unify the country. He intends to use the SOTU speech as his vehicle for doing that.

Good! I wish him well. I want him to unify the country. I want him to bridge the divide.

I also want him to stop pis**** off those of us who align with the Democratic Party simply by using the term “Democrat” in that insulting manner that has worked so well for the Republics.