Tag Archives: Newt Gingrich

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Capitol Hill hypocrisy keeps mounting up

Hypocrisy is a bipartisan affliction.

Democrats are hypocrites, as are Republicans. They say one thing and do another.

Meet U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., who now joins the Hypocrites Hall of Shame for taking full advantage of a congressional perk he once sought to abolish.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/12/john-mccain-robert-gates_n_4585156.html?ncid=txtlnkushpmg00000037

The perk is “franking,” the practice of using free mail service. Kingston once sought to get rid of it. Now we learn he’s one of Congress’s chief users of the franking privilege.

Kingston has spent more than $124,000 in taxpayer money on mailings since 2009. But when he first ran for the office in 1992, he campaigned on a promise to work to get rid of the privilege. So which is it, congressman? Do you now approve of the privilege or are you using it to champion its demise?

I love these hypocrites, the people who live by a “do-as-I-say” credo. They talk the talk but when it comes to living up to their high-minded words, well, all bets are off.

My favorite hypocrites in recent times are, oh:

* Republican U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich railing against President Clinton’s moral failings while cheating on his own wife by having an affair with a congressional staffer.

* Democratic U.S. Sen. John Edwards proclaiming his abiding love for his wife, Elizabeth, as she battled cancer while he was fathering a child with a campaign staffer.

* Democratic former Vice President Al Gore becoming a champion of energy conservation while running up staggering heating and cooling bills at his palatial homes.

* Republican U.S. Sen. John Ensign touting his family values while consorting with women other than his wife.

Yes, I’m leaving many others out.

Hypocrites have long been a part of what ails Washington and, for that matter, government at all levels since the founding of the Republic. I don’t know how you get rid of hypocrites, other than to vote them out of office.

Rep. Kingston likely is going to come up with some kind of bogus rationale for using the franking privilege that his Georgia constituents will accept. That’s their problem.

I just think this kind of double-speak needs some exposure.

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Term limits for all … but not for himself?

I recently chided members of Congress who have kept getting paid while other federal employees are having to take unpaid leave — all because Congress’s actions have resulted in a partial shutdown of the federal government.

I included my own member of Congress, Mac Thornberry, R-Clarendon, as a target of chiding. He’s still getting paid.

My criticism drew some response from blogosphere friends, a couple of whom took the argument a bit farther, suggesting that Thornberry shouldn’t even be in office at this moment, given that he ran for the House of Representatives the first time in 1994 while supporting the Contract With America, which included — among many other items — term limits for members of Congress.

I feel the need to respond to that criticism on Thornberry’s behalf.

To be clear, I am not a huge fan politically of my congressman — although I like him personally and consider him to be smart and an articulate advocate for his philosophical view of government.

Thornberry never took the pledge to limit himself to the amount of time he would serve in Congress. He espoused his support for the Contract With America, which was the brainchild of the leader of the 1994 GOP revolution, Rep. Newt Gingrich, who parlayed his party’s capturing of Congress into the House speakership. Thornberry has voted every time in favor of the term limits measure every time it’s come to the floor of the House. But because the legislation comes in the form of a constitutional amendment, it requires two-thirds of the House to approve it; the measure has fallen short every time.

Still, Thornberry is on the record as supporting it.

One of my blogosphere pals questioned my giving Thornberry a pass, suggesting that he should be more faithful to the CWA simply by taking the pledge to step aside after three terms, which the term-limits plank in the CWA provided.

This issue has dogged Thornberry ever since he took office, although the size of his re-election victories in every contested election — and there haven’t been that many of them — suggests that most voters are giving him a pass on it, too.

I have continued to maintain that Thornberry played the issue smartly when he ran the first time. Yes, he might have split a few hairs by supporting the CWA while declining to limit himself to three terms in office. Others in that congressional class of ’94 took the pledge, only to renege on it years later. Thornberry saved himself the embarrassment of trying to explain why he might have second thoughts.

As for lawmakers — including Thornberry — getting paid while fed staffers are being denied their income, well, that’s another matter. That should provide enough of an embarrassment all by itself.

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Boehner’s backside is on the line

Poor John Boehner.

He wanted more than anything to be speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. He got his wish when Nancy Pelosi handed the gavel to him as the 112th Congress convened in 2011. But now he’s like the dog who kept chasing the car … but didn’t know what to do when he caught it.

The Republican speaker is being whipsawed by factions within his own party.

Does he “cave” to demand to end the government shutdown by agreeing to put a Democratic measure to fund the government to a vote? Doing so would anger the tea party clique that is calling the shots in the GOP caucus.

http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/03/20804176-john-boehners-legacy-on-the-line-in-shutdown?lite&ocid=msnhp&pos=1

Does he want to remain speaker or — as he insists — does he want to do what’s best for the country and get the government, all of it, back in action?

Therein lies his dilemma. He must appease the raucous minority within his own caucus or he must do what most of the rest of us want, which is to end this ridiculous stalemate.

He is the speaker of the House, which defines him as a very powerful politician. He’s second in line to the presidency, after the vice president. He can make the speaker’s office as weak or as strong as he wants.

My sense is that Boehner wants to be seen as a strong speaker in the mold of, say, Texas Democrat Sam Rayburn. He’s wired to cut deal with the other side, just as Rayburn was during his many years as speaker.

However, he’s got that faction within his own party that thinks it knows best. It doesn’t know anything. Its members have no institutional knowledge of what happened to their caucus the last time they orchestrated a government shutdown in 1995. They had their heads handed to them at the next election.

Another speaker, Newt Gingrich, knows what happened. He’s been trying to counsel his tea party pals about the folly of their mission. It’s been to no avail.

Meanwhile, the current Man of the House is being flummoxed. Poor guy. Maybe he shouldn’t have wanted to be speaker quite so badly.

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Putin’s remarks do matter … a lot

Vladimir Putin’s assertion that the United States of America is not an exceptional nation has drawn fire from both sides of the political aisle in this country.

With good reason, I should add once again.

Yet, some political hounds, such as former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., have dismissed Putin’s remarks as being irrelevant, that they don’t matter.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/09/12/putin_becomes_congress_bipartisan_punching_bag_119926.html

I have to disagree with Gingrich.

Putin wrote — or as Gingrich said correctly, someone wrote it for him — an op-ed column in the New York Times in which he challenged American politicians’ view of this country as being “exceptional.” I won’t rehash the points I made in an earlier blog post about Russia’s relative mediocrity compared to America.

It is folly, though, to dismiss Putin’s remarks simply because he is a former KGB spy, as Gingrich did. He is leader of a significant nation that possesses a huge nuclear arsenal left over from the Cold War and the era when Russia was known as the Soviet Union. Russia is still a significant player on the world stage.

Most of us here in America, yours truly included, do not buy into Putin’s belief that this country is unexceptional. He has made his point and it is still reverberating around the world.

If he were president of, say, Trinidad and Tobago, then we could dismiss his comments as not worth our time or attention. His great big platform as Russian’s head of state gives Putin a very loud bullhorn.

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Newt hates being negative?

Now I’ve heard just about everything there is to hear in contemporary American politics.

Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, the one-time bomb-thrower in chief of the Republican, the one-man wrecking crew against all things Democratic, now says his party has gone too “negative” in its effort to roll back the Affordable Care Act.

http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/14/20026954-gingrich-hope-key-to-progress-for-gop?lite&ocid=msnhp&pos=4

I need to have my hearing checked?

Gingrich is now trying to be the paragon of positive thinking in his party. Imagine that.

My favorite Gingrich tactic came to light in the early 1990s when, while building what would become the House Republican majority, once counseled his congressional colleagues to adopt a glossary of terms to demonize his Democratic opponents. Among them was this notion that Republicans had to label Democrats, get ready for this one, as the “enemy of normal Americans.”

Remember how he tore after then-House Speaker Jim Wright of Texas for his ethical lapses? Turned out that Wright was dirty and he resigned from the House, but he did so after being bloodied badly by Gingrich’s relentless attack.

Gingrich’s scorched-Earth strategy succeeded in 1994, as the GOP captured both houses of Congress in one of the party’s more stunning mid-term successes. He then sought to give first-term President Clinton the dickens masterminding the infamous government shutdown. That didn’t work out too well for Gingrich, as his party got clobbered in the 1996 and 1998 elections. He eventually quit the House a broken political leader.

Gingrich has become the poster boy for those who know to acquire the power to govern, but who don’t know how to actually govern.

So here he is today, giving advice to his Republican progeny on how to woo disaffected voters.

Good luck with that, Mr. Speaker.

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Tea Party vs. Establishment GOP

It’s going to be fun watching the tea party wing of the Republican Party take on the old dogs of the GOP.

It’ll be over Obamacare and whether it’s prudent to shut down the government to deprive the Affordable Care Act of the funds it will need to become operational.

http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/313819-obamacare-funding-battle-pits-tea-party-vs-establishment-gop

Here’s what I see happening.

The establishment wing of the party knows the dangers of shutting the government down to prove some kind of political point. The Republicans tried that in the late 1990s. You remember that, yes? House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his band of GOP insurgents shut ‘er down over a budget fight with the Clinton administration; turned out Newtie really was mad because President Clinton didn’t give him a choice seat aboard Air Force One – but I digress.

The government shutdown didn’t work well for Gingrich and his Republican foot soldiers. They ended up getting their heads handed to them in the 1998 mid-term elections, Gingrich ended up quitting the House and President Clinton – despite being impeached by the House – ended his presidency on a high note.

The establishment guys remember all that. Their memories are painful. The tea party guys are new to this game of D.C. hardball politics. They’re righteous in their cause and, by golly, they’re going to have it their way or else.

I feel compelled to remind them that Newt Gingrich once was a righteous revolutionary who knew how to obtain power, but didn’t have a clue about what to do when it came time to actually use it.

A part of me is beginning to believe that history is going to repeat itself.

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Scandals know no partisan bounds

A word of caution is due to Republicans here and across the country as they watch the struggles of three well-known Democratic politicians.

Let’s not gloat, folks.

Anthony Weiner wants to run for mayor of New York. Bob Filner already is mayor of San Diego, Calif. Eliot Spitzer, the former governor of New York, now wants to become NYC’s comptroller. All three of them have made headlines for (in order) sending text messages and videos of a certain functional body part to women; groping and speaking hideously to female staffers; consorting with prostitutes.

Some Republicans are relishing the troubles that have befallen these Democrats. One noted conservative columnist and Fox News TV commentator, Michelle Malkin, recently tweeted about how silent Rep. Nancy Pelosi and other Dems have been about Filner’s difficulty; I responded to her with a tweet that advised her to cool the “partisan perv” talk.

The record shows that Republicans have endured more than their share of sexually related difficulties. To wit:

House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s extramarital affair with a staffer while he was blasting President Clinton for his own marital misbehavior; U.S. Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana becoming involved with a call girl; U.S. Rep. Mark Foley’s email flirtations with underage congressional pages; U.S. Sen. John Ensign’s marital infidelity; U.S. Sen. Larry Craig’s arrest (and this is my favorite scandal) for making indecent sexual advances to others inside a men’s restroom at a Minnesota airport.

Let’s stipulate that all three men now caught in the sexual perversion vise — Weiner, Filner and Spitzer — deserve every bit of the scorn they’re getting.

Misbehavior by male politicians, though, hardly is a partisan endeavor. Pols from both parties in recent years have garnered their share of infamy.

 

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Dr. Coburn is right about shutdown effect

U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn is an Oklahoma Republican who joins his GOP colleagues in hating the Affordable Care Act.

But the man also understands the consequences of shutting down the federal government to make a political point about ending what’s known as Obamacare.

Don’t do it, Sen. Coburn warns.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/313845-coburn-government-shutdown-would-destroy-the-gop

A government shutdown would destroy the Republican Party, he told the Washington Examiner.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, has this idea to quit operating the federal government if it results in getting rid of Obamacare. He’s been joined by some of the party firebrands, such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Such a shutdown could occur later this year as the White House and congressional Republicans lock horns in their ongoing battle over federal spending.

Someone ought to remind Lee, Cruz and some of the other political pistols on the right that Congress enacted the ACA, which then withstood a challenge in the Supreme Court of the United States, which ruled in June 2012 that the law is constitutional and it should stand.

Yet the foes persist time and again trying to get rid of a law they contend constitutes a federal overreach.

And now they’re threatening to shut the government down to make their point?

Quick. Put out a call to former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who also led a government shutdown in the 1990s. The shutdown helped doom Gingrich’s speakership.

What’s that saying about the consequences of ignoring the lessons of history?