The Smithian

February 17th, 2013

'...Obama’s draft mirrors the 2007 bipartisan immigration proposal backed by President George W. Bush and Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC). But as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) admitted during an appearance on ABC’s This Week, Republicans are unlikely to support any plan with Obama’s name on it—even if it incorporates many of their own proposals.

August 11th, 2012

thesmithian

Ryan’s nomination represents…the completion of a fifty year struggle. Starting in the early 1960s, conservative activists set out to seize control of the Republican Party. At the time the party was firmly in the hands of establishmentarians who had made their peace with the New Deal, but the activists regarded the…development of the modern regulatory and welfare states as…bound to lead to…societal collapse…the conservatives slowly advanced—nominating Goldwater, retreating under Nixon, nominating Reagan, retreating as Reagan sought to govern, and on and on through Gingrich, Bush and his successors…Ryan’s nomination represents a moment when the conservative movement ceased to control the politicians from behind the scenes and openly assumed the mantle of power…

more at NYM.

Ryan’s nomination represents…the completion of a fifty year struggle. Starting in the early 1960s, conservative activists set out to seize control of the Republican Party. At the time the party was firmly in the hands of establishmentarians who had made their peace with the New Deal, but the activists regarded the…development of the modern regulatory and welfare states as…bound to lead to…societal collapse…the conservatives slowly advanced—nominating Goldwater, retreating under Nixon, nominating Reagan, retreating as Reagan sought to govern, and on and on through Gingrich, Bush and his successors…Ryan’s nomination represents a moment when the conservative movement ceased to control the politicians from behind the scenes and openly assumed the mantle of power…

more at NYM.

March 27th, 2012

thesmithian

Ask yourself how we suddenly know that the dead kid had been suspended from high school because he got caught with a bag that might once have contained marijuana. Ask yourself why we know that. We know that because this case is Not About Race. It is Not About Race because It Is Never About Race. Race is the past. Black people can vote. One of them is president. Nothing Is About Race anymore. Just ask Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum…and they’ll tell you that the president “injected” race into the tragedy. It wasn’t there before the president — who is (shhh!) black, you know — put it there. Ask Joe Oliver, this “friend” of the gunman who insists that Zimmerman might have said “fucking goons” and not “fucking coons,” because the latter is an obsolete racial slur and the former is a “term of endearment,” according to Oliver’s daughter. This is enormously believable because, if you’re an armed 28-year old gunslinger in pursuit of what you believe is a dangerous burglar, the first descriptive that would leap to anyone’s mind is a term of endearment used by high-school girls. Yeah, sure. Whatever. As if. And it is enormously believable because This Is Not About Race.

Charles P. Pierce, at Esquire.

March 18th, 2012

thesmithian

'...a theme that has become known to the public largely through the Gingrich/Santorum bloc: that Barack Obama has led the most actively anti-Christian administration in American history. This is a talking point with a lot of traction across the airwaves and blogosphere of the right. Given Obama’s frequent Christian testimony—explicit enough to make most founding fathers uncomfortable with its public expression of private matters—how can this view be so widely held?'

March 8th, 2012

thesmithian

'The fact that Rick Santorum—a candidate whose radically conservative views on women, gays, and the division of church and state are not so different from those of, say, the Taliban—could get this far should be a wake-up call to mainstream Republicans, if there are any left. To win a GOP primary these days, it seems you need to be one of two things: a true-believer cultural extremist like Santorum or someone willing to say whatever it takes to trick primary voters into thinking you're a cultural extremist, as Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have attempted to do.'

February 23rd, 2012

thesmithian

‘Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign has received a second warning from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for widespread financial irregularities…

…saying the campaign must disclose why nearly $1 million was paid to the candidate, staff and a small group of fundraising consultants for questionable reimbursements…The campaign transferred Mr. Gingrich $88,000 last month for unspecified “travel” expenses, a pace far higher than he paid himself over the course of 2011…It was part of $220,000 in mystery money that month that went to people close to Mr. Gingrich on top of their salaries, raising the issue of potential self-dealing.

more. and from December.

January 29th, 2012

thesmithian

Zoom

When Newt Gingrich said in a recent debate that he was a man of “grandiose” ideas…Romney’s campaign pounced. It sent mocking Twitter messages with a hashtag, “#grandiosenewt”, encouraging voters to add their own examples of occasions when they felt Mr. Gingrich had been “grandiose.” Within minutes, the hashtag was trending…Reporters picked up on it…If the 2008 presidential race embraced a 24/7 news cycle, four years later politicos are finding themselves in the middle of an election most starkly defined by Twitter…

more.

When Newt Gingrich said in a recent debate that he was a man of “grandiose” ideas…Romney’s campaign pounced. It sent mocking Twitter messages with a hashtag, “#grandiosenewt”, encouraging voters to add their own examples of occasions when they felt Mr. Gingrich had been “grandiose.” Within minutes, the hashtag was trending…Reporters picked up on it…If the 2008 presidential race embraced a 24/7 news cycle, four years later politicos are finding themselves in the middle of an election most starkly defined by Twitter…

more.

January 28th, 2012

thesmithian

Zoom

The press loves drama and hates a front-runner. So guess who they are rooting for.

more.

January 28th, 2012

thesmithian

January 22nd, 2012

thesmithian

That’s what Newt Gingrich promises them…

In order to survive without moderating their policies, they must subscribe to the belief that if only they eliminate every program that helps poor people (including minorities), minorities will suddenly wake from a deep sleep and learn to embrace conservatives through the power of tough love. That’s what Newt Gingrich promises them. He is their answer to Barack Obama, their Savior, their Great Racial Uniter. He speaks not ignorantly, schizophrenically nor in code. He and his base have leaped into this ideological gamble with open eyes, and are attempting to take the rest of the country with them.

more.

January 21st, 2012

thesmithian

Zoom

January 17th, 2012

thesmithian

'So it was that on Tuesday Newt Gingrich gleefully said his description of Mr. Obama as a “food stamp president” at Monday’s Fox News debate had “struck a chord with the American people”; the White House press secretary asserted that it was “crazy” to say so, and then Mr. Gingrich doubled down — releasing an ad with his debate-night assertion that “more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history.” Mr. Gingrich was clearly making the case that he is the candidate most able to take the fight to Mr. Obama in the fall, but he was also laying bare risks for his party when it comes to invoking arguments perceived to carry racial themes or other value-laden attack lines.'

and more.

December 13th, 2011

thesmithian

'...In March, at the Cornerstone Church, in San Antonio, Gingrich declared, “I am convinced that, if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America,” his grandchildren will live “in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.” Last spring, this was a kind of right-wing performance art. Now it is the language of the man leading in the Republican polls, a man who—in the real world, not the alt-world—could, not inconceivably, become President of the United States. Imagine that.'

+++++

art: drawing by Robbie McCord

May 28th, 2011

thesmithian

Zoom

[Distort, Attack, Repeat] Fox may look like a news broadcast, but it’s really the advance guard of the GOP distortion machine. An hour-by-hour look at how Fox turns Obama into…

more.

[Distort, Attack, Repeat] Fox may look like a news broadcast, but it’s really the advance guard of the GOP distortion machine. An hour-by-hour look at how Fox turns Obama into…

more.

May 15th, 2011

thesmithian

Newt Gingrich doubled down on his clever new slur against President Obama as “the food stamp president.” He tried the line in a Friday speech to the Georgia Republican convention, and he used it again on “Meet the Press Sunday”…Blaming [Obama] for the sharp rise in food-stamp reliance (which resulted from the economic crash that happened on the watch of [President George W. Bush]) is just the latest version of Rush Limbaugh suggesting that Obama’s social policy amounts to “reparations” for black people…hen host David Gregory suggested the term had racial overtones, Gingrich replied “That’s bizarre,” and added, “I have never said anything about President Obama which is racist…He also told Georgia Republicans Friday that 2012 will be the most momentous election “since 1860,” which happens to be the year we elected the anti-slavery Abraham Lincoln president, and he suggested the U.S. bring back a “voting standard” that requires voters to prove they know American history—which sounds a lot like the “poll tests” outlawed by the Voting Rights Act.

more.

Newt Gingrich doubled down on his clever new slur against President Obama as “the food stamp president.” He tried the line in a Friday speech to the Georgia Republican convention, and he used it again on “Meet the Press Sunday”…Blaming [Obama] for the sharp rise in food-stamp reliance (which resulted from the economic crash that happened on the watch of [President George W. Bush]) is just the latest version of Rush Limbaugh suggesting that Obama’s social policy amounts to “reparations” for black people…hen host David Gregory suggested the term had racial overtones, Gingrich replied “That’s bizarre,” and added, “I have never said anything about President Obama which is racist…He also told Georgia Republicans Friday that 2012 will be the most momentous election “since 1860,” which happens to be the year we elected the anti-slavery Abraham Lincoln president, and he suggested the U.S. bring back a “voting standard” that requires voters to prove they know American history—which sounds a lot like the “poll tests” outlawed by the Voting Rights Act.

more.