November 23, 2011--Newt: Answering the Attacks
I promise to move on after Thanksgiving to subjects other than the Republican race for the nomination.
But with Newt Gingrich surging in the polls, including and especially in Iowa, which means he has a real shot at the nomination and thus the presidency (Obama is that weak and compromised), I cannot restrain myself from writing once more about how Gingrich, as a historian of his own life story and ever-shifting policy positions, specializes in shaving the truth. I'm being kind.
On his Website (linked below) he takes on what he sees to be unfair attacks on his record of equivocation and out-and-out calumny and greed.
It is worth perusing his responses to all 13 "attacks" because his slights of hand and subtle distortions offer a window into his mind and, should I say, soul.
Take his migrating views on healthcare reform as just one of these windows, particularly his views about requiring everyone to purchase insurance through the so-called individual mandate.
He has been caught being on at least both sides of this issue. Forget for the moment that according to Business Week his "consulting" (read lobbying) firm, The Gingrich Group LLC, was paid an mind-boggling $55 million between 2001 and 2010 to persuade Republicans to support the individual mandate; but then when Obama embraced it, simply to undermine him, Newt had to do some fancy dancing to get in synch with the Republican talking points and oppose it and him.
Retrospectively, he now contends that he also supported the mandate during the Clinton years because the healthcare plan emerging from the White House--under Hillary's heavy-handed leadership--called for a single-payer system. In other words, he didn't like the mandate idea but politically had to put something on the table, anything other than Hillarycare. Get the partisan similarity?
But then more recently, follow this closely, he contends that when he saw how disastrous the individual mandate was playing out in Mitt Romney's Massachusetts, he changed his position again and came to oppose it. Nice. Very nice.
No one ever said Newt isn't a clever boy. And therefore dangerous.
There are many other equivalent changes of position--or, if you will, flip-flops--all based on half truths and replete with edgy self-justification. For example explanations or denials about how he was against the Paul Ryan budget before he was for it or how and why he changed (or didn't change) positions on ethanol, abortion, TARP, Libya, the Department of Education, immigration, and of course Freddie Mac, for which he was paid nearly $2.0 million not to lobby.
The last of the 13 attacks he "refutes" has to do with his "personal life." About this I will restrain myself from commenting. It is erev Thanksgiving after all. But it is there on his Website for you to look at if you are inclined and want to spoil your appetite for giblet gravy. Or hate NFL football.
But with Newt Gingrich surging in the polls, including and especially in Iowa, which means he has a real shot at the nomination and thus the presidency (Obama is that weak and compromised), I cannot restrain myself from writing once more about how Gingrich, as a historian of his own life story and ever-shifting policy positions, specializes in shaving the truth. I'm being kind.
On his Website (linked below) he takes on what he sees to be unfair attacks on his record of equivocation and out-and-out calumny and greed.
It is worth perusing his responses to all 13 "attacks" because his slights of hand and subtle distortions offer a window into his mind and, should I say, soul.
Take his migrating views on healthcare reform as just one of these windows, particularly his views about requiring everyone to purchase insurance through the so-called individual mandate.
He has been caught being on at least both sides of this issue. Forget for the moment that according to Business Week his "consulting" (read lobbying) firm, The Gingrich Group LLC, was paid an mind-boggling $55 million between 2001 and 2010 to persuade Republicans to support the individual mandate; but then when Obama embraced it, simply to undermine him, Newt had to do some fancy dancing to get in synch with the Republican talking points and oppose it and him.
Retrospectively, he now contends that he also supported the mandate during the Clinton years because the healthcare plan emerging from the White House--under Hillary's heavy-handed leadership--called for a single-payer system. In other words, he didn't like the mandate idea but politically had to put something on the table, anything other than Hillarycare. Get the partisan similarity?
But then more recently, follow this closely, he contends that when he saw how disastrous the individual mandate was playing out in Mitt Romney's Massachusetts, he changed his position again and came to oppose it. Nice. Very nice.
No one ever said Newt isn't a clever boy. And therefore dangerous.
There are many other equivalent changes of position--or, if you will, flip-flops--all based on half truths and replete with edgy self-justification. For example explanations or denials about how he was against the Paul Ryan budget before he was for it or how and why he changed (or didn't change) positions on ethanol, abortion, TARP, Libya, the Department of Education, immigration, and of course Freddie Mac, for which he was paid nearly $2.0 million not to lobby.
The last of the 13 attacks he "refutes" has to do with his "personal life." About this I will restrain myself from commenting. It is erev Thanksgiving after all. But it is there on his Website for you to look at if you are inclined and want to spoil your appetite for giblet gravy. Or hate NFL football.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
5:33 AM
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