...a self-proclaimed “Mr. Cheerful”, the former House Speaker, Newt Gingrich
The GOP continues to feed piles of comedy political material to the nightly comedy broadcast and cable TV shows.
The latest GOP / CNN primary debate in Arizona has taken the last four Republican candidates to what one media pundit called a “political fantasyland”. I’m sorry, but that’s a real slam at a great place for family entertainment that offers real “fun and fantasy”, not the total removal from the political reality that appeared last week on a debate stage in Arizona.
In Republican primaries, it’s always normal to woo those on the extreme right and then to go to the center in the Fall. But with what’s going on today, many of them have started this year, kind of in the political center, and they are now racing to see who can be more extreme on the right than the other guy.
As an example, in an earlier debate, the former House Speaker, Newt Gingrich had said that “...the US wasn’t the kind of country to uproot millions of immigrants who had lived here peacefully and productively for many years”. In later debates, he had backpedaled somewhat suggesting that he would only ship back the elderly immigrant grandparents to Mexico.
But now in Arizona, Newt is ready to uproot not only thousands of US immigrants, but he also wants half of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to be sent to the southern US border. The DHS would also presumably be armed with pistols and posthole diggers for building a border fence. Gingrich later said he would save $500 billion a year by abolishing the US Civil Service which, would allow him to build the border fence for 10% of its current projected cost...? (Probably using non-union Hispanic laborers.)
On the other hand, Texas Representative Ron Paul said he opposed the building of a border fence because it might be used to keep Americans in, instead of keeping the illegal immigrants out. When it comes to being unreal, early on, Ron Paul was way ahead of the rest of the pack.
When a member of the audience actually tried to get the group back to reality by asking what each would do about the federal debt, they had no real answers.
Mitt Romney answered with a bizarre statement saying, “I’m going to go through every single program and ask if we can afford it”. (What if we can’t?)
And with all the GOP noise last week in DC about birth control and abortion, the CNN moderator, John King, obviously had to raise the issue of contraception. But even these four individuals knew that that subject was a virtual political mine field. Most of them were aware that most Americans think that contraception is a settled subject and they do not understand why any presidential candidates would be debating the morality or legality of birth control.
Of course, even though contraception has been a lively issue with the Republicans in the US Congress, it is also a big issue in many of the Republican state congresses. All of the candidates tried, but failed, to blame the raising of the B.C. issue on the “main-stream and cable media”. They adamantly refused to acknowledge that it’s the Republicans that are the ones that are bringing up all the replays of a sensitive subject that was settled with the American public over 50 years ago.
Of course, former Senator Rick Santorum just had to clarify his personal views on birth control: “I think I was making it clear that, while I have a personal moral objection to it, even though I don’t support it, that I voted for bills that included it. And I made it very clear in subsequent interviews that I don’t — I don’t support that. I’ve never supported it, and — and have — and on an individual basis have voted against it.”
So, he was against it, but voted for programs that included birth control, even though he personally did not agree with using birth control, it was OK if others did. Being a devout Catholic with seven children, I wonder how his Bishop feels about that answer...?
Moving on, one would have thought that since foreign affairs is one of the key issues that is the responsibility of all US presidents, this group would have done their homework on the subject. Well, not really.
After Newt Gingrich had chosen the word “cheerful” to describe himself in the debate’s lightning round, he then delivered this less than cheerful statement: “You live in a world of total warfare. . . . We live in an age when we have to genuinely worry about nuclear weapons going off in our own cities . . . . I believe this is the most dangerous president on national security grounds in American history.” Of course, there was no comment about the Republican president that allowed us to be attacked on 9/11, and there was no explanation as to why the current president is the, “most dangerous president in US history”. This was all Newt had to offer on foreign affairs.
Santorum began his comment on foreign issues this way: “...we have a lot of troubles around the world, as you see, the Middle East is in flames. . . ”, and that was it.
Romney, who not long ago was positioning himself as being the smiling champion of world freedom, declared flatly, “The Arab Spring has become the Arab Winter.”
Ron Paul had nothing to offer.
This was the total extent of their offerings regarding anything that is occurring beyond this country’s borders.
Because Santorum was attacked multiple times by the others on his history of non –conservative votes while in the Senate, his defense was actually very good, but totally against today’s GOP approach.
Santorum kept appealing for understanding that life isn’t all black and white. But it was instead the complexity of political life that troubled him, not the complexity of issues. To be good team players, Republicans sometimes have to support legislation they don’t approve of, he pleaded. Senators sometimes have to vote for big bills they don’t love in their entirety. He was trying to properly say that governing sometimes demands a level of “compromise”. However, he couldn’t bring himself to say the “C” word on national TV. That’s because, as we are all aware, today’s Republicans are not allowed to even consider the “C” word.
Of course, comments like this from Santorum caused the very pious acting Ron Paul to declare that as a real conservative, Rick Santorum was “a fake”.
Yes friends and neighbors, the GOP debate #20 was just one more example of how low the Republican party has sunk and how little they understand about where average Americans stand today.
It was all very, very sad and bewildering to watch.
Copyright G.Ater 2012
Follow me on Twitter: gater01
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