I'm becoming more and more convinced that Newt Gingrich is the Glenn Beck of 2012 Presidential candidates. Knowing he cannot hope to be a viable candidate, Newt just spews the crazy to make the others look sane.
From last night's appearance at the Faith and Freedom Coalition Forum, we get this gem. Keep in mind, this forum featured Herman Cain, Newtie, Tim Pawlenty, Buddy Roemer and Rick Santorum. With the exception of a few nods toward faux populism by Roemer, the others said the same thing in a sort of boring and predictable way. But Newt kicked it up and out a few notches.
Transcript of the clip above:
But for me, the real turning point was when the 9th Circuit court decided in 2002 to...that it was unconstitutional to say "one nation under God" as part of the Pledge of Allegiance in a school. And I decided -- in some ways it was very parallel to Lincoln responding to the Dred Scott decision about slavery.
I decided that if we now have judges so fundamentally out of touch with America that they have no clue what this country was based on, we need a political change so deep and so profound that nothing we have seen in our lifetime is comparable to the level of depth we have to go to get this country back on the right track again.
[applause]
Let me be very clear about this. Since 1952, we have won 9 presidential elections for Republicans and Democrats won 6. But despite the fact that Republicans were in the White House for 50% more time than Democrats, we did not at a fundamental level change the power of the left. We didn't change the bureaucracies, we didn't change the biases of the judiciary. And over that period, they have all gotten worse, moved further to the left and become more alienated from the American system.
There's so many dogwhistles in that little clip it's a veritable symphony. He sort of drops the thing about Dred Scott in there, which of course led to the Civil War just before saying we need political change so deep and profound it hasn't been seen in our lifetime? And then for good measure, claims the judiciary and bureaucracies have moved farther left? In what world?
Yes, of course a 'secular socialist left' judiciary gave us Citizens United. Of course it did. And it was that secular socialist left that dropped troops in Iraq, too. Sure it was.
But wait, there's more. Here's Newt describing the first day of his fantasy Presidency.
I was accused of overreacting to this on Twitter last night when I said "These people really want a dictatorship." Tell me if you think I was. Here's the transcript:
Now how fast could we in fact turn the country around if we had a President who shared our values instead of the values of the secular socialist left? Start on the very first day. There's a system called an executive order which allows the President to interpret the application of the law. Imagine just four examples.
What if, on the very first day, we had a President who said, we are now abolishing as of this minute every single czar in the White House and their offices, including spending?
[applause]
What if we said, on the very first day, we are reinstating Ronald Reagan's Mexico City policy and no American tax money will go to any abortion anywhere outside the United States, period?
[louder applause]
What if we said, on the very first day, that George W. Bush's implementation of conscience protection will be reinstated so the government will actively protect those who as a matter of conscience refuse to do things that the left wants done?
[applause]
And finally, what if we said on the very first day that the State Department will be instructed as of this date to recognize the right of every sovereign nation to define its own capitol and the United States embassy will be in the capitol of the country that defines it, which would mean that for the first time we would put the capitol in Jerusalem. The only country -- think about this -- the only country in the world where the United States government refuses to allow the local government to define its capitol is Israel, which is a democracy, an ally of ours, and it is profoundly wrong to discriminate against Israel, the government of Israel, the people of Israel and we should stop it on the very first day.
[wild applause]
Now, I'm not yet a candidate, I'm in the process of exploring as you know, and you can go to newtexplore.com -- I thought I'd put that plug in -- but let me say that every person who's going to speak tonight is a friend of mine. We're all going to have to be on the same team after this is over. It's going to take all of us to defeat the left because -- and I agree with what Steve said -- we can't just defeat the left in Washington.
We need 40 more house seats in Washington, we need a dozen more US Senators, we need to pick up the State Senate here, we need to strengthen the hand that the governor has, we need to across the board recognize there are 513,000 elected officials at the state and local level and only 537 at the federal level.
We need, for the first time in 80 years to replace the governing structure of the left with a governing structure that is center right and then we need, from the very first day, to implement decisively the re-establishment of an American exceptionalism that recognizes that the power starts with you and eventually goes to Washington when necessary. Power does not start in Washington with a bunch of judges and bureaucrats dictating to you what you do.
Thank you, good luck and God bless.
Ignore the reference to center right. That's just silly. There is no center right, only hard John Birch-style right now. The center is dead. If that's not a call for a right wing revolution, I don't know what would be.
Newt Gingrich knows he won't get elected. He has way too much baggage. But he managed, in this short little speech, to further de-legitimize President Obama ("...if we had a President who shared our values...) and to push all the buttons stoking far-right morals voters' anger while making the Santorums, Pawlentys and Cains look like sane human beings.
2012 will be all about wedge issues if we "secular socialist leftists" can't manage to put together a message and enough unity to push forward. Last night's speakers made that abundantly clear.