Newt's Debates

This past week Newt Gingrich had two notable debate exchanges. Well exchanges isn't right, he was asked a question by the moderator and then railed about the question. The first one was Juan Williams asking about his food stamps and child janitor comments, "Can't you see that this is seen at a minimum as insulting to all Americans but particularly to black Americans?" Newt went to his standard playbook and doubled down.

The Economist (that liberal bastion) wrote Newt Gingrich: Newt and the "food-stamp president" "When Mr Gingrich replied to Mr Williams that he cannot see why some might take umbrage at his comments that black Americans 'should demand jobs, not food stamps' and that poor kids tend to lack a strong work ethic, I don't think it's quite right to say he was 'playing dumb'. On the contrary, Mr Gingrich acts as though he is so morally evolved, so essentially oriented toward truth—as though he surveys the world from such an Olympian height, through such crystalline air—that he is unable even to imagine how his use of venerable racist tropes could be sensibly seen to serve a purpose other than transmission of the plain truth. This haughty pose flatters the bigots, who Mr Gingrich knows full well are roused by talk of food stamps and an underdeveloped taste for honest labour, reframing their hoary prejudice as gallant unflinching fidelity to facts."

"Of course, Barack Obama has put no one on food stamps. Population growth together with the most severe recession since the advent of the modern American welfare state, which was in full swing when Mr Obama came into office, conspired to make a record number eligible for government food assistance."

"A thought experiment: On Twin Earth, does anyone call President John McCain the "food-stamp president"? Is it "politically incorrect" there to call him that? Or is it just so tactically weird to pin that label on a white Republican who inherited a huge recession that the idea simply never occurred to anyone? If, back in our world, it's not "politically correct" and not tactically weird to pin that label on a black Democrat who inherited a huge recession, then why not?"

digby first described the exchange as "Here's some video of an arrogant white man lecturing a black man about what black people have a right to be offend by --- on Martin Luther King day" and then showed that Gingrinch's original comments are Straight up racism, no dogwhistle necessary because he was explicitly talking about African-Americans.

Think Progress adds some facts, "Not only is his perception of food stamp beneficiaries prejudicial, it’s false. The majority of people who participate in the food stamp program, known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), are white. Most of the participants are also either children (who can’t earn a paycheck unless Gingrich gets his way) or seniors who are of retirement age. In 2010, working-women represented only 28 percent of SNAP beneficiaries, and working-age men represented only 17 percent."

Steve Benen answers Why Gingrich was cheered. "Even if we put aside the racial subtext, Gingrich is playing a dumb game and hoping voters won’t know the difference...If Gingrich believes food-stamp beneficiaries — nearly half of whom are children — should have less food, he should simply make the case. Instead, he relied on cheap rhetoric, which the audience apparently loved."

To make it all worse, Wonkette points out, Arizona Schools Ban Mex-Am Studies, Angry Kids Put On Janitorial Duty "In a page right out of Newt Gingrich’s alternate-history science-fiction wingnut-polygamy utopian epic Candyland Space Land, the school district in Tucson has completely banned Mexican-American studies, seized all the textbooks and even wall posters from the classrooms, and punished the students who protested by sentencing them to janitorial duty." Read the details at The Guardian and The Tucson Citizen.

But that wasn't Newt's biggest moment this week. That came Thursday night when was the first question was about his ex-wife's statements to ABC. Newt doubled down on that too, blaming the media. Stee Kornacki explains The power of conservative victimhood:

"It’s no mystery why the audience of Republicans so instinctively and passionately rallied to Gingrich’s defense. His final line was the key: That the liberal media is out to get Republicans and will stop at nothing to destroy them is an absolute article of faith on the right. It’s why so many conservative leaders claimed that Herman Cain was the victim of a liberal smear when he was confronted with sexual harassment charges in November. Never mind that the conspiracy theory made no sense (why would liberals take down a candidate they’d love to face in the general election?); logic has little to do with this. Likewise, the left would be thrilled to face Gingrich next fall, but that didn’t stop Rush Limbaugh from arguing on Thursday afternoon that the Marianne Gingrich interview was part of a media plot to take out the former speaker.

What Gingrich did brilliantly on Thursday night is to articulate this paranoid victimhood in a clear and compelling (for his audience, at least) way. It’s the same basic trick he pulled in this week’s other debate, when he connected with another strain of the persecution complex: that honest, taxpaying Republicans are the victims of a dependency class of poor people and minorities that Democrats intentionally enable. Thus did Monday’s crowd rejoice when Gingrich insisted to Fox News’ Juan Williams that there was nothing remotely insulting about his statement that the NAACP should be asking for paychecks instead of food stamps, or his suggestion that children in poor neighborhoods don’t understand the value of work."

Steve Benen expanded on this in How Gingrich connects: "Conservative voters hate the media, so Gingrich exploits that hatred. Conservative voters don’t like feeling defensive about race and policy, so Gingrich tells them why they shouldn’t. His debate performances are like dopamine for the right-wing soul.

And because Gingrich understands this so well, the nature of the story shifts — it’s not about Gingrich’s scandalous personal life and his habitual adultery; it’s about those media scoundrels trying to keep Republicans down. GOP voters should feel sorry for Gingrich, the argument goes, because they feel sorry for themselves.

The fact that this article of faith is a fantasy is irrelevant. Indeed, it just takes a moment of independent thought to tear the house of cards down: was Gingrich condemning the “despicable” media when news organizations obsessed over Anthony Weiner’s personal life? How about Eliot Spitzer? Or John Edwards?

More to the point, when Gingrich was helping lead an impeachment crusade against President Bill Clinton, and the media’s obsession with a sex scandal was boundless, did Gingrich whine, “I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country”? If he did, I missed it."