The spending is leaving its mark on Florida, the site of today’s crucial GOP primary. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and his allies, especially the pro-Romney Restore Our Future, aired 12,768 television commercials in the state through Wednesday compared with 210 by former House speaker Newt Gingrich and his supporters, a study released Monday by the Wesleyan Media Project shows.
(source)
But is it fair to call Obama the “food stamp” president?
Reblogged from motherjones with 96 notes / Politics Newt Gingrich Obama Election 2012
‘Super PAC’ for Gingrich to Get $5 Million Infusion
The supporter, Dr. Miriam Adelson, is the wife of Sheldon Adelson, a longtime Gingrich friend and a patron who this month contributed $5 million to the super PAC, Winning Our Future. Dr. Adelson’s check will bring the couple’s total contributions to Winning Our Future to $10 million, a figure that could substantially neutralize the millions of dollars already being spent in Florida by Mr. Romney and Restore Our Future, a super PAC supporting him.
Mr. Adelson’s initial check financed a barrage of negative ads against Mr. Romney in South Carolina, helping Mr. Gingrich to an upset victory in Saturday’s Republican primary there. But those attacks, which focused on Mr. Romney’s wealth and private equity career, also drew condemnation from many conservatives, who said Mr. Gingrich’s allies were undercutting free-market capitalism and amplifying class-warfare arguments being made by Democrats and Occupy Wall Street demonstrators.
Providing one rich white man with millions of dollars to assist in said rich white man getting a new job: because there is no better way to make use of that money.
In 1997 Newt Gingrich Proposed the Death Penalty for Pot
As Speaker of the House, Gingrich introduced the “Drug Importer Death Penalty Act of 1996.”
The bill would have required a “sentence of death for certain importations of significant quantities of controlled substances.” It would have applied to anyone convicted more than once of carrying 100 doses — or about two ounces — or marijuana across the border. Defendants would have had a window of 18 months to file their one and only appeal.
“If you import a commercial quantity of illegal drugs, it is because you have made the personal decision that you are prepared to get rich by destroying our children,” the Georgia Republican said at a fundraiser for Rep. Charlie Norwood (R-GA) in 1995. “I have made the decision that I love our children enough that we will kill you if you do this.”
“The first time we execute 27 or 30 or 35 people at one time, and they go around Colombia and France and Thailand and Mexico, and they say, ‘Hi, would you like to carry some drugs into the U.S.?’ the price of carrying drugs will have gone up dramatically.”
U.S. law already allows the death penalty in the cases of large-scale drug operations — or continuing criminal enterprises — that result in murder.
Gingrich charged in 1994 that 25 percent of President Bill Clinton’s White House staff used drugs, but at the same time admitted that he had also smoked pot 25 years earlier.
“That was a sign we were alive and in graduate school in that era,” he explained.
“See, when I smoked pot it was illegal, but not immoral,” Gingrich reportedly told Wall Street Journal reporter Hilary Stout in 1996. “Now, it is illegal AND immoral. The law didn’t change, only the morality… That’s why you get to go to jail and I don’t.”
(via leftish)
Reblogged from leftish with 149 notes / Politics Election 2012 Newt Gingrich Drugs
I’d lost interest in the Republican debates, but if Newt really got this endorsement, well that just flipped the script.
Calling Newt Gingrich:
Who uses food stamps and other welfare programs. And no, Newt, it turns out they’re not all African American.
From Charles Blow.
Reblogged from politicalprof with 2,124 notes / Food Stamps Politics Newt Gingrich Election 2012 Poverty
Gingrich told a town hall meeting at a senior center in Plymouth, N.H., that if the NAACP invites him to its annual convention this year, he’d go there and talk about “why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.
Seriously, you guys are killing me.
A Letter to My Brother Newt Gingrich
From his gay sister and LGBT advocate Candace Gingrich.
Reblogged from capitalnewyork with 30 notes / Newt Gingrich Gay Rights Politics Election 2012
Jon Stewart’s take down of Newt Gingrich.
Reblogged from wisconsinforward with 88 notes / Jon Stewart The Daily Show Newt Gingrich Election 2012 USA Politics
GINGRICH: “I balanced the budget for four straight years, paid off $405 billion in debt — pretty conservative.”
THE FACTS: In the 1996 and 1997 budget years, the first two years he served as speaker of the House of Representatives, the government actually ran deficits. In 1998 and 1999, the government ran surpluses. Two more years of surpluses followed, but Gingrich was gone from politics by then and had nothing to do with them.
FACT CHECK: Exaggerations, misstatements by Gingrich, Romney, others in last pre-caucus debate
Interesting slideshow of Newt Gingrich notes over at Slate.
Reblogged from peterfeld with 62 notes / Newt Gingrich Politics Election 2012
I have two grandchildren… I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they’re my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.
I don’t even.
Reblogged from paxamericana with 1,336 notes / Newt Gingrich Republicans News Politics Election 2012
