The case against Newt.
Avant-propos: In short, if one claims to be a Reagan Conservative, he had better be a Reagan Conservative. Newt became such about four weeks ago. While he may have bound himself to TEA party values, he is less a TEA party candidate than is Mitt Romney. Understand that this is a not a requisite statement; only a summary conclusion after having written the following expose' on Newt Gingrich. But, first, a note about Romney and then, we take on Gingrich.
Why we can support Romney
We all know that Mitt Romney is a moderate conservative, despite his current effort of casting himself as a near TEA party type conservative (I would argue that there is no other kind of true conservative).
What Mitt Romney is not, and this is critical, is a One World Collectivist. And for that reason, alone, he would be a worthy representative of the GOP.
Understand this, and the rest of the civilized world does not share this understanding: it is TEA party ideals that are driving the current wave of conservative reform. All GOP candidates know this, are doing their best to attack that vote. It is the definition politic of the GOP and it is hardly radical unless, of course, you think a move to the state’s right to govern itself is a wingnut idea. I don’t and I have the 10th amendment to stand on. Try reading it. It will take you no more than 15 seconds, seriously. The larger Constitution is a doctrine of limited powers. It amends the notion that the people are the government. Call me a nut, if you will. Fine with me.
Why Newt is a dangerous candidate
Newt is fine with government requiring us to buy a product.
Newt Gingrich is more of a conservative, in this campaign, than is Romney, but that has not been his historicity. In fact, we could make the case for him being quite liberal, more so than Mitt.
I begin with a most recent discussion Gingrich had with David Gregory on Meet the Press:
“I am for people, individuals -— exactly like automobile insurance -— individuals having health insurance and being required to have health insurance. And I am prepared to vote for a voucher system which will give individuals, on a sliding scale, a government subsidy so we insure that everyone as individuals have health insurance. . . . . . I agree that all of us have a responsibility to pay- — help pay for health care. I've said consistently we ought to have some requirement that you either have health insurance or you post a bond.
Now, while he is not talking about creating a Federal Insurance Alternative, Gingrich is talking about a federal law requiring people to buy a product. Last time I looked, this is the very argument being used by Florida and its co-sponsors as central to the assault against ObamaCare.
Newt helped create central control over our young people.
More than this, under Jimmy Carter, he voted to establish a centralized federal agency over education, namely, the Department of Education. In so doing, he either did not have the good sense of knowing that this would be used as a pathway to secular controls of local educational districts, or he did not care. Reagan Conservative? Give me a break.
Newt Gingrich was among the first to support a Fairness Doctrine
A Reagan Conservative? Good Grief; not hardly.
A third serious issue is Gingrich’s support of the Fairness Doctrine - another one of those federal Progressive bills designed to give power of the Fed over the air-ways. He is listed as a co-sponsor of the 1987 version of that bill. Fairness in Broadcasting Act of 1987
Understand that Progressives had a Fairness Doctrine in place, legislatively speaking, from 1949 until 1987 and the Reagan years. Reagan was wildly opposed to such federal control and orchestrated its demise. In the same year (1987) the law was reversed, there was a move to rewrite and reinstate the federal controls found in the Fairness Doctrine. The bill I hyperlinked, above, was an effort to defeat Reagan in this matter and over-ride his veto. Newt support the move against Reagan to the degree that he actually worked against the nation’s most popular president and, again, tried to over a Reagan veto.
Big Government Newt on Cap and Trade
FromPolitfact, we have this damning summation of the Gingrich position on Cap and Trade:
On Feb. 15, 2007, Gingrich went on the PBS show Frontline and championed cap and trade.
Asked if he supported George W. Bush’s campaign pledge in 2000 to set mandatory carbon caps, Gingrich responded:
"I think if you have mandatory carbon caps combined with a trading system, much like we did with sulfur, and if you have a tax-incentive program for investing in the solutions, that there's a package there that's very, very good. And frankly, it's something I would strongly support." he said.
He then went on to criticize Bush for backing off the pledge.
"If he had instituted a regime that combined three things I just said -- mandatory caps, a trading system inside the caps, as we have with clean air, and a tax incentive to be able to invest in the new technology and to be able to produce the new technology -- I think we would be much better off than we are in the current situation," Gingrich said.
In fairness I suppose, Gingrich did testify against the cap and trade legislation in 2009 . . . . kind of.
While voicing an opinion against cap and trade, saying that such would be financially harmful to senior citizens and “rural Americans,” he added this comment, an assault against Big Business: “ . . . if you want to write a bill that covers the 2,000 most polluting places and say, fine those 2,000 [as part] of cap and trade, I’d be glad to look at it.”
His claim that “I have never favored cap and trade” is simple not true.
Newt and the Third Wave and a warning from Ann Coulter
In an article dated December 7, 2011, Ann Coutler told us something that I did not know. When “we” won that 1994 election, I was busy hanging cabinets in Fresno, California. A buddy called me from Visala, and told me to get my be-hind down there. He would meet me at the Lion's Club House. His comment? “We have just taken the House and the Senate away from Bill Clinton." No one in the mainstream population saw this coming. The media had been successful in keeping this pending electoral disaster from the public’s eye, until the polls had closed. Coulter takes back to that time with this cautionary note about Gingrich:
Before you newly active Republicans commit to Newt Gingrich as your presidential nominee on the basis of the recent debates, here's a bit of Newt history you ought to know. I promise you, it's going to come up if he's the candidate.
The day after the Republicans' historic takeover of the House of Representatives in the 1994 election, Newt was off and running, giving a series of Fidel Castro-style speeches about "the Third Wave information revolution." It had the unmistakable ring of lingo from his new-age gurus, Alvin and Heidi Toffler. . . . .
A few weeks later, when Newt was elected House speaker by the incoming Republican conference, there was a small elderly couple standing by his side as he gave a one-hour acceptance speech. It soon became clear who they were, when he issued a reading list to the Republican legislators. At the top of the list was a book by the Tofflers.
Hadn't Republicans just won on a platform of smaller government? Instead of a Republican victory, the '94 election seemed to be a victory for the Tofflers' cyber-babble about "social wavefront analysis," "anticipatory democracy," "de-massification," "materialismo," "the Third Wave" and "decision loads.
Then, in his first week as speaker, Gingrich was again promoting the Tofflers around town, introducing them at a technology conference and giving a speech titled "From Virtuality to Reality.. . end of the Coulter quote.
I encourage you to read this Coulter article and give you this last sentence (from Coulter’s article) as motivation:
"Newt Gingrich is the 'anti-Establishment' candidate only if 'the Establishment' is defined as "anyone who remembers what happened the day before yesterday."
Please note: I am updating for "end notes" as you read. Hurry back later this evening. -- blog editor.
And here it is:
After reading this, you will see that Gingrich's use of the term "conservative" is hardly, traditional. It is entirely possible, in my layman's opinion, that Gingrich is as wedded to transformative change as is Obama, but from an American's historical perspective. Barack's purview is clearly European. There is a third choice and it that which is found in the Federalist Papers. Our society was birthed form the thinking of theorists, as well. The America, as we know it, is a grand experiment guided by the rule of law as defined in the Constitution. The justification for this rule of law is the Federalist Papers in toto. Understand that those who seek change, in this nation, from whatever perspective, are not patriots in the truest since of the word and in my opinion. And, the only intellectual report I hold as authoritative is the one written and debated by the those whom we call "Founders."
End notes: The Third Wave as an approach to societal evolution.
Remember the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age? I do. That was part of our schooling back in the . . . . ah . . . . . Dark Age (when I went to school beginning in 1950). Well, apparently, those delineations are out and the world has the Pointie Heads have created their own summation of history, one that advances a One World Order. Third Wave theory
According to Heidi and Alvin Toffler, the historical/societal record can be divided into four "waves." The first was the agricultural age; the second wave was the industrial age; the third wave is the information age, its transcendent devise being the invention and development of the computer and its evolution. The fourth wave is a developing business model that utilizes advancements of the “third wave” that facilitates a One World political and structural economy. A “cashless” society is a part of this fourth wave, as an example . . . . . information technology used to substitute money and bring societies together. The failings of the Dollar and the Euro could be circumstances that lend themselves to this transitional change.
Using different words, the end game of the Third Wave**, as a societal theory, is a progressive obsolescence of the nation-state itself (that would be the United States and China and Italy and Kenya, etc.) understanding “progressive obsolescence” as a structured and intentional move away from the historicity and traditions of our past nation-state circumstance and into a world that is not yet fully revealed, even in the minds of those who are attempting to take us “there.” (you can quote me on this - J “The original educated OKIE” Smithson).
** Caution: if you research this in Wikipedia or other excellent sources, be care not to do what that source Wikipedia does and confuse the “third wave of democratization” (Samuel Huntington and others, no doubt) with the Toffler’s “third wave” theory.
Samuel Huntington, a PhD in political science, taught at Harvard from 1963 until his death in 2008. If Obama studied political science at Harvard, I believe that he would have sat under the tutelage of Huntington.
Huntington is credited with this remark (I have since lost track of my references for this quote, sorry -- trust me):
A government which lacks authority will have little ability short of cataclysmic crisis to impose on its people the sacrifices which may be necessary... We have come to recognize that there are potential desirable limits to economic growth. There are also potentially desirable limits to the indefinite extension of political democracy.
If he taught Obama at Harvard, and spent time with the thematic implications of that last statement, we might have a window into Obama’s little theory laden political brain.