Dear Commons Community,
The Republican primary has shifted again with Newt Gingrich competing with Herman Cain for the privelege to represent the GOP in next year’s presidential election. After the right-wing love affairs with Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain faded, it is now Newt Gingrich’s turn to challenge Mitt Romney for the prize. The affair with Newt will not last long. He has too much baggage going back to when he was majority whip in the U.S. Congress during the Clinton years. He also has not always moved through his marriages and love affairs in the most graceful manner. Regardless here are a couple of his latest positions that are sure to endure him to right-leaning Republicans.
On the Occupy Wall Street protesters:
“All the Occupy movement starts with the premise that we all owe them everything,” Gingrich said at the Thanksgiving Family Forum in Iowa, as noted by Igor Volsky at ThinkProgress. “They take over a public park they didn’t pay for, to go nearby to use bathrooms they didn’t pay for, to beg for food from places they don’t want to pay for, to obstruct those who are going to work to pay the taxes to sustain the bathrooms and to sustain the park, so they can self-righteously explain they are the paragons of virtue to which we owe everything… [they should] go get a job right after [they] take a bath”
On education reform:
“In poverty stricken school districts, Mr. Gingrich said that schools should enlist students as young as 9 to14 to mop hallways and bathrooms, and pay them a wage. Currently child-labor laws and unions keep poor students from bootstrapping their way into middle class, Mr. Gingrich said…. “You’re totally poor. You’re in a school that is failing with a teacher that is failing. I’ve tried for years to have a very simple model. Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they’d begin the process of rising.”
God help us!
Tony
