Newt Gingrich

Fox News Suspends Newt Gingrich And Rick Santorum Pending Presidential Campaign Plans

Posted by on March 2, 2011 at 10:51 am. 3 Comments :

Under pressure from within both political and media circles, Fox News has finally conceded that it is inappropriate to continue providing a free platform for presidential candidates who are also Fox News contributors. Well, some of them, anyway.

Bret Baier announced this morning that Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum will be placed on a temporary suspension for sixty days. After that “their contracts will be terminated unless they notify FOX they are not running for president.”

It’s about time. Fox News has been functioning as the exploratory committee for several GOP candidates who are getting millions of dollars worth of free advertising as they contemplate running for president. The announcement today, however, made no mention of other potential candidates like Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, or John Bolton. So Fox’s solution is partial at best. Yet, by the standards set by Fox, it is more than anyone expected at this point in time.

It is notable that the two prospective candidates who have been suspended are not particularly potent revenue sources for Fox. On the other hand, Huckabee has an existing weekly program with advertisers and everything, and Palin continues to be a draw amongst fans of the network. So it could be surmised that Fox chose to relieve a couple of insignificant talking heads as a gesture, while retaining those who are making them money.

It remains to be seen whether Fox will follow through with Gingrich and Santorum, and whether they will be accountable for the others on their roster. In the mean time we will probably have to sit through more inane blather from the likes of Dick Morris and Monica Crowley to fill the newly created gaps.

You know, on second thought, this may not be such a good thing after all.

Christine O’Donnell – Witch Senator For Delaware

Posted by on September 22, 2010 at 3:03 pm. 5 Comments :


By now most of you have heard of the Republican candidate for senate in Delaware, Christine O’Donnell. You have probably also heard that she has confessed that she “dabbled in witchcraft” when she was younger.

Now you have the opportunity to show your support for this Shrewish-American and help to expand the diversity of the United States Congress. O’Donnell would become the first Witch in Congress (that we know of) and bring representation to a disenfranchised minority that has been the victim of discrimination since the first Pilgrims put match to pyre.

The bumper stickers (shown above) are now available for purchase. You can even get the economical 10-Pack so that all of your vehicles display your pride in Occult worship and its contribution to American culture. And you’ll probably still have some leftover for your friends and neighbors. There are also fashionable T-Shirts available if you want to express yourself in style.

Don’t let this opportunity pass you by. When will there be another chance to send a qualified Witch to Washington? This will be an historic election.

O’Donnell is already working her magic. She will actually make herself disappear for the remainder of the campaign. She announced on the Hannity show on Fox News that she will not be doing any more national media. That suggests that she will be doing more local media in Delaware, but somehow, I doubt that will come to pass. She has a cauldron of questions to answer about her flighty past and qualifications to serve in the senate. The locals have the same questions for her as the national press does. And the national press will undoubtedly cover any appearances she makes at the local level. So what’s the difference? Therefore, poof — she disappears — just like Sarah Palin, Rand Paul, Joe Miller, and Sharron Angle.

So join the Broom Brigades today before it’s too late. There hasn’t been a candidate so bewitching since Mary Carey ran for governor of California. And remember to vote on November 2nd. Because if you don’t, she may turn you into a Newt.

She’s done it before.
Newt Gingrich

Newt Gingrich Calls The Tea Party The Militant Wing Of The GOP

Posted by on April 22, 2010 at 6:08 pm. 2 Comments :

It’s always encouraging when leaders of the Republican Losers Society inadvertently let fragments of truth escape from their highly secure and disciplined message machine. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does it always revealing.

The New York Dispatch covered Newt Gingrich’s appearance today before the Manufacturers’ Association of South Central Pennsylvania. While signing books Gingrich addressed his fans and had this to say about the Tea Party:

“[It’s a] natural expression of frustration with Republicans and anger at Democrats [which is] more likely to end up as the militant wing of the Republican Party.”

With the media embroiled in debate about the impact and influence of the Tea Party, this is a remark from an authoritative source on the subject. And it comports with much of what we already know about the Tea Baggers. These are the same people who show up at rallies carrying signs that say “We came unarmed – this time.” In fact, even that soft-peddles the issue because in many instance they are already carrying arms.

Many Tea Baggers talk openly of sedition and firing on government officials, This talk is not just from wild-eyed nut cases, but includes Erick Erickson, CNN’s new political commentator. Glenn Beck has “joked” about poisoning Nancy Pelosi and choking Michael Moore. He has described progressives as a cancer in America that cannot be tolerated but must be cut out. This is the same Glenn Beck who ridicules others who talk about the right’s “eliminationist” tactics. What will Beck have to say about Gingrich’s heresy?

Gingrich’s comments come on the day that Politico publishes an article titled, “The tea party’s exaggerated importance.” This long overdue analysis from a right-leaning news source finally acknowledges what so many conscious observers have been saying for the past year: The Tea Party is a partisan, exclusionary assembly of white Republican conservatives angry at having lost the last election. The article goes on to recognize that the TeaPublicans have enjoyed press coverage that far exceeds what they deserve.

Of course, it was already well known by many that the Baggers were merely a niche group of fringe activists whose wealthy benefactors in the GOP and Fox News have inflated their public image beyond reality. Does anyone really believe that if the millionaires at FreedomWorks (who paid for the buses and the rallies) and Fox News (who handled the PR and advertising) had not promoted the Tea Party that anyone would be talking about them today? As it is, most polls show that anywhere from 40% to 69% of Americans have still never heard of the Tea Party or have no opinion of it.

This puts Gingrich’s comments in an odd perspective. It paints a picture of a small group of disgruntled outsiders who are being exploited by a political machine that regards them as their muscle. And since the Tea Baggers are known to have an affinity for firearms and a determination not to be tread upon, this could be like placing a gunpowder factory next to a fireworks testing ground.

We can only hope that Gingrich is wrong. The good news is that he wrong quite often. But that doesn’t excuse his characterization of the Tea Party or the frightening consequences of his assertion.

The G.O.P. Morphs Into The G.O.Tea

Posted by on February 7, 2010 at 11:36 pm. 2 Comments :

The National Tea Party Convention is over, but the battle for the soul of the so-called “movement” continues. Sarah Palin set the tone at her keynote speech to close the affair:

“The Republican Party would be really smart to start trying to absorb as much of the Tea Party movement as possible because this is the future of our country. The Tea Party movement is the future of politics.”

Sarah Palin's Crib NotesThe “future of politics” is typical Palin hyperbole. Clearly she doesn’t understand what she’s saying. This is a woman who just got through mocking President Obama for using a TelePrompter, while she has crib notes written on her hand for a Q and A to follow her speech; A woman who told her adoring audience not to be afraid of being God-fearing; A woman who told Chris Wallace that Obama could ace his reelection if he were to “play the war card” by attacking Iran. This is the same woman who thinks it would be smart for the GOP to absorb the Tea Baggers.

On that measure she is not alone. Despite protestations from ostensibly neutral players, leading figures in both the Tea Party and the Republican Party believe that they are made for each other. This contradicts those who say that Tea Baggers are non-partisan and are angry with both parties equally. The truth is that the Baggers were always more closely aligned with Republicans and the evidence is their own words:

John Boehner, House Minority Leader: There really is no difference between what Republicans believe in and what the tea party activists believe in.

Michael Steele, Republican Party Chairman: It’s important for our party to appreciate and understand that so we can move toward it, and embrace it.

Mark Skoda, Tea Party Leader: This movement is beginning to mature … not as a third party but a force to be reckoned with in the traditional party structure.

Carl Cameron, Fox News: They plan to establish separate spin off political action committees to fund raise for candidates who back Tea Party goals and the official Republican National Committee platform.

Newt Gingrich, Former GOP House Speaker: If the Republican Party offers a positive alternative in a way that Tea Party activists and independents join them, the tide could turn.

At this point it is inescapable that the Tea Party is a functional subsidiary of the GOP. Much of it’s original organizing muscle was provided by establishment Republican operatives like Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks and GOP PR firm Russo Marsh & Rogers. And now heavy-hitter Republicans like Palin are gripping the Baggers in a polar bear hug. All of this needs to be remembered when lazy or dishonest members of the press try to pretend that partisanship isn’t playing a part in this phony movement.

Fox News Poll: Obama Beats All Republicans In 2012

Posted by on January 22, 2010 at 10:54 am. 6 Comments :

All it takes is a fluke victory in Massachusetts for Fox News pundits predict the demise of the Democratic Party. In the days since Scott Brown won the special election for the Senate the conservative press has been unreservedly giddy. They have proclaimed the end of everything from health care to the Obama presidency. The only problem is that nobody told the voters.

A poll from that bastion of socialist twaddle, Fox News, shows that Barack Obama is preferred over every Republican they surveyed against him.

By 47 percent to 35 percent Obama bests former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The president has an even wider edge over former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin (55 percent to 31 percent), and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (53 percent to 29 percent).

On top of that, the Tea Bagger phenomenon is turning out to be the biggest bubble since the tulip mania. As I wrote in The Tea Party Delusion, the popularity of the movement is largely a mirage created by the media (i.e. Fox News). Almost half the country doesn’t even know they exist. In this new poll from Fox, they match Obama against a generic candidate from the Tea Party and Obama wins by more than two to one (48% to 23%). Even amongst Republicans a majority (54%) reject the Baggers.

Perhaps the rumors of the President’s demise are highly exaggerated. The significance of these results in a poll from an overtly hostile source cannot be understated. By the same token, the lesson of the Massachusetts race is that overconfidence is a dangerous extravagance.

The 2012 election is still 34 months away and the stable of potential opponents have a not-so-secret weapon: Fox News. Yes, the network that commissioned this poll actually employs four prospective GOP candidates. In addition to the two surveyed here, Palin and Gingrich, they also have Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum on the payroll. It is unprecedented that a so-called news enterprise would actually employ so many electoral adversaries from the same party, or for that matter, any party. You have to wonder if Romney, Tim Pawlenty, and Bobby Jindal feel left out.

The association with Fox could prove valuable over the next two and a half years. The Fox Farm Team will have an opportunity to rack up a lot of free practice time on the air. That exposure, along with the rest of Fox’s advocacy for the rightist agenda, is an expensive asset that will only be afforded to members of the team.

Fox Nation HitlerAnd the coaching staff at Fox is already preparing the field. Fox Nation took the occasion of Brown’s victory to promote a video that portrays Democrats as despondent Nazis being berated by their leader, Adolf Hitler.

In the run up to the 2008 election, and in the year that followed, there were many complaints about the right-wing’s hyperbolic attempts to associate the President with Hitler, Stalin, or Marx, and despite the documented evidence of it, Fox always tried to dismiss it as overzealous opponents. But this video is unambiguously making the Nazi correlation and it is prominently featured on the Fox Nation web site. And it’s not the first time:

Fox Nation Hitler

The campaign for 2012 is clearly in progress and Fox is implementing their most aggressive and dirtiest game plan. But according to their own poll it isn’t yet having much of an effect. The operative word there is “yet.” If there is one thing that Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes, et al have in abundance it is patience. This is just the bottom of the second inning and they have plenty of pine tar left to apply extra spin to the ball.

Lying Is Easy, Comedy Is Hard

Posted by on June 9, 2009 at 3:20 pm. NO Comments :

Anyone who has ever tried to make an audience laugh knows how deceptively easy a talented comic can make their job look. The truth is, it is so difficult to do well that there is a famous (but difficult to source) quote reportedly made from an actor’s deathbed: “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.”

It’s going to get a lot harder for people like Jon Stewart. The competition is heating up with some of the most hilarious, and unexpected, entrants into the field of funny. Republicans from around the country are trying out their best material in an effort to amuse and deceive audiences nationwide.

First up is Republican National Committee Chairman, Michael Steele, who cracked up a room of College Republicans with his famous “Hat” routine. The premise is that it doesn’t matter how you wear your hat (to the side, backwards, etc) so long as it is a GOP hat:

I’m asking you to go out and ask your friends to wear our hat. The hat of an idea.

For this bit, Steele had four students stand so that he could pretend to put imaginary hats on them. Steele intuitively knew that the bit would be much funnier with audience members standing there for no purpose other than to grin and display their naked heads. And I have to admire the deeper meaning of the invisible hats of ideas that obviously represent the GOP’s absence ideas.

The setup included a dire admonition that Barack Obama “has asked your generation to wear his hat.” I must have missed that speech. But I did see Steele’s previous speech where he promised to deliver “change in a tea bag.” How does he keep coming up with this brilliant material?

And then there is Bill O’Reilly. In a sidesplitting debate over torture and abortion, O’Reilly challenged Juan Williams to explain why liberals object to torture but defend abortion providers like Dr. George Tiller. Williams attempted, through O’Reilly’s interruptions, to answer saying that torture is against both domestic and international law, but Tiller’s work was entirely legal. To which O’Reilly responded:

“You can dance the law dance all day long. And laws are passed by men. Laws can be revoked. They can be passed.”

The joke, as O’Reilly sees it, is the law itself. It’s just a dance and we don’t really need to comply with it because it’s just stuff that some people came up with in legislatures and courtrooms. Just imagine the comical scenarios that would ensue if we extend O’Reilly’s view of the law to burglary, rape, and terrorism. I can see O’Reilly now, defending Osama Bin Laden before a military tribunal, doing a jig while testifying that he can “dance the law dance all day long.” After all, the laws against flying planes into buildings could be revoked.

Almost as funny as his legal pirouettes is his contention that “the attorney general ruled waterboarding was not torture. It was legal.” As if the attorney general has the judicial standing to make such a ruling. He isn’t a judge. The best he can offer is an opinion, and you would think that O’Reilly has enough of those of his own. And to compound the laugh factor, O’Reilly seems perfectly satisfied to accept the constraints of the law (as he misinterprets it) with regard to waterboarding, even though he dismisses the law as it applies to abortion. Who’s dancing now?

This brings us to Newt Gingrich who made this declaration last night:

“Let me be clear. I am not a citizen of the world!”

I’m going to guess Plutonian, because he is just so out there, stretching the comedy envelope. He is objecting to a part of Obama’s speech wherein he referred to himself as “a citizen of the world.” I wonder if Gingrich knows that John F. Kennedy, George H. W. Bush, and even Ronald Reagan used the very same phrase. Gingrich also mined comedy gold by railing against the “fact” that our nation’s school curriculum doesn’t include American history. Makes you wonder how closely he was paying attention.

It’s going to be hard for working comics and satirists to compete with the new Republican Rubber Chicken Society. Not many people are better at spinning lies…er…stories than desperate Republican politicians and pundits. It may be too much to ask our professional laugh-smiths to create humor from scratch when the GOP can just pull it out of their butts. I mean, how can you compete with headlines like:
“Fox Newser Accused of Dragging Cyclist Through Central Park.” And:
“Peter Doocy [Steve’s boy] Joins Fox News.” And:
“Sarah Palin Mystifies and Annoys the Republican Establishment.”
“Coburn’s STD Lecture to Congressional Interns Put On Hold Due to Pizza Dispute.”

Yes, those are real. And so is the danger that reality will make comedians obsolete. Thanks GOP.

Fox News: Republicans Divided Over How to Attack Sotomayor

Posted by on May 29, 2009 at 12:21 pm. NO Comments :

An article on FoxNews.com is lamenting the difficult position in which Republicans find themselves with regard to President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court:

“Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama’s nominee to replace Justice David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court, is posing a conundrum for Republicans who are struggling to unite against a woman they presume will be a reliable vote for liberal causes.

“The GOP doesn’t want to give Sotomayer (sic) a free ride, because they believe she is a judicial activist who will legislate from the bench.”

So what’s the problem? Why don’t they just attack her as a liberal judicial activist? If that’s really their objection to her, it seems that there would be nothing controversial about taking that approach. All they have to do is fire up their slogans about Socialism and set Glenn Beck and his posse loose, and they have the makings of a conventional rightist campaign of obstructionism. The truth is, that isn’t really their objection. The article states that they are…

“…concerned that if they launch a no-holds barred attack on Sotomayor, the first Hispanic to be nominated to the court, they risk alienating a growing minority they want on their side in the voting booth.”

The only way that they can alienate the Hispanic electorate is if they were to oppose Sotomayor on the basis of her race. Consequently, they are inadvertently admitting that that is precisely what they want to do. The argument within the ranks of Republicans is not centered on Sotomayor’s judicial philosophy or record. Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich and others have already staked their claims that she is a racist, and that her gender renders her susceptible to that peculiarly feminine characteristic of empathy.

It becomes crystal clear that the dilemma facing Republicans, and Fox News, is tied solely to race and gender when you consider this simple scenario: If the nominee were a white male, would they have any hesitation to executing a straightforward campaign criticizing his record as a jurist?

The fact that there is a debate going on in the party at all, and trumpeted in right-wing media, is conclusive evidence that the real subject of the controversy is the nominee’s race and gender. They just don’t want to admit it. And we can count on Fox to obfuscate that truth and to portray the internecine squabble as something more benign. But if they were truly worried about how Sotomayor would rule as a Justice, then why would criticizing that risk their standing amongst Hispanics?

The answer? It wouldn’t. They’re lying. As usual.