Real Change Requires…
Lat week, while McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt was predicting that religion could kill the GOP, Newt Gingrich was busy pandering to Christianity Today about faith and the “values” issues evangelicals hold so dear. Pandering? Yes. The opener says it all (emphasis mine):
As the Republican Party searches for a future leader, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich pops up on the short lists.
Gingrich has kept fairly quiet about his recent conversion to Catholicism, but today he spoke to Christianity Today about his faith, the future leaders and constituencies of the Republican Party, and where the fights on same-sex marriage and abortion currently stand.
I guess he’s not ready to give up on the loons just yet. And he demonstrates, once again, that Republican leaders today are nothing but pandering hypocrites. Take, for example, his remarks on “traditional marriage”:
I think on traditional marriage, it’s likely to be a long, complex struggle with the courts making it, I think, worse, because they are intervening without regard to popular opinion.
and…
The Democratic Party has been the active instrument of breaking down traditional marriage…
This, from a guy who has three divorces and two alleged extramarital affairs under his belt. Makes one wonder what his idea of “traditional marriage” is. Or anyone’s for that matter. The only “traditional marriage” I’m aware of in America is the one where the wife stays home, does the house work, takes care of the kids, has dinner on the table when the husband gets home, and generally only speaks when spoken to. Oh, and as for popular opinion…
As for faith, in addition to the typical god-speak, he tries to blame the Democrats for something in that category, too:
[The Democratic Party has] been the active instrument for creating a more secular America.
This, from a history major and teacher. It’s tempting to excuse his ignorance of the fact that the United States was founded as a secular nation, and that it has been the Republicans who have been trying to change it into a Christian nation for the last three decades, due to his major being in European history rather than American. But, no. There’s no excuse for this oft-repeated bit of silliness that no rational, educated person, especially a history major, should even consider thinking. So either good ol’ Newton Leroy is an irrational educated person, or he’s perpetually pandering to the irrational. I opt for the latter.
The highlight of the interview for me, though, is his answer to the question regarding his future:
The central activity I’m engaged in is the proposition that my two grandchildren can live in the most prosperous and successful and productive country in the world when they’re in their 40s. We have to have fundamental, deep reform of our institutions. That’s why I created American solutions. My goal is to create a nationwide tri-partisan movement of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents that seeks to change America, and I think it’s going to take that level of change for us to be successful over the next 30 years.
Hey, that whole change thing worked for Obama, right? I had no idea how far Newt had embraced it as his own tagline, until I just visited his site, which boldly proclaims “Real Change Requires Real Change”. How dramatically intuitive. The site includes a forum titled American Solutions, Newt Gingrich and Real Change, yet another place for the wingnuts to come and find like-minded conservative parrots so that they aren’t wallowing in stupidity alone. For a moment, I entertained the idea that I might find a rational discussion or two, but I gave up after the first few dozen posts. Real Change, that.