Gingrich’s poor excuse for a big idea ("Leave Poor Children Alone, Newt")

Washington Post ^ | 12/07/2011 | Kathleen Parker

[SeekAndFind]

It is a rare day when Al Sharpton emerges as the voice of sagacity, but when Newt Gingrich has the microphone, all things are possible.

Just four weeks out from the Iowa caucuses, Gingrich — swinging like a trapeze artist over the heads of his fellow Republican contenders — has done what everyone knew he would, said something mind-blowingly wrong. Not just wrong as in incorrect but off-the-charts insensitive, insulting and, most important, Out. Of. Touch.

He might as well have wrapped his remarks in a Tiffany box and handed them to Mitt Romney, who could exhale for a moment. Or to Sharpton, who finally had a justifiable excuse for outrage on his MSNBC show and scorched the earth beneath Gingrich’s feet.

Gingrich’s big idea was that kids from poor neighborhoods should work janitorial jobs at school in order to learn a work ethic. His argument was that poor kids who live in housing projects don’t see people working and therefore “literally have no habit of showing up on Monday.” Instead, they gravitate toward, you know, pimping and prostitution.

So much for the big tent. So much for diversity. Sayonara, African American vote. Hasta la vista, Paco y Maria. In one flick of the tongue, Gingrich managed to alienate all those undocumented workers he winked at a couple of weeks ago when he telegraphed during a debate that 11 million illegal immigrants would not be deported during a Gingrich presidency.

The former speaker’s fumble is precisely what some Republicans have feared and others have breathlessly anticipated. The Washington Wager was whether Gingrich could make it for four weeks without self-immolating before Iowa. Or would he find himself so irresistible that he just had to express himself?

Voil à.

[rmlew]

Vichy Ersatz Conservative.
Parker supported Obama. She is no conservative. She whored herself to CNN to partner with Elliot Spitzer. Her entire writting amounts to attacks on conservatives.

[Publius6961]

Instead, they gravitate toward, you know, pimping and prostitution.

Kathleen Parker generated that thought and verbalized it.
But I'm sure that by tomorrow it will be a quote attributed to Newt. The Liberal Plantation Lexicon.

Very. much. in. Touch.
With the "progressive" playbook.