Newt Gingrich’s Rare Display of Accuracy Goes to the Heart of What Is Wrong with American Politics

© 2013 Peter Free

 

17 August 2013

 

 

Newt Gingrich is like an air-depleting balloon — zooming hither and yon in defiance of stable intelligence — but every once in while he says something important and true

 

Such as:

 

 

“We [Republicans] are caught up right now in a culture, and you see it every single day, where as long as we are negative and as long as we are vicious and as long as we can tear down our opponent, we don’t have to learn anything. And so we don’t.”

 

© 2013 Tal Kopan, Newt Gingrich: No GOP health care plan, Politico (14 August 2013)

 

 

This is a wiser insight than it initially seems

 

Learning is the basis of survival in a complicated, changing world.

 

Without it, we get the phenomenon that Jonathan Weiler pointed to:

 

 

Nationally, of course, the GOP has become a party of radicals, proudly wearing on its sleeve its contempt for the less well off and its ignorance of basic scientific and mathematical reality.

 

Its primary approach to "governing" at this point is to try to keep government from functioning at all, except when it comes to protecting the interests of the wealthy.

 

It can't pass its own budgets, because they make no sense whatsoever.

 

It's seemingly a badge of honor within the party to utter idiotic statements about women's reproductive systems in defense of retrograde attitudes toward women's health.

 

Its most passionate cause now is to try to undermine passage of a bill that would extend health insurance coverage to millions of Americans.

 

© 2013 Jonathan Weiler, The Myth of the Republican Moderate, Politico (15 August 2013) (paragraph split)

 

Even as a former Rockefeller Republican, when someone today identifies himself or herself as Republican (rather than independent) — I figure that likelihood favors the odds that they are — pick one — a plutocrat, perennially fearful, characteristically thoughtless, abysmally ignorant, bigoted, compassion challenged, or in possession of a tantrum-throwing two-year old's mind.

 

None of those qualities, injected into national politics, is a prescription for America’s success.

 

 

 

The moral? — As long as Republicans continue their spiral into nihilism, so does the nation

 

American politics has become a psychologically dark soap opera that only America’s haters can appreciate.

 

Ironically, the man that started the trend toward obstructionism for its own sake has identified the soul poison that is killing us.