Off to A Good Start - Gingrich announces his "Contract with America" in 1994. This was before Gingrich became a distributor of porn.
Yet, Newt Gingrich was not 100% bad. He was only 95% bad. There was still 5% good in him.
From the point of view of the Republicans, the good side of him was that he made an extremely fractious, squabbling and, in his own words, cannibalistic group calling themselves Republicans into a unified cohesive body all seeming to be completely united in common goals. The problem was that these goals were the lowest common denominator. Republicans range from the religious-right crazy fanatics to responsible lawmakers who merely want to cut the budget so as to pay off the national debt.
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Off to A Good Start - Gingrich announces his "Contract with America" in 1994. This was before Gingrich became a distributor of porn. |
That pot, however, was the lowest of the low. All they wanted was find out every trivial detail about the President's sexual affairs with Monica Lewinsky. They wanted to know exactly when did Monica have orgasms and exactly how many of them did she have. This was the only thing the Republicans wanted to know. They wanted to know more about Monica and still more about Monica.
Even traditional Republican concerns lost their legitimacy. For example, Republicans always have wanted to cut taxes, and still do so. However, if one is to cut taxes, one must also cut spending. Otherwise, America will run into $150 billion in annual budget deficits as it did during the Reagan years.
Republicans are aptly characterized as the rich fat cats. However, as a whole, Americans do not mind that the Republicans have most of the money, as long as there is enough for everybody. By insisting on cutting taxes without a word about a concomitant cut in spending, it became clear that the Republicans wanted to cut their own personal tax bills while leaving the people as a whole, plus future generations of Americans, saddled with an enormous national debt that they will have to pay. In short, Republicans wanted to cut taxes so as to line their own pockets.
Another traditional Republican concern is the voucher system for schools. The Republicans make it seem real simple. It is all about family values, they say. Let families chose the type and the quality of education which they wish their children to receive, and place the school system under local control.
However, what the Republicans really have is an evil, diabolic plan. The voucher system was first developed in that arch-evil criminal state, namely Virginia. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, families in Prince Edward County, Virginia, near Lynchburg, got vouchers to pay to send their children to any school that would accept them. Naturally, the white kids all went to the all-white Prince Edward Academy, a school that would accept no blacks. The blacks had only one school they were allowed to attend, the public school, which was given almost no money to operate because the school system was under local control by the whites.
Now, more frequently, vouchers are to be used to indoctrinate children into Christian fundamentalist religious beliefs. Under the Republican designed voucher system, the states and the federal government will pay for children to go to local Christian academies, where children will be taught the word of God. Instead of being taught that the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old and that the universe was created about 13 billion years ago, children will be taught as part of their academic education that God created the earth in seven days about 11,000 years ago. The Government of the United States will pay for this "education", under the Gingrich-Republican plan.
It is good that Gingrich is resigning because, had he not resigned, somebody probably would have killed him. He probably knows that. It is being said that Gingrich has earned a place in the American history books, and indeed he has. Gingrich will be remembered in every history book as one of the truly bad men of American politics. The 5% that was good in him will have been forgotten.
Sam Sloan
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