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April 22nd, 2007 at 2:54 pm
And the fact that many conservatives consider him a geat candidate for ‘08 just shows how far gone some in the Republican party are - its almost as scary as the fact that he’s constantly harping on these issues on FOX news as part of their “fair and balanced” coverage of events.
April 22nd, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Thanks for posting on this. I won’t. This guy had no moral compass in 1994 and he has none now.
I will file this under the mindless rantings of a little man.
April 22nd, 2007 at 4:00 pm
This is just why he is so popular with Conservatives. Years of exposure to liberal-bashing on Fox and the AM talk hosts have given them an easy out. Now any failure can be placed at the feet of liberals just by using the appropriate spin. The party of personal responsibility has become overwhelmingly eager to avoid it by blaming the other side whenever possible.
Holding accountable Lax gun laws that allowed a mentally disturbed student to get unfettered access to semi-automatic weapons would turn off a valuable interest group- the NRA, and annoy the Republican base who hold their second amendment rights near and dear. How much more politically feasible to think of some way to lay the blame for this tragedy on liberalism and all of its associated ills. No wonder Gingrich is the right’s golden boy!
April 22nd, 2007 at 4:12 pm
I wonder if his two former wives blames Liberalism for the Newters cheating and eating. I once thought the Newter had a chance as a Republican POTUS candidate, right now he’s making McClown look better.
April 22nd, 2007 at 4:22 pm
LMAO, Rudi- very funny as usual!
Well, at least we know that he’s still as polarizing as ever-for those who ever doubted it .Remember when he criticized Bush for failing to unite the country-? Theres a special place in Hell for hypocrites! Quite obviously he would do the same or be even more of a divider.
Maybe James Dobson can explain to us why he’s not being hypocritical here- but I’m sure Dobson would agree with the Newter- 100% about the correlation of liberalism and a depressed student who committed a murder/suicide. It will soon be revealed that Cho and his parents were Democrats.
April 22nd, 2007 at 4:25 pm
Holding accountable Lax gun laws that allowed a mentally disturbed student to get unfettered access to semi-automatic weapons would turn off a valuable interest group- the NRA,
Crap in = Crap out. There are just as many Democrats, liberals out shooting up the countryside with there guns as there is Conservatives.
April 22nd, 2007 at 4:32 pm
Gingrich’s statement was almost completely incoherent.
April 22nd, 2007 at 4:44 pm
[…] UPDATE: Joe Gandelman points out that Newt Gingrich said the same thing today on This Week. Isn’t it time for THINKING Americans to totally filter out, not listen to and not read people who can’t let even seven days go by before turning a barbaric outrage into a political vehicle to try and use against the other side? […]
April 22nd, 2007 at 5:36 pm
Unfortunately, there appears to be a shortage of THINKING Americans.
April 22nd, 2007 at 5:43 pm
From Salon and Washington Monthly:
Those damn Liberals turned the Newter into a Sodomite.
April 22nd, 2007 at 6:06 pm
Those damn Liberals turned the Newter into a Sodomite.
They did. Thats what we have been saying all along. Glad you finally are starting to see the light. Cause see if he had not been forced to Impeach Bill Clinton for getting a blow job he would not have had to experience the blow job for himself to make sure that what he was doing was justified.
April 22nd, 2007 at 6:39 pm
Nobody Newter is a Republican, the party of personal responsibilty. The things going into his mouth and the words coming out are Newters responsibilty, not us Libruls. I wonder if Newter and Dobson talked about the Red Wings at Hooters. Go Red Wings up 3-2 in Calagary tonight. (Newter doesn’t know hockey, I was referring to Leviticus 18).
Both Clinton and Newter have a history of being “unclean” in a Biblical sence. It’s just Newter who is the hypocritter.
April 22nd, 2007 at 6:49 pm
Yep, we Libruls like our politicians unclean- why pretend you have family values when everyone knows you’re busy porking your secretary? But Newt’s never lacked for chutzpah, LOL!
April 22nd, 2007 at 6:49 pm
My Comments on this… what an ASSHOLE!
http://thepopulistblog.com/2007/04/mrgingrich-you-asshole.html
April 22nd, 2007 at 6:57 pm
Actually, it’s kind of degrading to even talk about this.
Holly in Cincinnat hit the nail on the head: there is a shortahe of thinking people.
I would add that there is an overabundande of people who find fighting and arguing to be so much more appealing than trying to find solutions.
It’s your fault.
No, it’s your fault.
I thought I was finished with that when my children grew up.
April 22nd, 2007 at 7:46 pm
Newt is just a blowhard that likes to hear his own lips flap.
April 22nd, 2007 at 7:48 pm
I agree. Even making fun of Mr. Gingrich on this is giving his comments too much credit.
The other night I heard Gingrich debate Kerry on some NPR show that was broadcasting this debate tangentaly related to environmental issues. I thought, at the time, “Wow, maybe Newt is really growing up and taking coherent positions on things. I don’t agree with everything he is saying but I can listen to him and understand where he comes from.”
Then I read a transcript of what he said, and its pretty tactless, insensitive, morally bankrupt, and stupid. That’s it. We should just leave it at stupid. He’s convinced me, in short order, that he hasn’t learned anything over the years and is still as fanatical as he was in 1994.
April 22nd, 2007 at 8:09 pm
I would love to just be able to ignore people like Newt Gingrich. But its hard for me to forget that he and Tom DeLay led the Republican party and wielded a huge amount of influence in our government. It was because of the two of them that Clinton was impeached and a new standard was set for nastiness in politics. Yes, they are both ethically and morally bankrupt, but they held themselves up as examples for the way the rest of us should live. Both hypocrites got away with it for many years. So, I feel I have to take Gingrich and DeLay seriously. They are a threat to the values that I hold dear.
April 22nd, 2007 at 8:46 pm
kritter- Well, originally it was Newt and Trent Lott, until I think Newt started calling people “bitches” and “sons of bitches” etc.. When he don’t get his way he throws a tantrum. Newt Gingrich is a legend in his own mind, IMO. He is probably the most politically under achieved self promoter Washington has ever seen.
April 22nd, 2007 at 8:51 pm
But DeLay wielded a lot of power as Majority Leader and outlasted Gingrich. I disagree with Lott on issues, but never viewed him as morally bankrupt or hypocritical as the other two.
April 22nd, 2007 at 9:45 pm
It’s not measurably different than Joe Biden, prominent Democratic senator and 2008 Presidential candidate blaming the Gingrich revolution not only for Virginia Tech but also for Hurricane Katrina, Darfur, Iraq, Venezuela, and Don Imus.
That was only last week and I don’t recall seeing any condemnation hereabouts.
You are correct to criticize Gingrich, but it’s worth noting that he does not actually hold an elected office nor is he a declared candidate, unlike Joe Biden.
C’mon now. If you’re going to call yourself “moderate” you have to at least attempt to hew to the middle, right?
April 22nd, 2007 at 10:12 pm
Jimmie Just don’t come back and keep reading Newmax. The RNC talking points are another good news source if Moderation @TMV bothers you.
April 22nd, 2007 at 11:37 pm
[…] What Other Bloggers Are Saying, Thanks, In Part, To MemeOrandum: Think Progress; The Moderate Voice (Joe Gandelman); CorrenteWire; Winds of Change (Armed Liberal); Donklephant; Obsidian Wings; The Reaction; PoliBlog Technorati Tags:Â 2nd Amendment, Capitalism, CCW, Conservatives, Corporatism, Crooks and Liars, Current Events, Democrats, Don Imus, Election 2008, George Stephanopoulis, Gun Control, Headline News, Headlines, John Amato, John McCain, Labor, Labor Unions, Liberals, Middle Class, News, News and Politics, Newt Gingrich, Oligarchy, Politics, Rants, Republicans, RTKBA, Virginia Tech […]
April 22nd, 2007 at 11:57 pm
There’s a lot of focus in your post about how much Gingrich’s comment hurt your feelings or how divisive or political it was, etc. But no concern about the extent to which it might be true or false.
If you replace “liberalism” with some other term denoting modern cultural trends, it might allow you to think more clearly about Gingrich’s remark. Because Gingrich isn’t speaking of liberalism in the narrow sense, in which is synonymous with the Democratic Party platform.
One part - just one part - of the what Gingrich is talking about is the prevalence of crappy art in America and other Western or Westernized cultures. Natural Born Killers or the The Matrix or the South Korean film OldBoy did not cause Cho to kill anyone, which is why tort suits founded on the idea that a single work caused an act of violence always fail. But the collective impact of such works - including violent video games - and the relative absence of better works of art in our culture - make acts of violence more likely, even when crucial causal factor is always a volitional act by a sociopath.
I don’t think this point is particularly controversial. We teach children and young adults great works of literature, opera, etc. in part part because we think that such works will contribute to their moral education, and make them better people. So with regard to better art, we acknowledge that art is a causal factor in the creation of good people. Someone offended by Gingrich’s remark will have to explain why crappy art does not help to produce bad people, some of whom kill.
And what allows people to finance and produce and distribute bad art (besides lack of talent)? Well, that would be what Gingrich calls “liberalism,” i.e. the modern unthinking miasma of ethical relativism and non-cognitivism and the consequent collapse of standards, epistemological agnosticism leading to a similar dead end, aesthetic nihilism and the worship of the anti-hero, etc. There’s a lot of poison coming for the most part from our Universities, and this poison does help to create people who kill.
April 23rd, 2007 at 1:31 am
[…] Heh. Nice. Quite some people are angry: - Joe Gandelman for instance, but also; - Michael J Stickings, and - the Gun Toting Liberal… […]
April 23rd, 2007 at 3:17 am
Brian- Explain to me how crappy art causes depression and alienation leading to mass murder/suicide. Especially when the perpetrator was a Korean immigrant who had only been in the country for 14 years. I’m sorry but bad art does not cause mental illness, no matter what Rush Limbaugh tells you.
April 23rd, 2007 at 7:15 am
[…] on the sun) the Democrats should rejoyce since his share of independent voters will be about as high as Vice President Dick Cheney s popularity rating. … …Sportzia More […]
April 23rd, 2007 at 8:04 am
Remove the barriers to anything and watch the results. We have removed almost 90% of the moral barriers to everyday living and excused bad or vile behavior at every turn and for every reason under the sun. We have been paying the price of the tinfoil hatted leftist loons ideology for over forty years and the cost has now gotten very bad. Children are dying everyday in our homes, apartments, streets and schools. Our family members are dying in the very same places plus hospitals of things unknown or unheard of decades ago. We have allowed the killing via brain removal of living babies while still in the mother’s vagina. More of our children are dead because of drinking and drugs on campus then guns and we still refuse to acknowledge what is in front of us every second of every day. Long live the “liberalism” so much loved and touted by our democratic (sic) politicians and their enablers.
April 23rd, 2007 at 8:38 am
Sue- don’t you have liberalism confused with libertarianism? After all , libertarians want no government interference in the private life. And the biggest mass murderer of all time, Tim McVeigh was from the far right.
April 23rd, 2007 at 8:44 am
Sue,
I understand how vile “Partial-Birth Abortions” or whatever you are equating with “brain removal of living babies while still in…” I challenge you, Sue: Break from those talking points and show me evidence, solid non-talking-point evidence of this occurring anywhere in the USA under legitimate auspices. These are ideas used to rile up their rabid base, and you have chosen to buy into them with no backing evidence to support it.
Stop blaming a madman’s rampage on some divine retribution for our immoral actions. Isn’t being judgmental one of the things noted in the bible as being reserved for God alone? So why are you spewing it all around like it was yours to dole out.
April 23rd, 2007 at 8:49 am
Cho was mentally ill- and was raised by an immigrant family- I highly doubt his actions had anything to do with the culture at large. In any case, the violent video games, movies and TV programs have more to do with freedom of speech than they do with liberal values. Many liberals and conservatives alike deplore the violence in our gun culture.
April 23rd, 2007 at 9:16 am
Sue you dont understand.
We should pass more laws to make it better. Then we can just go on being vile moral creatures.
Jordan killing a baby is still killing a baby. No matter how you do it.
While Cho might have been deranged this is exactly the conversation we cant have because the left doesn’t want to talk about it. Instead they want to pass more legislation to regulate it. Or if your libertarian you want less legislation so its easier to have more of the same.
Newt just said….Lets talk. The left said…nothing to say…your a moron.
April 23rd, 2007 at 9:20 am
A little o/t , but for Sue and Brian. I am going with your premise amd I’m going to play a racist. Since the Liberals have allowed abortion and drugs permeat our schools Liberalism is to blame.
But this coursening of our culture started when the RACES mixed and segregation became the law of the land, Since then we have lost two wars and our doctors now kill zygotes. Violence and foul language can be traced to hip-hop. Our pure teens didn’t behave this way when Past Boone was rock and roll. Those British Stones introduced our innocent children to negro delta blues. Now we have Emminem and Kid Rock.
I could even blame Repiublicans or florine in the water(tin hat Libertarians. What you fail to address is one troubled young man who slipped over the edge. Never mind that HFA and psychosis over a period of many years lead to this tragedy, it’s the fault of Libruls, neocoins and Aspertame - or mixing the races against Gods will.
KR It appears that Cho had a developement problem that metastsized to a full blow mental disorder. The press and bloggers want to label Cho as pure evil, maybe even worse than the Wackjob in Tehran.
April 23rd, 2007 at 9:27 am
Newt was just pandering to the Focus on the Family crowd who would be happy to target liberals for any tragedy that erupts. He hasn’t shown personal responsibility in the decisions he’s made in his own life-so why should anyone listen to him about so-called liberal values?
April 23rd, 2007 at 10:35 am
Nobody: Killing a baby is still killing a baby. Yes I’ll agree with you. That had NOTHING to do with my comment. My comment simply said that throwing some partial birth abortion BS into the argument is ridiculous. Its not an actual medical procedure. Show me where that takes place? You throw ridiculous straw-men into the pro-choice, anti-abortion debate. Why? To inflame, not discuss.
Newt didn’t say anything about opening dialogue. He laid blame. You all like to blame “liberal culture.” Show me where you have any actual proof that this is the cause. Video games? Where were those when the guy in the tower at UTexas in 1966 shot people? What was the cause then, integration?
Come on! You are dancing around the issue of gun violence in this country. We should be talking about how to preserve the right to bear arms while reducing our tragic national record of gun violence that almost every other westernized country does not tolerate. For some reason, you choose to tolerate it by laying blame not on the weapon, but some vacuous leftist conspiracy that is so drawn from talking-points and void of rational thought and analysis as to be sickening.
April 23rd, 2007 at 10:51 am
If it does not happen Jordan. Ever.. Then why is everyone so upset with it. Why care if it was outlawed if it NEVER happens?
Rudi your response is exactly the deflection Newt talks about. You wont talk about it, discuss it or even consider it. This is the way of the left and actually the right for that matter. Lets talk about it.
Nope nothing to say. Were right your wrong. End of story.
April 23rd, 2007 at 11:19 am
[…] He truly deserves this award. But, then, it hasn’t been the first time. The scary thing is that there are many who think the comment in the link is the kind of “discussion” that comprises politic debate. No. It is an attempt to whip up hatred against people who happen to disagree with you on other issues. By comparison, he makes Newt Gingrich’s similar earlier comments seem like a thoughtful PhD dissertation. […]
April 23rd, 2007 at 11:35 am
Nobody Newt represented the glorious state of Georgia, it’s history of racism is just as bad of some of its neighbors. The Newter is just pandering to his base using convert racism to rally the Nixon base. Guess when this headline hit the wire:
There was a similar story in 2003, in the 1960’s to the 1990’s segregrated proms were the norm in Newters home state.
Now the date of this story.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3026519&page=1
Will the Newter blame Libruls for kids mixing races at a prom for the first time?Will the Newter be outrage, me thinks not.
April 23rd, 2007 at 11:36 am
Nobody:
The concern is legal precident. The Partial Birth Abortion act contains NO provisions for the mother’s health. This is dangerous legal precedent, and could be applied to many legal hot-topics outside the abortion debate. It could affect YOUR rights in another, totally unrelated, legal area.
But instead, the Supreme Court’s majority opinion cites “abortion doctors,” and a pantheon of dubious medical terms that actually don’t exist and are not derived from any medical practice being applied in America today.
This kind of ideological warfare is infinitly dangerous!
April 23rd, 2007 at 2:35 pm
This thread would seem to offer some confirmation of Gingrich’s point. He makes an argument about the moral wasteland created by liberal politics, and this is met not by a counter argument but by a lot of attitude and name-calling. Liberals love to stay in their echo chamber, ridiculing and hating any voices that contradict what the wish were true.
I’ve dealt with liberals arguing against any public standard of discourse and decency so many times it’s a little funny to hear the perplexity and anger toward such obvious statements as Gingrich’s.
Of course, republicans have their own characteristic sins to answer for. I sometimes wonder who, ulitimately, is worse for the republic.
April 23rd, 2007 at 3:21 pm
mlu: if that is your lone conclusion, that we are afraid to offer discourse, then you haven’t read through these comments.
Many progressives would like to go to the table regarding gun violence and our culture that promotes it. You can blame liberals for this “moral wasteland,” but what is so immoral about desiring fewer deadly weapons in our country?
What part of so-called “liberal culture” is causing this? What part of this same culture drove McVeigh? How about Ted Haggard? Was that liberal culture as well? Where do you draw this conclusion?
The burden of proof is not on centrists or liberals, or even conservatives! All these crys of liberal culture serve to mask the real issue, and that is we have a problem with gun violence in this country. There are plenty of more liberal countries that do not have this problem. They curb gun ownership, and we have a strong correlation between such ownership and gun deaths in this country. You’re obscuring the debate with this garbage.
April 23rd, 2007 at 5:14 pm
kritter,
On the off-chance that you’re still following this thread: Art does not create mental illness, and Cho is causally and morally and legally responsible for 32 deaths. However, if depravity and murder become part of the “wallpaper” of the world - through the medium of art - then murder becomes one option that an alienated or otherwise defective person may choose.
Crappy art desensitizes the soul, and it additionally makes the murder option more salient. Cho already vicariously killed countless people in his video games, and while watching movies such as Oldboy. Murder became the method by which Cho asserted his embrionic identity. The choice was his, but crappy art pointed the way.
It also didn’t help that Cho knew that NBC would agree to co-produce his multimedia murder spectacular.
BTW, I don’t know the relation of these thoughts to Gingrich’s point, so I guess I’ve strayed far afield. Both Democrats and Republicans have talked like this over the years; about a decade ago, Al Gore would have agreed with me.
April 24th, 2007 at 1:51 am
[…] Gingrich does get the nomination (which seems as likely as water skiing on the sun) the Democrats should rejoyce since his share of independent voters will be about as high as Vice President Dick Cheney s popularity rating. … …Sportzia More […]
April 24th, 2007 at 10:57 am
[…] Joe has already addressed Newt Gingrich’s claim that liberalism is to blame for the Virginia Tech shootings, but here, below, are my thoughts in response to that idiotic claim. […]
April 24th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
[…] I have to agree with the folks over at The Moderate Voice. Never mind that liberals have not been constantly in power over the past 35 years that he refers to. Apparently the mere existance of liberals is sufficient. […]
April 26th, 2007 at 7:45 pm
[…] Gingrich does get the nomination (which seems as likely as water skiing on the sun) the Democrats should rejoyce since his share of independent voters will be about as high as Vice President Dick Cheney s popularity rating. … …Sportzia More […]