Insulting Comments at Fox News Debate Show Newt Clueless on Black Americans

by Peter Beinart Jan 17, 2012 1:50 AM EST

At the GOP debate Gingrich stood by his comments about African-Americans needing to demand work, and his description of Obama as the 'food stamp' president, showing why he - and his party - can't appeal to non-whites.

If you want to understand why the GOP is so ill-prepared to compete in an increasingly non-white America, just look at the exchange between Fox News questioner Juan Williams and Newt Gingrich halfway through last night's Republican presidential debate.

It being Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Williams asked Gingrich whether some poor and minority voters might not be insulted at his claim that poor kids lack a work ethic and that black people should be instructed to demand jobs not food stamps. Gingrich, as is his wont, haughtily dismissed Williams' question, to wild applause.

Then Williams tried again, mentioning a black woman who had taken Gingrich to task for calling Barack Obama a "food stamp" president. By this point, the overwhelmingly white crowd had begun to boo the only African-American on stage. When Gingrich insisted that Obama was indeed the "food stamp" president - because more Americans are now on food stamps - and dismissed Williams' criticism as "politically correct," the crowd began to scream with delight. By the time Gingrich finished his answer, the crowd was on its feet in a standing ovation.

The fascinating thing about the exchange is that Gingrich is not a racist. I suspect he genuinely cares about the African-American poor. In fact, he's convinced himself that his willingness to say things that many African-Americans consider insulting is an expression of that concern; that only he cares enough about African-Americans to speak the "politically incorrect" truths that black leaders won't.

Gingrich's problem isn't racism; it's ignorance. Only someone profoundly ignorant of African--American politics would suggest that black Americans have spent the past few decades seeking food stamps, not jobs. We celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day, after all, in part because of the speech King gave at an event called the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. If you look at the budgets proposed by the Congressional Black Caucus over the years, you'll see that they often include huge, FDR-style government jobs programs. Gingrich may not think that's the best way to go about providing jobs, but to suggest that African-Americans and their leaders don't consider jobs important just reveals how shut off from Africa-American politics he actually is.

I'm sure Gingrich also sees nothing offensive in calling Obama the "food stamp" president. After all, under Obama the number of people using food stamps has gone up! So because Alan Greenspan presided over predatory lending policies by banks, perhaps we should have called him the "Shylock" chairman of the Federal Reserve. And if child molestations by priests rise on this administration's watch, perhaps we should call Joseph Biden the "pedophilia" vice president.

Gingrich would never use those phrases, of course, because he's familiar enough with Jews and Catholics to understand why they'd find them offensive. But for Gingrich - a veteran politician from the state of Georgia, speaking at a debate in South Carolina on Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday - not to understand why calling the first African-American in the Oval Office the "food stamp" president would offend African-Americans is simply amazing. The most plausible explanation is that Gingrich inhabits a cultural and intellectual bubble. A bubble called the Republican Party.

I don't doubt that Newt Gingrich wants to help African-Americans, just like I don't doubt that George W. Bush wanted to help Iraqis. But in politics, if you want to help people, it's a good idea to learn something about them first.

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Romney endures battering in South Carolina

Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich vie to be the conservative alternative to the front-runner, aiming blows at his business and government record.

By Paul West and Seema Mehta, Los Angeles Times

January 16, 2012, 10:53 p.m.

Reporting from Myrtle Beach, S.C.-

In one of the most sustained batterings he has endured in the 2012 presidential primary debates, Mitt Romney was repeatedly put on the defensive over his business and government record and the attack ads by his supporters that are swamping South Carolina's airwaves.

The former Massachusetts governor's rivals have been increasingly desperate to derail his front-running candidacy as Romney looks to put a virtual lock on the Republican nomination in Saturday's primary.

Rivals Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich both took aim at Romney, landing blows that, despite hitting their mark, may have canceled out either candidate's chances of emerging Monday night as Romney's key challenger.

Together the opponents sought to argue that Romney lacked principles, was exercising an unfair advantage through a "super PAC" created by his former aides, and was hiding his income taxes to deflect criticism.

Santorum delivered one of the first blows, laying a trap for Romney about voting rights for prisoners. A super PAC supporting Romney has been running ads accusing Santorum of backing the right of felons to vote from prison - a charge the former Pennsylvania senator said was false.

Santorum defended his Senate vote, saying the measure he supported was aimed at restoring voting rights for criminals who had served their time and finished their probation and parole requirements. He noted that Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day and that the criminal population disproportionately included African Americans. He pressed Romney about whether he supported such a measure.

Romney said he did not believe that people who had committed violent crimes should ever be allowed to vote, leading Santorum to parry that when Romney was governor, violent felons in Massachusetts could vote even while they were on probation and parole.

"If in fact you felt so passionately about this that you were now going to go out and have somebody criticize me for restoring voting rights to people who have ... exhausted their sentence and served their time and paid their debt to society, then why didn't you try to change that when you were governor of Massachusetts?" Santorum said.

Romney responded that his state's Legislature was 85% Democratic, and he went on to criticize the existence of super PACs, although he has benefited the most from their existence this election cycle.

"We all would like to have super PACs disappear, to tell you the truth," he said later in the debate. "Wouldn't it be nice if people could give what they'd like to campaigns and campaigns could run their own ads and take responsibility for them?"

Gingrich criticized Romney's inability to get his supporters' super PAC to remove an ad that distorts Gingrich's position on abortion. He said it "makes you wonder how much influence he'd have if he were president" - a line that drew hoots of approval from the audience.

Romney shot back that Gingrich's supporters were running an ad replete with erroneous charges about his business record that is "probably the biggest hoax since Bigfoot."

With his experience as co-founder of a private equity firm, Bain Capital, under attack, Romney said for the first time that he would "probably" release his tax returns later this year if it was apparent he would be the nominee.

Gingrich defended his assaults on Romney's business record, which includes job losses at some companies Bain invested in, and what Gingrich called a pattern of loading a "handful" of companies with debt, after which they went broke.

To applause, the former House speaker said that questioning Romney's record in private business was "exactly what campaigns ought to be about. And we need to satisfy the country that whoever we nominate has a record that can stand up to Barack Obama in a very effective way."

One of the debate panelists, Gerald Seib of the Wall Street Journal, asked Romney about American Pad and Paper, a company that went bankrupt, costing hundreds of people their jobs, while Bain Capital took out $100 million in profits and fees.

Romney said the company was caught in a shrinking industry and some of those who lost jobs were union workers who didn't want to transfer to a nonunion plant. And he pushed back against the notion that he practiced a particularly harsh brand of capitalism.

"I know that people are going to come after me. I know President Obama is going to come after me. But the record is pretty darn good," Romney said.

"If people want to have someone who understands how the economy works, having worked in the real economy, then I'm the guy that can best post up against Barack Obama," Romney said to cheers from supporters in the crowd at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center.

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When Black Meant Republican

It's easy to forget now, but just a few generations ago African-Americans overwhelmingly identified themselves as Republicans. The story of how the Party of Lincoln lost its black support is long and sad, but understanding what happened is critical as the Party looks to improve its standing in the black community.

In the fall of 1895 Atlanta put on one in a series of "International Expositions" designed to highlight its progress in recovering from the war. Racial tensions had been growing since southerners, at the end of Reconstruction, began instituting Jim Crow laws to curtail black civil rights. Those laws were still under challenge at the time. African-Americans were divided over the merits of direct, legal resistance.

The organizers of the Exposition invited prominent black leader Booker T. Washington to give a keynote address. The position he took in that speech was a calculated gamble. He aimed to improve blacks' social position by aggressively pursuing economic progress while de-emphasizing the battle for civil equality. The approach he outlined, The Atlanta Compromise, became the dominant black political ethos for generations. It was a dizzying failure with consequences we are still working to unwind.

Washington had a rival. W.E.B. DuBois was raised in the north and graduated from Harvard. He pressed to make the fight for political equality the community's highest priority and dismissed Washington's emphasis on economic development and Capitalism. DuBois founded the NAACP and became a leading figure in the northern cities. He was enamored with Marxism and even penned a defense of Josef Stalin on Stalin's death. His influence would increase as Washington's version of compromise began to unravel.

Washington's approach suffered from two crucial flaws. First he thought that institutional southern racism would weaken as the black community began to realize its economic potential. Secondly, he failed to appreciate that capitalism cannot work its magic without government protection of basic property rights. In the face of these tragic misunderstandings, blacks labored away for decades building remarkably successful businesses, professions, and civic institutions, only to watch them crushed over and over again by discriminatory laws and outright violence. There was no hope for economic progress without the most basic civil rights.

A wave of race riots in the teens and '20s were particularly devastating. Only a fraction of the incidents were documented at the time, usually in the form of a brief, euphemistic reference in a local paper to "troubles." But postcards (that's right, postcards), stories, and victim accounts painted a clearer picture. Two of the most notorious riots occurred in Rosewood, Florida and Tulsa, Oklahoma. Prosperous black communities were in many cases wiped off the map, destroying generations of hard-won gains. When the Depression came, the brief flowering of the separate black communities was effectively dead.

By the '50s, as America was bracing finally to confront its racist legacy, the gritty capitalism Washington had promoted was seen by blacks as a discredited failure at best, an "Uncle Tom" sell-out at worst. As Dr. King's effort's bore fruit and African-Americans began at last to have genuine economic freedom finally open to them, there was little enthusiasm to exploit it. Blacks who had led the successful fight for equal protection focused their continuing efforts less on free enterprise than on government social programs and poverty relief. At the moment when Booker T. Washington's dream of individualism and enterprise held the most potential promise it was eclipsed by a very different vision.

This emphasis created an opening for Democrats which they successfully exploited. The drift of blacks away from the Republican Party was capped by a cynical effort to recruit disgruntled racist Democrats in the south.

What does this mean for Republicans? In spite of the failures of the Great Society era and with little help from Republicans, there is a vibrant, secure black middle class emerging for the first time in America. The growth of black prosperity will be a key to the country's future, but it depends heavily on leaving behind a vision of government dependence with deep, well-justified roots.

We need to recognize this history to understand its impact on our future. Until a generation ago, accumulating capital across generations, so critical to climbing the ladder in America, was a complete fantasy for African-Americans in the south. They could reasonably expect that whatever wasn't spent or hidden would be taken from them. This reality has left the black community with a starting point in terms of wealth, capital, and connections far behind whites or even other minorities.

In addition it would serve Republicans well to understand the difference between traditional black and white understandings of government power. For whites who look to European history as their guide, government is a necessary evil to be treated with great care. Its growth should be managed in order to prevent it becoming an interest to itself; capable of crushing personal liberty and economic freedom.

Blacks' experience with government power is almost a polar opposite of whites'. When central government has been weak, they have suffered. This suffering is not merely relative, but has left them vulnerable to random acts of violence, humiliation, and looting. They have good reason to see government power as protection and to be suspicious of white efforts to weaken it.

A healthy Republican Party, with its crazy-dial turned down from the redline, could have a lot to offer African-Americans. But realizing the potential for black involvement in the Party will require us to better understand and honestly confront our own history. The GOP cannot hope to remain relevant if it devolves into a white religious club. Expanding our appeal is a moral and political imperative that can succeed if we have the will.

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GOP voters start casting ballots in Hillsborough

By Jodie Tillman, Times Staff Writer In Print: Tuesday, January 17, 2012

TAMPA - Steve Weinberg had his mind made up, so he decided not to wait. On Monday, he was one of more than 1,200 Hillsborough County voters to go to the polls to get a head start in the Republican presidential primary.

"I wanted to get it over with," said Weinberg, 64, who works in real estate and voted in northern Hillsborough. "He may not be as conservative as the others, but I went for (Mitt) Romney because he's electable."

Early voting has begun in Hillsborough for the Jan. 31 Republican presidential preference primary, ahead of most of the rest of the state.

State legislators last year made controversial changes to election laws, including trimming the early voting period.

But the old laws still stand in Hillsborough and four other counties with a history of racial discrimination - Monroe, Collier, Hardee and Hendry - until the federal government approves the changes.

Early voting in other Tampa Bay counties will begin Saturday.

Monday's turnout was about a third of that of the first day of early voting in 2008. But that year, both political parties had presidential preference primaries.

At Jimmie B. Keel Regional Library north of Carrollwood, where Romney and Ron Paul signs lined the parking lot, more than 150 people had cast votes by late afternoon.

Kathleen Paynter and her husband, Randy, showed up so that their 10-year-old son, Aaron, who was out of school for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, could watch.

Kathleen voted for Newt Gingrich, and Randy voted for Rick Santorum.

"I feel like (Gingrich) is the one who has a chance to come up against (President Barack) Obama," said Kathleen, 51. "He can out-debate him."

Randy said he had considered Gingrich, too, but instead went with his instinct.

Santorum "is honest. He's the most conservative," said Randy, 46. "If people listen to their hearts, I think he has a chance."

Aaron piped up that he likes Romney. "Only because he's in the lead," his father teased.

It wasn't quite as lively at the C. Blythe Andrews Jr. Public Library, which is in a mostly Democratic neighborhood off Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. No Republican campaign had even bothered with signs.

By about 4:30 p.m., only four people had shown up to vote, said Linda Wright, a clerk with the Hillsborough Supervisor of Elections Office. She sent six poll workers home early.

"It's a holiday, so that's where people's minds are" she said. "We expect tomorrow there'll be a big change."

She looked out the door. Up the sidewalk came voter No. 5.

"Well, here comes Mr. Posey," she said.

Marvin Posey, the 80-year-old owner of Posey Power Batteries, said he voted for Romney.

"He's a good, religious man," said Posey. "He may be a different religion, but that's okay." (Romney is a Mormon.)

Posey said he thinks Romney is someone who's "completely different" and will shake things up in Washington.

Does he think Romney can win? He wasn't sure. He was surprised that a few more Republicans hadn't shown up at his polling site.

"Five all day long?" he asked. "That worries me bad."

Early voting polls

Early voting is from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. at locations inside libraries. Other locations are open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Any registered Republican in Hillsborough can vote at any of the locations.

Fred B. Karl County Center, 601 E Kennedy Blvd., 26th floor.

Robert L. Gilder Elections Service Center, 2514 N Falkenburg Road.

Bloomingdale Regional Public Library, 1906 Bloomingdale Ave.

C. Blythe Andrews Jr. Public Library, 2607 E Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

Jan Kaminis Platt Regional Library, 3910 S Manhattan Ave.

Jimmie B. Keel Regional Library, 2902 W Bearss Ave.

New Tampa Regional Library, 10001 Cross Creek Blvd.

North Tampa Branch Library, 8916 N Boulevard.

Plant City City Hall, 302 W Reynolds St.

Riverview Branch Library, 10509 Riverview Drive.

SouthShore Regional Library, 15816 Beth Shields Way.

Temple Terrace Public Library, 202 Bullard Parkway.

Town 'N Country Regional Public Library, 7606 Paula Drive, Suite 120.

Upper Tampa Bay Regional Public Library, 11211 Countryway Blvd.

West Tampa Branch Library, 2313 W Union St.

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Conservative blogs take on Newsweek cover

By MJ LEE | 1/16/12 4:01 PM EST Updated: 1/16/12 8:18 PM EST

The lastest edition of Newsweek features the face of a pensive President Barack Obama along with the provocative headline: "Why are Obama's critics so dumb?" - and that's hit a little too close to home for conservative bloggers.

Joel Pollak, editor in chief of Breitbart.com, turned the cover's question around on Andrew Sullivan, who penned the magazine's cover story, in a blog post called, "Why is Andrew Sullivan so dumb?"

"You'd have to be stupid, fanatical and dishonest to argue - as Trig Truther Sullivan does - that Barack Obama's failures are part of an ingenious ‘long game' that is destined to succeed," Pollak wrote. "If this is the best Obama's supporters can do, Obama's only hope for reelection is the weak Republican field."

Similarly, Power Line's John Hinderaker vented in a blog post titled, "We must be really, really stupid!"

"Well, sure. We who are unhappy that unemployment has increased on Obama's watch, that over-regulation has stymied economic growth, that our children now owe a $15 trillion debt that we can't pay - hey, we're just dumb!" he blasted. "We obviously aren't smart enough to understand how devastating our economy, unemploying millions of Americans and burdening our children with trillions of dollars in debt is really a great idea."

Sullivan, a self-described "unabashed supporter of Obama from early 2007 on," writes in the cover story that attacks against the president are not only out of bounds but "simply - empirically - wrong."

"Given the enormity of what he inherited, and given what he explicitly promised, it remains simply a fact that Obama has delivered in a way that the unhinged right and purist left have yet to understand or absorb," Sullivan wrote. "Their short-term outbursts have missed Obama's long game - and why his reelection remains, in my view, as essential for this country's future as his original election in 2008."

The story was rated by Townhall's Managing Editor Kevin Glass as "a doozy about how conservatives are delusional and the left-wing base is just dumber than the president," and he added that the Newsweek writer has bought into what he called "The Obama Delusion."

"The president's critics, on both sides, have and will continue to make sound critiques. And Andrew Sullivan and The Daily Beast are just trolling us," Glass wrote.

"Is there anything the mainstream media won't do to get Obama reelected?" Noel Sheppard of NewsBusters wanted to know.

The Weekly Standard's Mark Hemingway ripped Newsweek for falling deeper into "self-parody": "If in recent years it seems as if Newsweek has been descending into self-parody, it's still hard to imagine that this is real."

And over at Red State, the magazine's cover inspired blogger Caleb Howe to exercise some creative liberties by declaring a "Photoshop contest" to make a fake Newsweek cover.

"I'm assuming the thought process, such as it is, was ‘controversial sells magazines,'" he wrote. "So in that light, I have a suggestion for Newsweek's next cover, one that will really stir things up."

One of Howe's several mock Newsweek covers features a sad-faced puppy and the words: "Puppies: Why our editors torture them."

Sullivan defended the president's record Monday evening, saying, "Obama has governed as he said he would, as a sensible, pragmatic centrist." He explained that a frustration about lies people were telling about the president's record had inspired him to write the cover story.

"I just got frustrated hearing all these people tell untruths about the record," Sullivan said on MSNBC. "The record is that he has done something perfectly sensible - he's fulfilled the promises that he made to turn this country round slowly."

He urged Obama's critics to have more "patience" when scrutinizing the president's accomplishments, and suggested that critics approach their negotiations with the president without a "fantasy about who this guy is."

"He's not a big old lefty," he added. "I mean, ask the left. He's a compromiser in the middle and I think what he's done is set out very carefully where he wants to go."

Mark Miller, assistant managing editor of Newsweek, insisted earlier on Monday that Sullivan's piece articulates criticism of the president from "both the left and the right."

"I think Andrew makes the case fairly well that the way that he's been caricatured by the right and the way that the left is disappointed with him doesn't actually serve him well," Miller said on MSNBC.

He noted that one of Obama's biggest problems is that he "isn't out there ... grandstanding and talking about his accomplishments in a way that may be necessary to break through the noise."

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