Ward on Words

Fasten your seatbelts - the war for attention in 2012 has begun! Newt Gingrich is apparently taking his contract with America seriously once again. He's running for the nation's highest office. He's not one to let serving divorce papers to a woman undergoing cancer treatment stop him from such a noble pursuit. Mother Jones has pulled together some Newt bombs - utterances made by Gingrich over the last 30+ years. Let's take a look! And let's consider if a man with this rhetorical history should serve as the leader of the world's most powerful country... 1978 In an address to College Republicans before he was elected to the House, Gingrich says : "I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican party is that we don't encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, and loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words." He added, "Richard Nixon…Gerald Ford…They have done a terrible job, a pathetic job. In...

A story in Mother Jones  points us to the historian favored by the GOP elite (Gingrich, Bachmann, Huckabee), a man named David Barton. Here's how MoJo describes him - as a... "...Republican activist and minister who founded WallBuilders, a for-profit evangelical outfit that works to inject religion into politics. Barton holds some pretty unconventional views, and in the past he has spoken alongside fringe figures like Holocaust deniers and white supremacists. Among other things, he claims that Jesus would oppose the capital gains tax and the minimum wage; that global warming is "self-correcting"; and that the nation's homeland security apparatus has been infiltrated by members of the Muslim Brotherhood. He also contends that the separation of church and state is a perversion of the Founding Fathers' intention to create a Christian nation." Let's just say Barton and I are not likely to be invited to the same parties. Here's what Mike ...