Conservative News

Newt Gingrich, Filled With More Excrement Than Your Average Politician

8:04 am EST January 20th, 2012 | Conservative | 58 Comments

When Bill Clinton was involved in the Lewinsky affair, it was bad, reprehensible conduct for a husband and a father. Certainly it showed a lack of morals and judgement. That said, it was not a high crime or misdemeanor by any stretch of the imagination. He had done wrong, but it didn’t warrant a crisis of the constitution. Republicans didn’t share that sentiment. Republicans thought the affair was reason enough to remove the president from his office.

They were led in this charge by Newt Gingrich. Gingrich vowed in 1998 to bring up the affair as much as possible. Gingrich decided to create ads about the affair, and thought it would be a good issue to run on in 1998. It didn’t work, and Democrats gained 5 seats in the House that year.

As we now know, while Newt Gingrich was on this moral crusade, he was cheating on his wife and eventually divorcing her.

So now, years later, after his moral crusade built on a platform hypocrisy, Gingrich has the nerve to berate CNN for bringing up this story? Excrement, indeed.

Topic: Newt Gingrich

New Year, Powerline Still Stupid

10:50 am EST January 13th, 2012 | Conservative | 37 Comments

The defense of Mitt Romney’s career as a corporate raider is in full sway, and especially how he’s a virtual lock for the nomination now, the usual conservative clowns are lining up like they always do in order to protect their cause. Case in point, the nimrods at Powerline (background on their years of stupidity) are asserting the following:

The Left is carrying out a coordinated attack on Mitt Romney’s business career. One sees exactly the same allegations, often phrased identically, whether you look at the Daily Kos, the Associated Press, Slate or Think Progress, or listen to Newt Gingrich or Rick Perry.

Apparently Newt Gingrich, leader of the conservative revolution in the House and Rick Perry, George W. Bush’s number two in Texas and a few months ago The Great Conservative Hope, are now part of a coordinated campaign between the left, the Associated Press and Slate (?) to take down Mitt Romney. It couldn’t be that Romney has a spotty career in the private sector. It couldn’t be that Romney has tried to disappear his time as governor and has put his career front and center. No. It has to be a conspiracy.

Because with the right, its always a conspiracy. It has been since at least 1964 when they were going on about the water being fluoridated by communists or in 2008 when they claimed that the housing collapse was a conspiracy of Democrats and poor people and not Wall Street. It’s always a conspiracy.

Because they are morons.

Newt Gingrich Is Not Ronald Reagan

11:15 am EST December 12th, 2011 | Conservative | 61 Comments

In the last few weeks, as Newt Gingrich has leapfrogged Mitt Romney and common sense to become the Republican frontrunner, Democrats and progressives like me have reacted with glee. Newt Gingrich, in the eyes of the left, would be a suicidal pick for the Republican party. Destined to lose, and to once again send the conservative movement out into the wilderness.

Since then, there has been a meme from the right and now being echoed in the mainstream press. Don’t be too quick to dismiss Gingrich, they say. As evidence they cite 1980 and the fact that the Carter team preferred to face Reagan, thinking that his conservative positions would be a huge turnoff to the nation. That election, of course, ended in a landslide in Reagan’s favor and ushered in the so-called “Reagan Revolution.”

Those parallels are, at best, a major stretch.

For one, as bad as things are politically for President Obama, he is a far savvier politician than Jimmy Carter ever was. Carter repeatedly made the kind of tin-ear mistakes that Obama has largely avoided for the last three years. Obama is highly unlikely to emulate the foreign policy impotence of the hostage crisis, and this president simply doesn’t give “malaise” speeches.

The parallel becomes even more ludicrous when you compare Gingrich and Reagan. First, their pedigrees and legacies. Before being elected, Reagan was a B to C list actor, a national commercial pitchman, and the governor of one of America’s largest states. Gingrich, on the other hand, has never been elected to statewide let alone national office. And his tenure at the national level is remembered by moderates and liberals as one that ended in shame. Only conservatives remember the Gingrich tenure as Speaker with any sort of fondness. Post-Speaker Gingrich is also remembered by moderates and liberals as an abject hypocrite who was attacking President Clinton for an extramarital affair while he was cheating on his second wife.

The complete implosion of this meme comes when you compare Gingrich and Reagan as human beings. I’m a progressive who of course finds almost nothing admirable in the policies of Ronald Reagan, but it is a historical fact that he was a gregarious, well-liked leader (if conservatives were being honest they would acknowledge this about Franklin Roosevelt and Bill Clinton). Reagan’s the best advocate conservatism has ever had in America for a reason. There is a reason “happy warrior” is synonymous with his name.

Newt Gingrich is not this. Even though the “new Newt” claims he has learned from his past mistakes, in his debate performances and media interviews you can still see the petulant, whining, arrogant, condescending jerk Newt right below the surface. Gingrich is only ever a few seconds away from the temper tantrums he had during the Clinton era. In the battlefield of a national political campaign this will come out in spectacular fashion. Reagan was able to communicate some form of humility, often using self-deprecating humor in order to lull his political opponents into a false sense of superiority. Gingrich, at all times, believes he is the smartest man in the room. He would believe it if he was attending a summit of rocket scientists, he surely believes it on the campaign trail.

This doesn’t even take into consideration the conservatism of the two figures. While Reagan is being held up as a lion of the right, he would be seen as far too moderate to make it through the modern Republican primary. Gingrich is pandering to the Tea Party base, which is all well and good for the GOP nomination, but the 2012 electorate will not look like the 2010 crew that elected the Republican House.

Newt Gingrich isn’t Ronald Reagan. They were both nationally known conservative Republicans, but the similarities end there. Despite the sentiments of people like myself, Reagan is likely to be remembered fondly for a considerable time. The same will not be true of Gingrich.

Topic: Newt Gingrich

Elevating Ignorance Comes Back To Bite The GOP

11:44 am EST November 16th, 2011 | Conservative | 24 Comments

The conservative movement, particularly its modern American element, has celebrated ignorance. From Barry Goldwater’s support for using nuclear weapons in Vietnam to Sarah Palin describing “what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read?” as a “gotcha” question.

The pinnacle of conservative ignorance was, of course, the never-ending support of an obvious moron in the guise of George W. Bush for president. Watching the GOP campaign, they are now realizing they may have gone too far with putting stupid up on a pedestal:

“It is an ‘Animal House.’ It’s a food fight,” said Kenneth Duberstein, a chief of staff to President Ronald Reagan. “Honestly, the Republican debates have become a reality show. People have to be perceived as being capable of governing this country, of being the leader of the free world.”

Even before his “oops” moment in one of the debates last week, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas stumbled his way through an answer about Pakistan and nuclear weapons. Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota has offered a series of historical goofs. And after mistakenly saying China does not have nuclear weapons, Herman Cain on Monday painfully gave an answer to a question about Libya in which he all but acknowledged having little grasp of the military actions that took place there.

Too late, geniuses. You’ve ingrained ignorance in the modern GOP and the conservative movement. You deny verifiable science. You deny obvious facts. You attack those who use intelligence over their “gut.” And on and on and on.

This is the world you made, conservatives. Swim in Lake Ignorance.

They’re Always So Pathetic

9:36 pm EST November 7th, 2011 | Conservative | 83 Comments

It is sort of hilarious to watch the same people who quite literally caused a constitutional crisis over half-baked allegations against Bill Clinton now insist that not only is Herman Cain innocent of the charges against him, but in fact that the very concept of sexual harassment is suspect.

Even better, they get to play the race card they’ve bitched and moaned so much about in the most disingenuous way ever.

Your modern conservative movement, rotten to its very core and then some.

Rush Limbaugh Is Really A Sick Person

1:04 pm EST October 18th, 2011 | Conservative | 34 Comments

VIDEO: LRA Survivor Responds To Limbaugh: “My Heart Breaks”

Evelyn Apoko, a survivor of atrocities committed by the Lord’s Resistance Army, has recorded a video appeal to Limbaugh.

In Case You Wondered If Republicans Are Still Crazy

9:17 am EST October 15th, 2011 | Conservative | 67 Comments

Here’s Rush Limbaugh, sick as always.

On his radio show today, Rush Limbaugh launched another religion-based smear of President Obama: that he is sending troops to Africa to kill Christians. Limbaugh declared that “President Obama has deployed troops to another war, in Africa,” adding that the group being targeted, the Lord’s Resistance Army, “are Christians. They are fighting the Muslims in Sudan. And Obama has sent troops, United States troops to remove them from the battlefield, which means kill them. … So that’s a new war, a hundred troops to wipe out Christians.” Limbaugh then claimed that Obama supports “help[ing] the Egyptians wipe out the Christians.”

Sick. Always sick. Eternally sick. And he’s one of the right’s top “thought” leaders.

Yet Another Big Lie From Breitbart’s Big Journalism

11:29 pm EST October 2nd, 2011 | Conservative | 15 Comments

I know this will shock some of you, but Andrew Breitbart and his team at Big Journalism (and Big Government, and Big Peace, and Big Hollywood, etc.) often make up stories. They just out and out lie. This explains their success within the bastardized world of conservative “journalism” where the truth is the inconvenient bit.

Add this one to the “Big Lie” pile. Here’s Ron Futrell, trying to make the case that the media is responsible for creating the image of Obama attempting to unite the country:

Here’s just one example of the story line from 2007 with this little bit from the Washington Post about Obama, “he has the capacity … to unify the country and move it out of what he called “ideological gridlock.” Wow, good thing we don’t have gridlock and we hired the guy for the job who could stop it with a beer summit or the wave of his magic cigarette.

Whenever I see conservatives use ellipses, a warning bell goes off indicating that there’s trouble afoot. So, here is the text from the story Futrell links. I will highlight what he chose to excerpt and you can read for yourself what he left out on purpose.

Drawing a sharp contrast with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, his main rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama said in an interview that he has the capacity she may lack to unify the country and move it out of what he called “ideological gridlock.”

To make that really clear, Futrell has taken Dan Balz’s reporting on what Obama said about himself and magically attributed it to The Washington Post’s expressed opinion. I’m not fan of a lot of what the Post does, but they didn’t express an opinion here. They reported the words of a candidate for office. You know, reporting?

Futrell does this because he knows 99.9% of the people on the right who will read what he wrote will never click through, but even for someone in the Breitbart stable this is mighty dishonest.

On purpose.

Maggie Gallagher’s New Hate Group

10:00 am EST September 27th, 2011 | Conservative | 67 Comments

Conservative anti-gay marriage crusader Maggie Gallagher has a new group, and she talked to National Review about it.

Frank Turek is a man whose contract was terminated by a major corporation when human resources found out he had written a book opposing same-sex marriage. He is on the front lines of an emerging trend we are hearing about: people losing jobs or other economic opportunities because they have written, spoken, donated, or otherwise peacefully exercised their core civil rights on behalf of marriage as the union of husband and wife.

Frank’s day job is leadership seminars for Fortune 500 companies. He also runs a ministry and has written a book against same-sex marriage titled Correct, Not Politically Correct: How Same-sex Marriage Hurts Everyone.

For many years Frank Turek has done seminars for Cisco, among many other companies. A student who attended his class Googled his name, found out he opposed same-sex marriage and said “I’m going to get Frank fired because he doesn’t represent Cisco values.” And this student succeeded.

So, this guys contract was terminated and he doesn’t provide seminars any more to Cisco when it turned out he was preaching hatred. Gallagher has somehow morphed that into him being fired. So, in other words, Maggie Gallagher is still being a hateful liar.

Amanda Carpenter Blames Inhaler Issue On Obama, Lies When Caught

5:43 pm EST September 23rd, 2011 | Conservative | 27 Comments

So Demint aide and former Townhall contributor Amanda Carpenter was on Twitter blaming the impending end of over the counter asthma inhalers on President Obama:

One of the stories about the issue Carpenter linked to made this note:

The FDA finalized plans to phase out the products in 2008 and currently only Armstrong Pharmaceutical’s Primatene mist is available in the U.S. Other manufacturers have switched to an environmentally-friendly propellant called hydrofluoroalkane.

Now I, being a sentient human being, took notice of the fact that when the FDA made these plans in 2008, Barack Obama was not President of the United States. The President at the time was George W. Bush, someone who Carpenter was a big supporter of. When I pointed this out to her, her response was the following:

She acts now as if she wasn’t solely blaming Obama for this, as if she previously had said Obama is incorrectly enforcing a policy passed under Bush. But if you simply scroll down to a few minutes earlier, she’s very clearly blaming this policy on “Obama’s EPA” and claim that this is something the “Obama Admin wants to ban.”

EXCEPT THE BAN WAS AGREED TO UNDER BUSH.

This is how a liar operates. This is your modern conservative movement, in action.

(h/t to @toddgregory who is similarly appalled by this kind of blatant lying)

UPDATE: The Weekly Standard also blames this Bush administration decision on Obama, continuing proof that conservatives don’t or can’t read basic information.

After I posted about her lie, Amanda Carpenter has gone silent on this issue, and has not retracted her false allegation. Instead she went on to discuss relevant issues like the break-up of REM.