You
wanna� talk about improbable? I was going back over my commentary
from May of this year. I
am not going to eat my words, but they are a bit haunting
right about now. Do you remember what I said about a certain
Republican presidential candidate? Let me refresh your memory:
Remember when the latest polling said that, �if the
election were held today, President Obama would lose to
at least two of the Republican hopefuls.� Well, you�re not
hearing that now; not this month. That�s because Republicans
made the unwitting choice of grooming nitwits for a no-nonsense
job. It�s hard to get elected to the most visible job in
the free world when you�re wearing dirty laundry.
Well,
when I said this in May, I also followed up by naming names.
I said, �The
likelihood of Newt Gingrich winning the presidency - much
less, the Republican nomination - is as likely as an ice
cube�s walk through hell�it ain�t happenin!� But he�s poised to make a run in 2012 anyway.� I haven�t changed my prediction.
Though he�s leading in the polls, Gingrich is still Newt�and
Newt is still Gingrich.
What
I�ve watched him do during this run is something that conservatives
live for: a personality who�s willing to risk it all by
throwing the most offensive, improbable and even insane
policies against the wall to see what sticks.
After
saying recently that child labor laws are �truly stupid,�
Gingrich last week told an Iowa audience that children in
poor neighborhoods have �no habits of working� nor getting
paid for their endeavors �unless it�s illegal.� Of course
many people - especially poor people - took exception to
Gingrich�s perception of a huge constituency of Americans.
This is a public stereotype assault that is usually spoken
only inside the safe confines of conservative talk radio.
Gingrich
went on to clarify himself: �Really poor children in really
poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody
around them who works,� the former House speaker said at
a campaign event at the Nationwide Insurance offices. �So
they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They
have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of
�I do this and you give me cash,� unless it�s illegal.�
Many
of us trying to make sense of Gingrich�s purpose realized
immediately that he has never been poor nor lived in a poor
neighborhood. Though he may conduct himself as �poor, white
trash,� he�s anything but. Newt�s net worth is obscene -
in respect to the people he�s seeking to serve.
More to the point, this a calculated method of policy-making.
Conservatives literally throw out an insane proposition
and wait for either public praise or public outcry and then
throw it out or run with it. You may say, that�s the way
policy is done! You may be correct in some instances, but
I argue, this is not responsible policy-making procedure.
What is responsible is listening to the needs of the people
you shall serve. Why is that so hard to understand? That�s
why Occupy Wall Street is alive and well today.
What�s so scary is that Gingrich is serious! Doesn�t
he know that our country has outgrown that stage of it�s
primitive past? That we enacted child labor laws because
of the barbaric, irresponsible and exploitative nature of
it�s premise? In
1916, the NCLC and the National Consumers League successfully
pressured the US Congress to pass the Keating-Owen Act,
the first federal child labor law. The Supreme Court struck
it down in 1918. It took the Great Depression to end child
labor nationwide; adults had become so desperate for jobs
that they would work for the same wage as children. In
1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor
Standards Act, which, among other things, placed limits
on many forms of child labor.
In
reality, why would a candidate running for president even
suggest children working when our country has an unemployment
rate over 8% - for adults! In a country where our children
are effectively under-achieving in their education as compared
with the rest of the world? He�s running as a candidate
that wants to de-fund the department of education and under-employ
children? Then, keep adults out of work?
I
imagine Gingrich would also support gold production in artisanal
mines using child labor and unsafe refining processes�not
in Africa, but here in the good ol� USA. Thank goodness such mines
aren�t a booming US industry, although coal is still around! Newt
Gingrich will be remembered as one of the most hated and
insensitive politicians in my lifetime. Despite his adeptness
as a tactician (having led the Republican Revolution of
1994), Gingrich will come into office and ruin the lives
of millions. Dr. Tom Coburn (R-OK), who benefited from Gingrich�s
skill, recently stated that he �just found his [Gingrich]
leadership lacking.�
He�ll
legislate as a social and ethics leader, but the truth will
unmask the hypocrite (3 marriages, two ending in affairs;
an affair while crusading for Clinton�s
resignation under the Monica Lewinsky cloud; a paid lobbyist
for Fannie Mae). Eventually, he�ll be run out of office
as he was in 1999 when he was sanctioned, fined, and eventually
resigned. Let us not forget�
I
implore you to learn and then do not forget Gingrich�s history.
Social policy is a serious and thoughtful element of American
reality. Never trust a politician that, like Herman Cain
tried to make policy with the 9-9-9 tax plan modeled on
the SIM City video game, �Gingrich will create
policy on the fly and pass off hair-brain ideas as urban
policy and expect you to live by it. Don�t be fooled.
BlackCommentator.com
Columnist, Perry
Redd, is the former Executive Director of
the workers rights advocacy, Sincere Seven, and author of
the on-line commentary, �The
Other Side of the Tracks.� He is the host of the internet-based
talk radio show, Socially Speaking in
Washington,
DC.
Click
here to contact Mr.
Redd.
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