On various occasions I have had the duty to interview people suspected of doing something wrong. I quickly learned something: when you run into someone who responds with rage at being asked a reasonable question, watch out. People who have done nothing wrong will seldom respond that way. They just answer the question. But, quite frequently the people, who complain the loudest about the unfairness of the question, are the people with the most to hide. They are trying to intimidate others into not doing their job.
Barack Obama managed to avoid scrutiny by placing the race card whenever anyone dared ask him about anything. This was also Bill and Hillary Clinton’s principle method of avoiding scrutiny. Remember Hillary talking about the vast right-wing conspiracy? Bill Clinton would refuse to answer legitimate questions on the basis that he was focused on doing his job for the American people. This approach was perfected when the man, obviously guilty of perjury, managed to pin the blame on Republicans for daring to impeach him merely because he was guilty of a felony. His reasoning was that this was only about sex, so it didn’t matter. Perjury always matters.
When I saw the way Newt Gingrich responded to John King, my heart sank. I immediately recognized the “angry, how-dare-you-question-me routine.” No one does scorn better than Newt Gingrich. At first glance, Newt Gingrich’s tirade against John King was brilliant. It certainly got the crowd excited and won him the election in South Carolina. But, it is pretty obvious that Gingrich was lying. The following article from the Daily Beast documents the problem. Now, the Daily Beast is no friend of conservatives, but unfortunately, in this case, it has its facts down:
Newt Gingrich is the only Speaker of the House in our nation’s history that was fined by the ethics committee. The fine was a whopping $300,000. The Speaker of the House makes an annual salary of $223,500 per year. It was even less when Gingrich was Speaker. That means he was fined far in excess of his entire annual salary. That size of fine says a lot about his real net worth and even more about the seriousness with which House members viewed his actions. Remember, this was a Republican controlled House at the time.
Newt Gingrich was forced to resign as Speaker after House Republicans staged a mutiny. He was the man who developed the “Contract with America” and helped Republicans regain the House after more than 40 years in the Wilderness. This was an accomplishment on a par with the biblical Moses. The Republicans in the House would have tolerated almost anything from the man who did this, but they could not tolerate Newt Gingrich. Recently, more and more of them have been speaking out and warning us about serious problems with Newt Gingrich’s leadership. Perhaps we should start to listen.
The President of the United States is the most powerful person on earth. This person literally has the power to unleash a nuclear weapon. In the hands of the wrong person, who responds because of rage rather than reason, this is extremely dangerous. That is why during the last days of the Nixon administration there were reports that senior administration officials secretly agreed to ignore an illegal order from Nixon, if it came to that. Fortunately, Nixon never tried issuing such an order.
There is no room for error on this topic. Republicans need to be absolutely sure they can trust Newt Gingrich’s character, or they dare not nominate him. This does not mean that he has to be perfect. It does mean that he has to be someone who has proven himself to be worthy of trust. With regard to convicting someone for criminal behavior, they are innocent until proven guilty. With regard to running for President, it is the duty of the candidate to prove he has the right character for the job. Newt needs to tone down the rhetoric and start being a lot more truthful, if he wants to meet that standard.
TDM