Newt Gingrich, who led the Republican Party to power a dozen years ago, told cheering conservatives Saturday it is time to overhaul a balky, slow-moving government locked in the last century.
Citing multiple government failures after Hurricane Katrina, the former House speaker said the government meltdown at all levels illustrated how badly government needs to be updated in all of its operations.
“The system failed, the city of New Orleans failed, the state of Louisiana failed and the government of the United States failed,” Gingrich said. “When you see an American body on an American street sitting there for three days on television because the government can’t collect the dead, something has failed.
And who exactly is the government?
So what does old Newtie think he’s going to do? Run for president? Gee, he’s the guy who engineered this mess, who set the table for the likes of Delay, Abramoff, et al. Serial adulterer, documented cheat, author of widely ignored historical fictions: yeah, these are the qualities America needs.
His entire political career has been about doing away with intrusive government, government with too much power, too much responsibility for too many things. He and his cadre are actively opposed to the authority that could have ensured we didn’t see a great American city flooded. His followers did everything they could to make sure the world couldn’t help but see American bodies floating in the floodwaters of an American disaster. They think their good fortune is a sign of moral rectitude, even as their own experience belies that fact.
I hope he runs. He’s eminently beatable: his record is a trainwreck.
On a related note Bob Barr, formerly a predictable right-wing ideologue, spoke at the same conference, making a case for the Bill of Rights, for the rule of law. King George IV’s loyal subjects were having none of it.
Barr merited only polite applause when he finished, and one man, Richard Sorcinelli, booed him loudly. “I can’t believe I’m in a conservative hall listening to him say [Bush] is off course trying to defend the United States,” Sorcinelli fumed.
You may remember Barr as one of the House impeachment managers during the Clinton witch-hunt. He may be consistent: shame his erstwhile fellow party-members aren’t.