Former GOP Rep. Molinari says that’s ‘crazy’ and ‘outrageous’
Since retiring from Congress, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has devoted much of his time leading a pro-drilling front group with “resources” from the oil industry (see “Gingrich’s ‘drill here, drill now’ campaign continues as BP oil disaster grows“).
Now, he is promoting his new anti-regulation, pro-drilling book, To Save America, which argues repeatedly that the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress are a “secular-socialist machine” that “represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.” TP has the story of Gingrich’s defense of that hate speech — and how even people in his own party are attacking his extremist views.
Gingrich has repeatedly defended this claim, telling both NBC’s Meredith Vieira and Fox News’ Chris Wallace that he truly believes that the Obama administration is an equivalent “threat” to America as brutal dictators like Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin:
VIEIRA: Can you honestly compare what’s going on with the Democrats with Nazi Germany?
GINGRICH: No it’s not a question of how evil they were. Nazi Germany was terrible, Stalin’s Russia was terrible, Mao’s China was terrible. It’s a question of finality. Had we lost either of those contests, we would have become a radically different country.
* * * *WALLACE: So “” but you compare that to the Nazis and the Communists?
GINGRICH: I compare that as a threat.
Watch it:
In reaching to make his case, Gingrich repeatedly tries desperately to connect the Obama administration with Nazi Germany. The index of Gingrich’s book cites Nazi references eight times, many of which are attempts to compare Obama and progressivism to totalitarianism (view a screen shot of the index below):
- pp. 48-49 Gingrich quotes David Horowitz arguing that the great atrocities of the modern era, whether from Nazis or Communists, were committed by people who believe in a “future that would save mankind.” Gingrich uses Horowitz’s quote to draw a comparison to “the current leaders of the Democratic Party.”
- pp. 295-296 argues that “the Left” is pursuing an “international strategy to take away” Second Amendment rights to own firearms. Gingrich writes that if Hitler had not disarmed “Jews and other anti-Nazi groups,” then the “Holocaust would have been virtually impossible to implement.”
- pp. 268-269 says that “Marxism, Nazism, and Fascism” each “required the use of a powerful, centralized state authority” where “those who resisted were eliminated,” “religion was enemy number one,” and “religious texts” were replaced with “nationalist propaganda in schools.” Gingrich then writes that “there are many parallels between the anti-religious governments of the twentieth century and the anti-religious elite of the United States in the twenty-first.”
While Gingrich’s book is laced with these Nazi comparisons, he also rehashes other absurdities, like a defense of Palin’s “death panel” charge and an argument that there are actually too many regulations on offshore oil exploration. Gingrich “” who has repeatedly backed establishment Republican candidates like Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT) and Dede Scozzafava over tea party challengers “” seems to be trying to establish his credibility within the fringe base of the conservative movement by touting Nazi comparisons popularized by Glenn Beck and other hate radio personalities.
While Gingrich hopes that social and religious conservatives will forget that he left his dying wife to be with another woman, it is unlikely that Gingrich will be able to deceive tea parties with his Beck-like Nazi rhetoric.
This repost is by Lee Fang at Think Progress. What follows is an excerpt from another TP pieces.
On Fox News Sunday this past weekend, host Chris Wallace challenged Gingrich on that quote, asking if it was a “wildly over the top” comparison. Gingrich said it wasn’t:
WALLACE: You also write this, and let’s put it up on the screen. “The secular-socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did.” Mr. Speaker, respectfully, isn’t that wildly over the top?
GINGRICH: No, not if by America you mean the historic contract we’ve had which says your rights come from your creator, they’re unalienable, you’re allowed to pursue happiness. I mean, just listen to President Obama’s language.
On her CNN Headline News show last night, Joy Behar asked former GOP congresswoman Susan Molinari “” who served in Congress while Gingrich was speaker of the House “” if Gingrich was “losing his marbles” by making such comparisons. Molinari replied that Gingrich’s comments were “outrageous” and “crazy”:
BEHAR: Susan, when Bush was called a Nazi, the right wing went berserk on him. And yet, Gingrich just throws the word around as if it’s nothing. What is up with him? What is he, losing his marbles?
MOLINARI: This has always been “” let me distance myself from that remark first of all in all seriousness. To compare anything that is going on in this country to the atrocities of Nazi Germany in any way, shape or form is just crazy. And you know that Newt was so smart. He got the Republican majority back in a generation, contract with America. And then, you know, moved quickly into a government shutdown and complained about his seat on President Clinton’s plane.
This is Newt. He can be really smart sometimes and sometimes he can just say some absolutely outrageous things. I would be like to be in that corner of saying that is outrageous.
Watch it:
Later in the show, Molinari tried to change the subject, saying, “let’s just take Newt off the table because that’s just not even worth talking about.” “Let’s put him under the table,” replied Behar. “Right. Exactly. Thank you,” responded Molinari.
JR: The bottom line is that Gingrich’s extremist hate speech should take him out of the bounds of public and political discourse.
Related Post:
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Gingrich is an aging has-been politician who think riding the Tea-Party wave can get him one last shot at the big time.
Think Mickey Rourke in “The Wrestler” but without the dignity.
Gingrich’s hate-filled senility is surely a potentially valuable means of de-fanging the right of US politics ? Given his career and prominence in the GOP it gives a solid platform for any high profile democrat to put the linking of the Obama administration to genocidal regimes into its real perspective:
On the present trajectory, America will have lead responsibility for the greatest genocide by serial famines that the world has ever seen.- As the IPCC AR4 noted, some African nations are likely to lose 50% of their food production by 2020 – and the curve of climate destabilization is only just beginning by then. –
Given US prowess in itself developing the scientific case for action under the US National Academy of Science, there can be no remotely credible excuse of ignorance of the threat.
A clear case can be made that the GOP’s long corrupt opposition to any measure to control global warming is blatantly genocidal on a scale far greater than any maniac despot achieved in the last century.
The only question is whether there is any high profile democrat with the integrity to make this case as forcefully as it warrants ?
Regards,
Lewis
Could be that founders were saying go out there and get what you can get.
But in today not much land not already legally claimed and news is that the ocean waters don’t have as much fish as once was.
Good one, Lewis.
I don’t know where Newt got his reputation as some sort of thinker. He was always an airhead, and is really proving it now.
One thing that Gingrich does have going for him is populist appeal in calling for lower gasoline prices though obviously his backers want higher gasoline prices. As it happens, while there is still a lot of cheap oil in the ground, it probably is not going to be brought to the surface any faster than it is now and will likely be brought up more slowly since new discoveries of easy oil have not kept up with extraction. Thus, there is absolutely no way he could ever deliver lower gasoline prices with domestic drilling which all has high expenses. More domestic drilling simply firms up a floor price for oil since it assures that the marginal barrel is an expensive barrel (right now it is a cheap barrel held off the market by Saudi Arabia to manipulate the price of oil).
Because of the failure of discoveries of easy oil to keep up with production, a low oil price means less production over time. So, if it were possible to deliver low gasoline prices, a populist benefit, it would also mean lower greenhouse gas emissions from oil globally. A low oil price policy is congruent with cutting greenhouse gas emissions because of the nature of the oil supply.
It does not seem prudent then to cede the populist issue to someone who has got it wrong to begin with. No matter how much you might love a price on carbon, when it comes to oil, cutting its price is the most effective way to cut emissions globally. And, cutting its price seems to be the only way to avoid the most dire climate consequences since cheap renewable energy will lead to exploitation of oil shale and other huge carbon reservoirs if we don’t get off of oil based technology now. There is a very narrow window for that timing. Nanosolar or some other company will be producing PV at under $0.25/Watt within the decade if not within the next five years. That would be perfect for Shell’s in situ oil shale oil production process, for example, at current oil prices. To shut the door on that, we need oil to be too cheap to support investment in such a scheme. Lowering oil prices by lowering consumption gets us to the point where we no longer need oil in the most beneficial manner possible I think.
Everybody the Nut Brigade doesn’t like is Hitler & Stalin, including Rachel Carson and that mild mannered Darwin, along with climatologists of course.
Say what?
Kelly Cobiella reports that a CBS News team was threatened with arrest by Coast Guard officials in the Gulf of Mexico who said they were acting under the authority of British Petroleum.
Err, ahh, hmmm.
Anything going on in the climate policy arena?
“A clear case can be made that the GOP’s long corrupt opposition to any measure to control global warming is blatantly genocidal on a scale far greater than any maniac despot achieved in the last century.”
If we’re going to make these hypothetical comparisons then isn’t our inadequate messaging akin to watching someone, who thinks they’re doing the right thing, add poison to a communities drinking water while standing still and whispering “I think that’s not a good idea.” If that case went to court we would likely be found guilty of some sort of wrong-doing.
Although I do agree that this anti-scientific behavior is nothing less than aiding genocide. But more like being a nazi-prison guard: kill or be killed.
Is there any additional information on the incident mentioned by Cervantes (#5)? I’ve heard that from two other sources, but don’t have much more to go on. At first blush it sounds totally unacceptable and a blatant abuse of BP authority (who does the Coast Guard work for?). But I’m looking for some context….was there a safety issue? Was there some legitimate reason for the Coast Guard to threaten arrest? Or is something seriously wrong here?
Gingrich is in it for the money. Period.
Gingrich has historically engaged in inflammatory hate speech. The man is completely beyond the pale. He uses carefully chosen language and analogies that are designed to instill fear and foment hate. He is unable to engage in any serious discussion of the policies that he finds objectionable without resorting to this sore of rhetoric.
It isn’t just Newt. This comes from a member of the party of Limbaugh where if you don’t agree with Limbaugh you are not a true Republican. At the moment they seem very totalitarian but I would not compare any of them, including Beck, to Hitler, Stalin, or Mao. I did see some actual neo-Nazi’s at some of the anti-Obama / anti-health care rallies. I’m not name-calling; I’m just saying that the best place to have a Nazi sighting would be at one of the fringe conservative rallies.
Unfortunately, it seems that lately this sort of hate speech, equating your opponent to Hitler or Stalin, DOES pass for political discourse with this crowd.
Let’s be clear who is more like Hitler.
1. Republicans and Nazis both favor rule by corporations. Democrats favor rule by all of the people.
2. Compare the holocaust to what Mother Nature has done in previous climate changes: Nature has killed entire species, entire genuses, entire families of genuses, entire classes, and an entire phylum. That was just on this planet, without batting an eyelash. Just compare the Holocaust to the Great Death, the Permian-Triassic extinction event of 251 Million years ago.
Reference: Climate Threat to the Planet:* Implications for Energy Policy and Intergenerational Justice by Jim Hansen, December 17, 2008, Bjerknes Lecture, American Geophysical Union San Francisco, California; Page 22: If we burn all or almost all of the fossil fuels, Earth will have a runaway greenhouse event and Earth would become another Venus. Mother Nature has killed entire planets, Mars and Venus, and would kill the Earth with not a second thought. Oh yes, Earth would still be here as a hot dead rock, just like Venus.
We had better not provoke Mother Nature. Mother Nature’s #1 weapon is famine. Shifting wind and rain in the wrong place isn’t for our amusement. It causes droughts and floods. Droughts and floods cause difficulties for agriculture. For example, from local TV news the morning of May 18, 2010: A Mercer County farmer planted corn this spring. It washed away. He planted again. It washed away again and his fields are under water now. If it dries out soon enough, he will plant a third time. Eventually, he will run out of money to buy seed.
I never heard of having to plant the same field 3 times to get 1 crop before. This is the third year in a row of too much rain here. This has been the corn belt for more than a century, but now it seems to be a belt for something else.