In the keynote address at the 2009 Republican Senate-House Dinner, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich stressed that the GOP needed to get back to "first principles" but that party needed "to be inclusive." This from a man who earlier over the weekend argued that nation was beset by "paganism" and who decried the passage of gay marriage in Iowa as "outrageously wrong". Irony seems to be lost on today's GOP leadership.
An overview from Fox News:
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Monday urged some 2,000 Republican loyalists to stand up for the party's principles but to be inclusive as the party tries to retake the majority."I am happy that Dick Cheney is a Republican," Gingrich said at the annual Senate-House fundraising dinner. "I am also happy that Colin Powell is a Republican."
Cheney, the former vice president under President George W. Bush, and Powell, who was Bush's secretary of state, have feuded recently over the approach of the party, with Powell calling for more moderation and Cheney arguing against that.
"A majority Republican party will have lots of debates within the party," Gingrich, the former Georgia congressman, said. "That is the nature of majority parties."
Standing in as the party's de facto leader, Gingrich was filling a speaking role that Bush held in recent years and that was initially offered to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican nominee for vice president, this year. He headlined a series of speakers who gave the crowd a blistering review of President Barack Obama and Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill.
Despite the rallying cry, the Republican faithful still weren't opening their wallets as they have in recent past. The event took in a relatively small fundraising haul of $14.5 million, the lowest total in at least five years. Last year, it raised $21.5 million, compared with $15.4 million in 2007 and $27 million in 2006.
Committee officials attributed the drop partly to the struggling economy and pointed out that when Bush headlined, he gave the dinner a bigger draw for donations.
The de facto leader of the party for the month of June (is the GOP on a rotating leader of the month plan? Rush, Cheney and now Newt?) went to explain that "the great difference between Reagan's rhetorical skills and President Obama's rhetorical skills are that Reagan used his rhetorical skills to shine light on truths and facts, while Obama uses his to rhetorical skills to hide" from those things. Mr. Gingrich emphasized Republicans should stick to three key principles: strengthening the American civilization, strengthening the nation and its security, and building an economy that has the best jobs in the world.
I'm going to guess that by "strengthening the American civilization," the former Speaker means that he wants us all to rediscover God. In an April 2009 interview with Christianity Today, Mr. Gingrich noted that religious liberty was "the heart of America's system" while lamenting that the "Democratic Party has been the active instrument of breaking down traditional marriage, it's been the active instrument of a pro-abortion movement, it's been the active instrument for creating a more secular America." I would have thought that religious liberty might have included freedom from religion but apparently not.
I'm guessing that by "best jobs," the former Speaker means that he wants us all to work at Wal-Mart because since 1980 the Bentonville-based retailer has been the nation's largest creator of jobs. Never mind that those jobs pay below average wages and provide few if any benefits. On the Republican's watch, the blue-collar unionization rate fell from 43.1 percent in 1978 to 19.2 percent in 2005. That was commiserate with our decline in manufacturing. There are now fewer high paying manufacturing jobs in the United States than there were in 1950 even though the country's population is much larger. Thanks to Republican policies, we have replaced high-paying manufacturing job with low-paying service jobs while enhancing corporate profits. A win for the few of them and a loss for most of us.
Mr. Gingrich went on to say that he thought the GOP's "goal should be to reach out to the American people in every possible way, to make sure that John Boehner becomes the Speaker of the House January of 2011 and Mitch McConnell becomes the Senate majority leader and that this is a one-term presidency, in the Jimmy Carter tradition." By reaching out to the American people in every possible way, he must mean ream because thanks to the GOP's trickle down policies real wages have declined since 1980. Wages as a percentage of GDP is at its lowest since the late 1920s while corporate profits are at their highest.
Still it was the actor Jon Voight who stole the show at the 2009 Republican Senate-House Dinner. He began by saying that "Obama as a candidate portrayed himself as a moderate but turned out to be wildly radical." He then added that "everything Obama has recommended has turned out to be disastrous." No specifics were given.
Mr. Voight singled out House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, billionaire George Soros, and senior White House aide David Axelrod "and their ilk for the downfall of the country." He concluded that "Obama is a false prophet" and he only won by "deceiving and misleading America's youth into voting for the anti-America, we must bring an end to this false prophet Obama."
Delusional as ever is today's GOP.
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