Joan Walsh: Gingrich didn't call Obama a "strapping young buck," but ...

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Sunday, May 15, 2011 12:16 ET

Joan Walsh

Newt Gingrich and "the food stamp president"

He didn't call Obama a "strapping young buck," but his slur is coded racism (and not very Catholic) just the same

http://www.salon.com/news/newt_gingrich/index.html?story=/opinion/walsh/politics/2011/05/15/gingrich_food_stamp_president



Newt Gingrich doubled down on his clever new slur against President Obama as "the food stamp president." He tried the line in a Friday speech to the Georgia Republican convention, and he used it again on "Meet the Press Sunday." It's a short hop from Gingrich's slur to Ronald Reagan's attacks on "strapping young bucks" buying "T-bone steaks" with food stamps. Blaming our first black president for the sharp rise in food-stamp reliance (which resulted from the economic crash that happened on the watch of our most recent white president) is just the latest version of Rush Limbaugh suggesting that Obama's social policy amounts to "reparations" for black people.

But when host David Gregory suggested the term had racial overtones, Gingrich replied "That's bizarre," and added, "I have never said anything about President Obama which is racist." That's not quite as extreme or silly as Donald Trump declaring "I am the least racist person there is," but it's up there. He also told Georgia Republicans Friday that 2012 will be the most momentous election "since 1860," which happens to be the year we elected the anti-slavery Abraham Lincoln president, and he suggested the U.S. bring back a "voting standard" that requires voters to prove they know American history -- which sounds a lot like the "poll tests" outlawed by the Voting Rights Act.

Just last week Gingrich said Obama "knows how to get the whole country to resemble Detroit," which just happens to be home to many black people. And last year Gingrich accused Obama of "Kenyan anti-colonialist behavior" that made him "outside our comprehension" as Americans, spreading Dinesh D'Souza's idiocy that Obama inherited angry African anti-colonialism from the Kenyan father he never knew. “This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president,” Gingrich told the National Review Online last year.

Republicans have done well with their quest to stigmatize social welfare programs as handouts to the undeserving, and to pretend that most of the undeserving are black people. But it may not be working as well today. Paul Ryan's class-war budget is going down in flames, largely because seniors are up in arms over Ryan's attacks on Medicare. Ryan and his GOP allies tried to be clever, making sure his plans to phase out Medicare wouldn't apply to today's seniors, who happen to be disproportionately white and disproportionately Republican. But seniors are seeing through the ruse, telling Ryan and the GOP that they want to protect Medicare for their children, too. Even Gingrich is now backing away from the Ryan budget, telling Gregory it's too "radical" and "too big a jump." A jump off a political cliff for Republicans, that is.

[izquierdista]

1. Gabby Johnson writing your speeches again, Newt?

If only the church bells would clang out ALL of Newt's babbling.....

[blue neen]

2. Newt Gingrich would be the "lewd tramp president", because that is exactly what he is.

Rude, crude, socially unacceptable, and now too old to qualify (age-wise at least) as a man whore.

[progressoid]

3. Not very Catholic?

Oh, I'm not so sure. I think it's quite Catholic depending on what flavor of Catholic we're talking about.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

4. Well, if we're talking about me... since I am a Catholic... it's not very Catholic.

Then again, I happen to be an anomaly...I participate in organized religion even though I'm a bigger critic of it than many who do not.

Go figure, eh?

[progressoid]

6. I was thinking of the Scalia variety.

I can't imagine the hateful things swimming around in his skull.

[Angry Dragon]

5. he reminds me of a feral boar

[Randy_P]

7. Dupe thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x602829

[Amerigo Vespucci]

10. Ask me if I give a rat's ass.

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[whathehell]

8. Newt wants a standard "that requires voters to prove they know American History"?

Maybe he's just trying to knock out

Michelle Bachmann in the primaries.:rofl:

[whathehell]

9. He is so vile and underhanded....

:puke:

[StopTheNeoCons]

11. So, it is untrue that Newt Gingrich called Obama a strapping young buck?

So, it is untrue that Newt Gingrich called Obama a strapping young buck?

[Lil Missy]

13. I know a lot of whites who wouldn't pass a poll test. Or a basic civics test.

[GeorgeGist]

14. Newt hates people. Period.