Newt's Cynicism and Lies

Pay attention, voters !!! Evidence is fast piling up of Newt's cynical lying and/or his cluelessness. I personally think it's a unique combination of the two: Sometimes Newt is just outright making up stuff and saying what he knows will excite his gullible crowd. At other times, he really doesn't know but has convinced himself at the moment that he does know and he does believe what he's saying.

A couple of examples:

1. The AJC's fact-check column gave him a "pants on fire" false rating for his claim about the food stamps program. He's right that more people are on the program than ever (isn't that what happens when people lose their jobs and their homes and have no money?). But he is dead wrong, and he's got to be cynically lying, when he says that people are given credit cards instead of stamps now and that some people redeem them for cash and take trips to Hawaii.

The truth is that instead of stamps or coupons, the program now issues a special debit card that can only be used for very specific food items, can't be used in restaurants, can't be used to buy alcohol, or even certain luxury foods. And no way can they get cash or go to Hawaii. That's just plain a lie. And Gingrich either knows it -- or he is just cynically repeating some outrageous claim from somebody's wild imagination.

2. Rachel Maddow skewered him for his retort to Nancy Pelosi in which he claimed that the sanctioning of him by the Ethics Committee back in 1995 was politically motivated. Just look at the House vote count that sanctioned him with a $300,000 fine: 395 to 28.

To be perfectly clear: 196 House Republicans voted to sanction Newt.

And this week conservative Rep. Peter King (R-NY) said that Gingrich is too erratic, too self-centered, and that he "does not have the discipline, does not have the capacity to control himself. . . . [If he is elected] the country and Congress would be going through one crisis after another."

This is a member of his own party who served under him when he was Speaker of the House. From the other side, Paul Begala wrote in Newsweek: "When I look at the economy, I think Obama can't win. When I look at the Republican field, I think Obama can't lose."

Newt is betting that the anti-Washington base he is pandering to won't be listening to either of these Washington insiders, however.

Just for safe measure, Newt made headlines of his own that swamped any such criticism by telling the Republican Jewish Coalition that he would appoint John Bolton as his Secretary of State. Now that is a headline grabber. And it did.

Ralph

PS: Liberal blogger Jason Linkins has perhaps the best, succinct words to describe Newt: "gaseous, grandiose, and divisive."