Newt's dangerous radicalism

In Thursday night's debate, Newt Gingrich again brought up his plan to assault the courts that he deems "anti-American." He would subpoena and impeach judges and abolish courts for controversial decisions that he doesn't like. He received vigorous applause from the audience when he denounced the judiciary as "grotesquely dictatorial."

Only Ron Paul took issue with that, calling it "an affront to the separation of powers" and warning against letting the judicial system become a political football for partisan elected officials.

So is this just more of Newt's bombastic ideas? Not at all. We now learn that last year, through one of his non-profit foundations, Newt contributed $300,000 as start-up money to help build the movement that eventually resulted in recall of three of the judges in Iowa who voted to legalize gay marriage. It not only punished judges for a sound legal decision, but it politicized a judicial appointment system that was designed specifically to be based on merit and not politics.

Iowa has an admirable system: an independent panel selects potential judges based on merit, from which the governor makes his appointments. Then after a new judge has been in office for a specified period of time, there is a "retention vote" whereby a judge can be removed from office. It is intended to be used and, until this time, has been used, only to remove judges for corruption or malfeasance.

But in 2010, an organized effort by right-wing organizations -- sparked by Newt's help and including the hateful NOM --was successful in removing three courageous judges for a single decision that was unpopular enough with a conservative voting public. And they have vowed to get rid of the fourth judge next year when his retention vote comes up.

This is a serious erosion of our democratic government. Newt is a dangerous, totally unprincipled man. Don't let his facade of intelligence and plethora of knowledge fool you. The man is dangerous because he sounds so informed and so convincing.

Today over lunch a friend quoted what has got to be the most on-target description of Newt.

He's like a blender with the top off.

I think that needs qualifying though. It would not be just a mess of a fruit smoothy to be cleaned up. It's more like the blender is spewing forth toxic and corrosive chemicals that would cause great harm.

Ralph