Senator Ron Johnson Should Listen To Newt Gingrich

As I write this post today I am reminded that a federal judgeship for Wisconsin remains open, due to the antics of Republican Senator Ron Johnson.  He blocked two of President Obama’s nominations to fill the vacancy, insisting that both law professor Victoria Nourse and former state Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler were ‘too liberal’.  Granted, with the arrival of Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin in Washington there is now a consensus on three names for the bench, but let us recall the opening was announced in 2009 when Judge Shabazz retired.

During the time Johnson has served in Washington this judicial vacancy in Madison was declared to be an emergency by the administrator of federal courts.  No matter how one slices or dices politics this type of continual disagreement over allowing government to operate is nauseating.   And it needs to cease.

The same is true when it comes to the continual drumbeat from Republicans over the health care law.  There is seemingly never enough rhetoric from Republicans about repealing the law that will allow millions of Americans, many for the first time, to have coverage.

The latest bluster comes from congressional Republicans who insist they will not sign a needed continuing budget resolution unless it contains a clause to defund President Obama’s signature legislation.   Some are even threatening to shut down the government if they can not sink the funding.

I find it curious how so many Republicans who think only of the bottom line can not see the harm to our economic standing by such a foolish move.

Senator Johnson needs to do more than just howl against a health care plan that not only passed both houses of congress but also legal hurdles at the Supreme Court,    He needs to put forth a workable national health care idea as an alternative to the one he finds so politically expedient to punch away at.

Yesterday former House Speaker Newt Gingrich made some very pointed remarks about elected officials such as Johnson on this issue.

“I will bet you, for most of you, you go home in the next two weeks when your members of Congress are home, and you look them in the eye and you say, ‘What is your positive replacement for Obamacare?’ They will have zero answer,” Gingrich said.

Gingrich blamed the problem on Republican culture that rewards obstruction and negativity instead of innovation and “being positive.”

I am willing to listen to ideas Johnson might have, but up to now he seems more content to sing from the Tea Party hymn book than ante up with constructive dialogue.

Look Who Will Not Speak At Republican National Convention

Poor Michele Bachmann—and she was planning to be president.

Newt Gingrich hoped to get a coveted speaking slot at the Republican National Convention. Instead the Romney campaign will have him teach a series of workshops they have nicknamed Newt University. 

Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain are not scheduled to speak, either. They have decided to stage their own mini-convention of sorts — calling it a “unity rally” to dispel any doubts about their party loyalty — at a megachurch about 20 minutes outside town.

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas is trying to be a good sport about getting passed over for a speech. “That’s not my call to make,” he said in an interview this week

Newt Gingrich Says Elections Rigged “In Favor Of The Wealthy”

Say it isn’t so.

“It is very difficult in America today,” he told MSNBC’s Al Sharpton. “If you look at New York where Mayor Bloomberg spent an extraordinary amount of personal money to buy the mayor’s office for the third time. It is fairly hard to compete with a billionaire if — if they get to spend all the money they want and the middle-class candidate’s raising money in $2,500 units. So I think the current system is rigged, frankly, in favor of the wealthy.”

Here Is How Newt Gingrich Could Save Nation $40,000 A Day

Get the heck out of the GOP presidential race!

In financial terms, it costs taxpayers about $40,000 a day to pay for Mr. Gingrich’s Secret Service detail. His campaign was $4.3 million in debt as of the end of March, according to filings. There is also the intangible cost to Mr. Gingrich’s stature and the threat to party unity behind the inevitable nominee, Mitt Romney— whom, Mr. Gingrich says, he will support and campaign for.

Mr. Gingrich seems not to care in the least about the stature and party unity thing.

One of the quirky indulgences of modern campaigns is that candidates announce their intent to run for president on multiple occasions — essentially, stunts to milk media attention. They announce the formation of exploratory committees, announce that they intend to run, announce that they are actually running, etc.

Ever the innovator, Mr. Gingrich has applied that ritual to quitting. While he has had no realistic chance of overtaking Mr. Romney for several weeks, he maintained until recently that he would stay in the race all the way to the Republican National Convention.

But at some point, Mr. Gingrich started referring to the race in the past tense. He shed nearly all of his staff members. He pinned his hopes on Tuesday’s primary in tiny Delaware, saying that he would reassess if he lost — which he did, by almost 30 points.

One More Thing Before Newt Gingrich Leaves The GOP Race

Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

If Sinclair Lewis had lived long enough to write a novel about Newt Gingrich, he’d have cast him as a grifter. He’d move from town to town, living out of a suitcase and renting by the night. Gingrich would probably sell shares in The Fully Patented Ultra-Sonic Moon Shuttle, an expensive stake in a nonexistent rocket. “Reserve your ticket to the stars! Dip your toes in the Sea of Tranquility! Breathe the mineral rich air of the moon!” Of course, as soon as the jig is up, he’d be gone — leaving behind irate debtors, bankrupted old ladies and the odd angry husband or two.

A fantasy perhaps, but Newt has always lived on his wits, surviving only so long as people never spotted the con. The clues were there at the very beginning of his career, when he took a position teaching history at West Georgia College in 1970. Within a year, the 28-year-old applied to be college president. When that failed, he waited another year before trying to become head of the department. Again, he was rebuffed. After delivering a handful of lectures on “futurism” and “environmentalism,” this ambitious young man defected to the geography department

Newt Gingrich Claims FOX News Is Baised!

This is perhaps the richest story of the day.

Say this isn’t true! 

FOX News biased?

Newt Gingrich blasted Fox News, “accusing the cable network of having been in the tank for Mitt Romney from the beginning of the Republican presidential fight,” Scott Conroy reports.

Said Gingrich: “I think Fox has been for Romney all the way through. In our experience, Callista and I both believe CNN is less biased than Fox this year. We are more likely to get neutral coverage out of CNN than we are of Fox, and we’re more likely to get distortion out of Fox. That’s just a fact.”

‘Hottie’ Congressman Aaron Schock Used Campaign Funds For Workout DVD’s

Newt Gingrich should use some of his cash for the same program!

Republican Rep. Aaron Schock (Ill.), whose “musculature” and “body politic” garnered praise from Men’s Health in 2011, is being accused of using campaign funds to buy home workout DVDs.

Schock, 30, purchased the P90X “Extreme Home Fitness” DVDs during the 2010 election cycle and classified them as a “healthcare” expense.

The purchase was identified as campaign-related by mistake, and a later report was amended to reflect the error, Schock Chief of Staff Steve Shearer told The Associated Press.

He did not respond to requests for further comment by the time of this posting.

Melanie Sloan, of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), authored a report that claims his campaign did not change the total amount reimbursed to Schock on an amended form.

“Originally, P90X was listed as an itemization on what were included on the total. They took those out, left the total the same,” she told the AP.

“At some point, he realized the fitness tape was a problem and he amended the reports to take them out.”

Newt Gingrich Going For “Big-Choice Convention”

From Politico

Newt Gingrich has to know this idea is about as credible as his original desire of amassing the needed delegates during the primaries to be the nominee.

Newt Gingrich is cutting back his campaign schedule, will lay off about a third of his cash-strapped campaign’s full-time staff, and has forced out his manager as part of what aides are calling a “big-choice convention” strategy, communications director Joe DeSantis told POLITICO. Michael Krull, a former advance man and a college friend of Callista Gingrich’s who took over the campaign after a staff exodus in June, was replaced last weekend by Vince Haley, who has worked for Gingrich for nine years and currently is deputy campaign manager and policy director. “We’re focusing exclusively on what it’ll take to win what we’re going to be calling a big-choice convention in August,” DeSantis said in a phone interview Tuesday night.