The Dark Eye Of Newt

I’d really planned to do something else besides post on Newt Gingrich again, especially since my “A” list “betters” have been all over the story of Gingrich saying that we may need "a different set of rules" to fight terrorism, a set that might not include the free speech we currently, sometimes, enjoy (as noted by Harry Shearer on The Huffington Post today), with the amazing irony that Gingrich spoke these words at a New Hampshire banquet honoring free speech advocates (Newt also said, in essence, that we should be prepared to sacrifice an American city in the process, with Shearer saying that we already did that in the case of New Orleans – that’s a bit of a stretch, but Shearer’s point is well taken).

The problems I and others have with Gingrich are legion, and there’s no point in rehashing them all here. However, I want to take a good observation from SadlyNo and cited by Atrios today pertaining to Glenn Reynolds and work with that; namely, that deep down, Repugs like Gingrich and his acolytes (which, for all intents and purposes, is the rest of the Republican Party and their media subsidiary, whether they want to admit it or not, and I don’t mean that to praise Gingrich) harbor these apocalyptic fantasies of doom in which anything like laws, regulations and civil order has been totally smashed, and all that prevents total anarchy is a lone white, Anglo Saxon-descended Republican male with a prayer book and at least one gun (the bigger with the greatest capability to fire off lots of rounds as quickly as possible, the better).

I mean, hey, I watched “The Road Warrior” and “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” too, and they were good movies. But that’s my point…they were movies.

So, since Newt has decided that he wants to be the Great White Father Protector Of Us All in 2008, I thought it best to do some more checking on The Once And Future King In His Imagination And Consummate Egotism.

Well, it would stand to reason that a man harboring such delusions of grandeur would have his own domain, and indeed he does, and I journeyed to this font of wisdom to read some of what “The Great Man” has to say. I found, among other things, a provocative post boldly titled, “Real Change Requires Real Change.”

The patriotic heart just stirs, doesn’t it?

I also found this excerpt, which actually makes some sense…

The collapse of math and science education in the United States and the relative decline of investment in basic research is an enormous strategic threat to American national security. This is a strategically disappearing advantage. There is a grave danger that the United States will find itself collapsing in scientific and technological capabilities in our lifetime. In fact, the 14 bipartisan members of the Hart-Rudman Commission on national security unanimously agreed that the failure of math and science education is a greater threat than any conceivable conventional war in the next 25 years. The Commission went on to assert that only a nuclear or biological weapon going off in an American city was a greater threat.

(Oh, I almost forgot; Gingrich also states that the United States “is in greater danger today than at any time since 1980 when Jimmy Carter was president.” I guess, being a chickenhawk, Gingrich doesn’t know that Carter has the second-longest record of military service of any president between 1950 and 2000 behind only Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was head of all Allied forces in World War II.)

I think Newt, though, is actually onto something by focusing on “the relative decline in basic research” in this country compared to our advances during and after the second World War. The problem is that the Republican Party composed primarily of people he recruited, supported and promoted in the U.S. House has greatly exacerbated this shortcoming.

This link takes you to a document that outlines spending plans for research and development proposed in August 2000 for the fiscal year 2001 budget. Please keep in mind the context in which this document was written; President Clinton was calling for funding increases and the Republican congress (particularly the House) was strictly adhering to budgetary ceilings and not giving Clinton what he wanted, to the point where Clinton was threatening to veto the budget (that kind of restraint would be laudable now, but I would argue back then that there was more leeway because of the budget surpluses which were envisioned into the future…ugh).

I think this excerpt is particularly important (and yes, I know Gingrich himself was gone from Congress by this time)…

The House would be far less generous to nondefense R&D than the Senate, and would cut R&D funding for many agencies. Although the House joined with the Senate in agreeing to substantial increases for DOD and NIH, nondefense R&D excluding NIH would decline 1.3 percent in the House appropriations bills. Although the House would award a slight 3.9 percent increase to NSF R&D to $3.0 billion, this would be far short of the nearly 20 percent increase requested by the President. The House would cut NASA R&D by 1.0 percent, mostly because it would eliminate the Reusable Launch Vehicle program. Commerce R&D would fall by nearly a quarter because the House would eliminate the Advanced Technology Program and slash NOAA R&D. USDA R&D would decline 2.0 percent because the House would prevent a mandatory competitive grants program from spending any money in FY 2001 and would cut other competitive research grants, while boosting funding for congressionally designated research projects. While DOE R&D would edge up slightly by 0.7 percent, the House would balance increases for DOE’s defense R&D activities with sharp cuts in nondefense energy-related R&D activities and stagnant funding for science activities.

So Gingrich is now calling for investment in technology and R&D as part of his “let-them-come-to-me-because-I’m-so-great-that-I-don’t-have-to-campaign-for-President” campaign?

I found a great post on The Daily Kos from diarist DarkSyde who had what I thought were important words on this subject:

Wise science policy, combined with innovation, Western capitalism, and research gets us to the moon and eradicates polio or small pox. Right-wing pseudoscientific drivel fueled by short-sighted corporate greed, institutional cronyism, and willful ignorance gets us a polluted, toasty planet spiraling down the environmental drain, an economy beholden to the tender mercies of Middle East Petro Tyrants, and maybe another boner pill -- if we're lucky.

While either path can produce jobs and thus boost the economy, one clearly raises our quality of life and leads to a bright, long term future, and one does not. You can pretty much guess which road we've been racing down at break neck speed these last six years ...

Newt, here’s what you can do if you want to have a prayer of generating any kind of positive energy for your campaign: for starters, you and Wired Magazine can apologize to Al Gore (you on behalf of your party, for the words of Trent Lott, Dick Armey and others) for helping to propagate the lie that Gore said he invented the Internet (a lie which I don’t think will ever be completely removed from our dialogue, unfortunately), since Gore is partly responsible for actual technological innovation in this country during the ‘90s which your party has opposed and you profess to encourage now.

And the next time you get the urge to prognosticate about the threats faced by this country, please do us all a favor and shut your yap instead.