Needlenose

Gingrich has been gradually creeping out from the shadows into the limelight since his fall from grace when leading the impeachment crusade against the very popular Bill Clinton.  But the Gingrich of the 90s seems relatively tame compared to the teabaggers and birthers of today – and even compared to Gingrich 2010!

In a recent speech to the reactionary American Enterprise Institute, Gingrich seems to have planted one foot firmly amidst the teabagger camp with his calls to forbid the so-called Ground Zero Mosque (which is neither a Mosque nor at Ground Zero), and the other solidly planted in the Wolfowitz/NeoConArtist era of never-ending war on Radical Islam:

“I believe [Bush] was right but in fact could not operationalize what he said. That is, there was an Axis of Evil, Iran, Iraq, North Korea. Well we’re one out of three. And people ought to think about that. If Bush was right in January of 2002 — and by the way virtually the entire Congress gave him a standing ovation when he said it — then why is it that the other two parts of the Axis of Evil are still visibly, cheerfully making nuclear weapons? And it’s because we’ve stood at brink, looked over and thought, “Too big a problem.”

“If Franklin Roosevelt had done that in ‘41, either the Japanese or the Germans would have won,” Gingrich said. The U.S. has to “over-match the problem,” he said, adding, “That’s what Americans are all about.”

I wonder if he got the memo that various Repug leaders were starting to bail on Shrubya’s Afghanistan Folly?  Palin/Gringrich in 2012 – the worst of 3 eras of Repug misleadership!  It would be kinda luck the Germans in WWII – invading a bunch of weak countries (Iran, N. Korea), then going crazy and attacking Russia from Palin’s house…I don’t even want to think about the hell they’d create.

David Dayen at Firedoglake wrote this morning about how Sen. Richard Shelby’s attempt to block 70 Obama administration nominees over a couple of earmarks “does amount to what you would call a ‘teachable moment’ about the dysfunctional Senate.”

In his initial reaction overnight, Josh Marshall went a bit further, noting that Shelby’s hostage-taking attempt showed “gallons more audacity than Obama ever could have hoped for”:

… I wonder if this story might not end up amounting to much more than the sum of its parts because it brings together three or four of the issues roiling American politics today in a bundle of smack-you-in-the-face arrogance that’s too much to ignore.

For Republicans and the Tea Party set you’ve got pork-barrel spending and earmarks… for Democrats, there’s the outrage at archaic Senate obstructionism.

Perhaps more important, it crystallizes the essential pettiness and hubris of the Republican in such a vivid way that even Democrats should be able to sell the image of GOP selfishness to a generally inattentive public.

It’s happened before, back in 1995 when Newt Gingrich led the newly Republican-controlled Congress in forcing a shutdown of the federal government, trying to force President Clinton to capitulate on budget issues.  Thanks to an inopportune remark by Gingrich about a personal snub he had received from Clinton, the White House successfully embarrassed the GOP into ending the standoff.

That Shelby would try such a stunt barely a couple of weeks after the Republicans snagged their coveted 41st Senate seat shows that his party hasn’t outgrown Gingrich’s penchant for overreach.   But, as D-Day also wrote today, President Obama and the Democratic leadership can’t let themselves be even less willing to stand up for their own interests than the famed triangulator, Clinton.

Perhaps Obama should make a high-profile visit to various GOP senators’ home states, asking locals if they’re as fond of Shelby’s earmarks as Massachusetts voters were of Ben Nelson’s “Cornhusker kickback.”  Or maybe there’s a better attention-getting maneuver.

But hell, they need to do something.  Don’t let this teachable moment pass.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

Now that the dust has settled over the bad financial waves that Emperor Shrubya vainly tried to whip back (at least until after the election), more information is now filtering out about the architects of the junk mortgage disaster – starting with the Freddie Mac’s “enablers.”

As you might presume, Freddie’s ‘bad government’ partners include some of the usual suspects, like Newt Gingrich, who pulled in $300,000 to lobby his good buddies in Congress and the misAdministration about “the benefits of the Freddie Mac business model” – i.e. against moves to break up Freddie Mac’s business and spread it among other companies such as commercial banks.

But the Grinchster wasn’t alone – here is the current Repug list of shameful enablers:

•Sen. Alfonse D’Amato of New York, at Park Strategies, $240,000
•Rep. Vin Weber of Minnesota, at Clark and Weinstock, $360,297
•Rep. Susan Molinari of New York, at Washington Group, $300,062
•Susan Hirschmann at Williams and Jensen, former chief of staff to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, $240,790
•Viet Dinh, $300K

Just don’t expect any of these ‘Grinches’ to return any of the misbegotten dough.