A Fight Gingrich Has Been Spoiling to Have
Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney this week picked a fight with President Obama that is potentially divisive in the extreme sense of the word, the kind that surfaces prejudices and resentments and therefore promises, from a strategic standpoint, to be terrifically effective in driving otherwise complacent voters to the polls. And there was just no way that Newt Gingrich, the father of modern us-versus-them politics, was going to sit out a conversation like that.
So there was the former GOP House speaker on Wednesday, dog whistle in hand, holding a conference call with journalists to discuss how the "radical" president was in the process of secretly trying to undo the work mandate of the 1996 welfare reform law as part of a liberal plot to pad the welfare rolls. The call was sanctioned by the Romney campaign, which touted some of his remarks in a press release.
Romney, and now Gingrich, allege that the Obama administration is in the process of waiving the work requirements in the law to make it far easier for recipients to collect benefits without working, actively looking for a job or attending job training classes. Why would Obama want to make so seemingly counterproductive a change to current work-for-welfare policy, which polls show to be popular with Americans?
"I think on the hard left, there is an unending desire to create a dependent America," Gingrich explained. "There is a deep repudiation of the middle class work ethic, and there is a sense of noblesse oblige to take care of the poor by giving them money. ... It's not just that Obama's a radical, but the people he appoints are even more radical, and I don't think they thought it would be a big deal. I think they thought they were being very clever. They thought that this wouldn't be noticed by anybody. They used the language of the right to cover up a reform of the left and all of a sudden it blew up on them."
So there was the former GOP House speaker on Wednesday, dog whistle in hand, holding a conference call with journalists to discuss how the "radical" president was in the process of secretly trying to undo the work mandate of the 1996 welfare reform law as part of a liberal plot to pad the welfare rolls. The call was sanctioned by the Romney campaign, which touted some of his remarks in a press release.
Romney, and now Gingrich, allege that the Obama administration is in the process of waiving the work requirements in the law to make it far easier for recipients to collect benefits without working, actively looking for a job or attending job training classes. Why would Obama want to make so seemingly counterproductive a change to current work-for-welfare policy, which polls show to be popular with Americans?
"I think on the hard left, there is an unending desire to create a dependent America," Gingrich explained. "There is a deep repudiation of the middle class work ethic, and there is a sense of noblesse oblige to take care of the poor by giving them money. ... It's not just that Obama's a radical, but the people he appoints are even more radical, and I don't think they thought it would be a big deal. I think they thought they were being very clever. They thought that this wouldn't be noticed by anybody. They used the language of the right to cover up a reform of the left and all of a sudden it blew up on them."
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