Newt Gingrich took a principled stand Friday: "I am not for amnesty for anyone. I am not for a path to citizenship for anybody who got here illegally.”
This, of course, is a slap in the face to the Newt Gingrich who famously said earlier this week that illegal immigrants who came to the US 25 years ago, are home owners, have a couple of kids, a couple of grand kids, go to church and who hate liberals should not be deported.
The beauty of Newt Gingrich is that if you hear a position of his that you think is ludicrous, all you have to do is wait a few days and he will take another position that is diametrically opposed to it. Newt’s policy shape-shifting is categorically different from Romney’s. Whereas Romney takes a poll and then rejects his previously firmly held belief to take a new, much more conservative position in order to pander to an extreme right-wing constituency, Gingrich’s policy waffles are very different. With Gingrich, it’s not so much pandering. Gingrich really does seem to believe that he is the greatest philosopher king in the history of the world. Gingrich loves the sound of his own voice, especially when he uses words like “frankly,” “historically” and when he proclaims that everyone else thinks “tactically” whereas he alone is able to think “strategically.”
Newt gives off the sense that when he utters an opinion, the mere fact that he utters it makes it profound and inherently correct, even if it directly contradicts what he said the previous week, day, or minute. Mitt is under no such illusion.
The fascinating thing about Newt is that there was a time when his headline-making sound bites were for saying things that were so wildly demagogic it made your teeth hurt, i.e. back in 1994 when he proclaimed that Susan Smith had killed her kids because liberals had controlled congress for 40 years (smith had been abused by her Republican, Christian Coalition-leading father).
Nowadays, Newt gets into trouble for saying things that are demonstrably true, i.e. Paul Ryan’s budget plan is “Right-wing Social Engineering” and his bit about not deporting immigrants who have been here for 25 years and are entrenched, productive members of society. Newt’s transformation is a perfect reflection of the change into the Republican Party over the last 20 years. The Party has moved so far to the right in recent years that GOP politicians who were once on the outside right wing fringes of the GOP are now lambasted as being “liberals” for occasionally dipping their toes into the fact-based world of reality.
Also posted at www.Dailynational.com