And then Jon and Stephen together killed Newt's 2012 chances.
Video and transcript below the fold.
For the last 18 or so months, Barack Obama has been the President; Democrats have controlled both houses of Congress. Purely by coincidence, that is the exact same amount of time that Republicans have expressed a newfound concern for our nation's financial stability.
REP. JEB HENSARLING, R-TX (6/9/2010): ... spending is out of control ...
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL, R-KY (7/19/2009): ... we're going to have a deficit this year, $1.8 trillion dollars ...
REP. ERIC CANTOR, R-VA (11/4/2009): ... people are aghast ...
REP. JOHN BOEHNER, R-OH (4/19/2009): ... they're scared to death about the future for their kids and their grandkids ...
NEWT GINGRICH (7/1/2010): ... genuinely worried about their children and grandchildren being crushed ...
The deficit wants to skullfuck your mother!! It wants to eat your children... after it shows your wife a level physical passion you've never been able to provide. It's a powerful deficit, is what I'm saying.
Well there is good news for concerned Republicans. Your prayers to the God of Uncrushed Children have been answered.
FAREED ZAKARIA (8/1/2010): You see, George Bush's massive tax cuts are the single largest chunk of our structural budget deficit. ... Were the tax cuts to expire, the budget deficit would instantly shrink by about 30%, or more than $300 billion dollars.
That 3-D Animatronic version of Fareed Zakaria is right. Handsome. Letting the Bush tax cuts expire shrinks the deficit by 30%, some say 25%. As luck would have it, the Bush tax cuts are scheduled to expire at the end of 2010, the very year Republicans have expressed concern about deficit reduction! I love it when a plan comes together.
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, R-AZ (8/4/2010): Let's extend the tax cuts, let's extend them.
REP. PAUL RYAN, R-WI (7/30/2010): Let's just go with Kent Conrad's plan, and extend these tax cuts for two years.
REP. JOHN BOEHNER, R-OH (8/8/2010): I am not for raising taxes on the American people.
REP. ERIC CANTOR, R-VA (8/6/2010): We cannot allow for even talk of raising taxes right now.
Oh my God! Do they not realize that the tax cuts strengthen the deficit monster that's going to eat our babies? How exactly can you be for deficit reduction, and extending tax cuts? How do those two diametrically opposed thoughts exist in the same party platform?
SARAH PALIN (8/1/2010): They know that we have to extend the Bush tax cuts; they have to repeal the budget-busting bills like Obamacare...
Oh my God! She's got them existing in the same sentence!
(In Kennedy voice) And I say to you, Sarah Palin, that a sentence divided against itself cannot stand: comma, period, exclamation point.
Why did I...? Why Lincoln's words are in Kennedy's mouth.... (shrugs) Not really sure why that happened. I guess it's better than doing it as Jackie Mason.
How can you argue that? It's... it's just... (tries to stroke beard) my thinking beard is gone!
Well, they must have an explanation for this.
8/8/2010:
DAVID GREGORY: You're saying, extend the tax cuts that aren't paid for, and cut the deficit.
REP. MIKE PENCE (R-IN): I think it's apples and oranges.
Yes, yes, in the sense that for no discernible reason, you love apples, and think oranges are ruining the country. Take another crack at this. Why are they different?
PENCE: They talk about tax cuts the same way they talk about spending increases, as though the government owned all of the money. They say, "are they paid for". Well, I think deciding on a government spending increase is very different on whether or not we allow the American people to keep more of their hard-earned tax dollars.
So what you're saying is money the government gets is very different than money the government spends. OK. But you're for deficit reduction. And I believe the deficit's opinion on that issue can best be summed up with this.
HENRY HILL (GoodFellas): Business bad? Fuck you, pay me. Oh, you had a fire? Fuck you, pay me. The place got hit by lightning, huh? Fuck you, pay me.
Deficit doesn't care where it comes from. Ultimately, it boils down to, in Mike Pence's opinion, apples and oranges. And speaking of oranges, what does House Minority Leader and retired Syracuse mascot John Boehner think is the answer?
JOHN BOEHNER (8/8/2010): The only way we're going to get our economy going again, and solve our budget problems, is to get the economy moving.
Wha...? The only way to get our economy going, is to get it moving? That is either the most profound or most retarded statement I've ever heard. You know what? Actually, no, wait, wait. In fact, it's the most profoundly retarded statement I've ever heard. That is the kind of statement that you think will be followed by the phrase, "in bed".
By the way, didn't that cat use to be orange? Now he's like a different brownish.... Either he's getting ready to play an Indian in a 1950s Western... or John Boehner, and I believe this may be the case, is not human, but actually made entirely of cured meats. I'm saying he is, perhaps, jerky.
So lack of specificity is just one part of the Republican economic plan, but to find the creamy caramel nougat-y center, you must find the philosophical underpinnings of the Republican economic plan. For that, we go to one of the brains of the operation.
NEWT GINGRICH (8/3/2010): The job-killing nature of the Obama-Reid-Pelosi team, is, in fact, the first big challenge we're faced with as a country. ... Part of it's because they don't know, and part of it is because, frankly, they're socialists and they don't care.
Wow. So the plan to return the tax rate for any household making over $250,000 a year in 2010 to what they were under President Clinton, and still lower than almost every year under Ronald Reagan, is an active socialist plot to ruin the economy. And we all know, there's only one way to counter a socialist plot.
GINGRICH: Do you want to create jobs as rapidly as China? The Chinese pay zero capital gains tax. If we had zero capital gains tax in the United States, we'd be building factories, founding companies, creating jobs. We'd be dramatically better off.
So that's the Republican plan. To fight socialism, we must become communists.
Send this clip along to any of your Republican or conservative friends who've been making hay about the deficit, and tell them, "I laugh in your general direction".
Wow. Colbert metaphorically dunked Gingrich's head in the toilet there, and then flushed. You really have to see the entire clip. I may write it up for a weekend diary if I have the time.