Of all the presidential candidates at the Values Voters Summit, Newt Gingrich has so far topped out as the most radical. That's not easy to do, mind you, but I think "vowing to dismantle courts I don't like and to ignore the Supreme Court if I feel like it" counts as
pretty damn radical.
Appealing to conservatives wary of the court system, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on Friday not only called for reforming the judicial branch, but he also said he'd ignore the Supreme Court if he fundamentally disagreed with them. [...]
"I would instruct the national security offiicals in a Gingrich administration to ignore the Supreme Court on issues of national security," he said, citing actions President Franklin Roosevelt took against German "saboteurs."
Just as President Abraham Lincoln was inspired to act against the Dred Scott decision, Gingrich said, "one of the major reasons I am running" for president is the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals' 2002 ruling that the phrase "one nation under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance was unconstitutional. The ruling was later overturned.
Not in the article is that Newt vowed during the speech to defund the 9th Circuit. I'm not sure how partially dismantling the court system of a large section of the nation works out in practice, but I'm sure Newt doesn't particularly care.
Now keep in mind, this is to an audience that has just been told, over and over, how very dangerously radical the Obama administration is. Why is it radical? I don't know, I can never figure that part out, but something about regulation or the environment or the unwillingness to properly discriminate against Muslims or something. But then here comes Newt, in his peeved college professor persona, scowling at the audience like they are freshmen members of some class he really, really doesn't want to teach, and he explains that the way to stop all this radical governing is to simply ignore the courts when they come to decisions he, as hypothetical President, didn't like.
Honestly? If he actually had a chance at winning, I'd probably be more outraged. And if the Values Voters Summit audience members hadn't spent the entire day contradicting their own ideals, speaker after speaker (we demand religious freedom! But that guy over there is a Mormon, which doesn't count), maybe I'd make more fun of them.
But he's got no chance, and his audience really doesn't give a damn about being hypocritical, since they seem to get up early each morning just to plan how they could best be hypocritical during that particular day, and so this is just another footnote in the ongoing pander-fest to the members of the conservative Taliban. Free speech for me, but not for you; religious freedom for me, but scorn and suspicion for you; when you govern your decisions are radical, scary, and unprecedented, but we can ignore the Constitution all we want because Jesus and some guy in a tricorner hat said it was fine.
These are very silly, mean spirited people, and it is a testament to just how mean they are that Newt Gingrich, king of hypocritical moralizing and radicalized government, is not nearly extreme enough to win their votes.